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THE ROLE OF SEMANTIC TRANSFER IN CLITIC DROP AMONG SIMULTANEOUS AND SEQUENTIAL CHINESE-SPANISH BILINGUALS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Alejandro Cuza ,
Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux  and
Liliana Sánchez
Alejandro Cuza*
Affiliation:
Purdue University
Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Liliana Sánchez
Affiliation:
Rutgers University
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Alejandro Cuza, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, School of Languages and Cultures, Purdue University, 640 Oval Drive, Stanley Coulter Hall, West Lafayette, IN, 47907; e-mail: acuza@purdue.edu.
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Abstract

This study examines the acquisition of the featural constraints on clitic and null distribution in Spanish among simultaneous and sequential Chinese-Spanish bilinguals from Peru. A truth value judgment task targeted the referential meaning of null objects in a negation context. Objects were elicited via two clitic elicitation tasks that targeted anaphoric contexts and left-dislocated topics. An acceptability task tested sensitivity to left-dislocated object drop. Although simultaneous bilinguals were mostly undistinguishable from monolinguals, the late learners differed from both of these groups across tasks. Age of arrival led to different outcomes, with late learners showing more deficits than the child learners. Late learners avoided using clitics and relied on lexical and null objects. Residual transfer effects were observed among the child learners in the form of insensitivity to the features that serve as the basis for null argument identification and clitic deficits in production. It is also argued that transfer persists despite early and intense exposure to the second language in a natural environment because of the existence of an unmarked argument identification option in the first language.

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Articles
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Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 93 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012 

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