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The Acquisition of English and Spanish Dative Alternation Structures in the Longitudinal Spontaneous Production of Monolingual and Bilingual Children

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The Acquisition of English and Spanish Dative Alternation Structures in the Longitudinal Spontaneous Production of Monolingual and Bilingual Children UNIVERSIDAD DE VALLADOLID FACULTAD DE FILOSOFÍA Y LETRAS DEPARTAMENTO DE FILOLOGÍA INGLESA PROGRAMA DE DOCTORADO EN ESTUDIOS INGLESES AVANZADOS: LENGUAS Y CULTURAS EN CONTACTO TESIS DOCTORAL: THE ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH AND SPANISH DATIVE ALTERNATION STRUCTURES IN THE LONGITUDINAL SPONTANEOUS PRODUCTION OF MONOLINGUAL AND BILINGUAL CHILDREN Presentada por Silvia Sánchez Calderón para optar al grado de doctora por la Universidad de Valladolid Dirigida por: Raquel Fernández Fuertes 2018 ©Silvia Sánchez Calderón, Valladolid, 2018 Abstract ABSTRACT The chief ongoing debate in the domain of dative alternation (DA) structures revolves around the syntactic derivational relationship (or lack thereof) between prepositional and double object constructions (DOCs) in English (i.e. to/for-datives and DOCs) and in Spanish (i.e. a/para-datives and dative-clitic- doubled (DCLD) structures). In English, the debate has centered on the derivation of DOCs from to/for- datives (e.g. Czepluch 1982; Haspelmath 2006; Larson 2014, 1990, 1988; Oehrle 1976) or to/for-datives from DOCs instead (e.g. Aoun and Li 1989; Dryer 1986; Koizumi 1994). In Spanish, a/para-datives are analyzed as the source structure of DCLDs (e.g. Bruhn de Garavito 2000; Demonte 1995, 1994; Kempchinsky 2004). Non-derivational approaches have proposed that DA constructions stem from two different structures (e.g. Marantz 1993; Mulder 1992 in English; Cuervo 2003a, 2003b in Spanish) or establish a common underlying configuration (e.g. Snyder and Stromswold 1997; Snyder 2001, 1995). Yet, prepositional structures are also argued to be subject to additional syntactic and semantic requirements that double object constructions are not (e.g. Larson 1990, 1988; Marantz 1984; Pesetsky 1985; Snyder and Stromswold 1997). Semantically, there is also a debate in the literature as to whether the two DA structures share a similar theta role distribution (Baker 1988) or whether they denote a semantic difference (e.g. Colleman 2010; Colleman and De Clerk 2011 in English; Demonte 1994; Romero Morales 2008 in Spanish). Monolingual (L1) and bilingual (2L1) acquisition works on English and Spanish DA are rather scarce and there is no consensus in the findings reported. While some L1 English studies (e.g. Bowerman 1990; Campbell and Tomasello 2001) and 2L1 English studies (e.g. Gu 2010) point to the later emergence of to/for-datives, other L1 English works (e.g. Snyder and Stromswold 1997) report a similar emergence for English DA structures. In Spanish, only the study conducted by Torrens and Wexler (2000) reports the early onset of DCLDs from the initial L1 acquisition stages. Data analyses in the present dissertation show that prepositional and double object constructions emerge at an approximately similar age in English and in Spanish alike, as analyzed in the L1 children’s data and in each of the 2L1 English/Spanish children’s two languages. Biological gender differences are not seen in the two language groups either. These data point to the syntactic non-derivational relationship (e.g. Marantz 1993; Mulder 1992; Snyder and Stromswold 1997; Snyder 2001, 1995; in English; Cuervo 2003a, 2003b in Spanish) and to the semantic analogy (Baker 1988) between DA constructions in English and in Spanish. Although the two DA constructions mature at a similar age, prepositional structures show a later onset and a lower incidence through language development when compared to double object constructions, as equally seen in the L1 and in the 2L1 children’s data in each language. These findings might be related to the additional properties required in the production of English to/for-datives and Spanish a/para-datives and/or the role played by adult input in child output. Similar results appear when comparing across English and Spanish in the case of the production of both the two L1 groups (inter- group comparison) and the 2L1 children (intra-group comparison). Thus, as per the acquisition pattern, the properties that characterize double object and prepositional constructions indicate a cross-linguistic parallelism in English and Spanish and the amount of exposure to these constructions could also have played a similar role in the children’s output across the two languages. Key words: Dative alternation, double object constructions, prepositional constructions, monolingual acquisition, bilingual acquisition, age of onset, language development, adult input, child output, biological gender ii Acknowledgements ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am extremely thankful to the many people who have contributed, in many different ways, to the elaboration of this dissertation. The research reported in this dissertation is the result of all their help. I owe a special debt to my supervisor, Raquel Fernández Fuertes, because her dedication and her time are reflected in this dissertation. I am thankful for her thought- provoking questions that helped me to structure my ideas. I cannot forget her constant guidance in times of need and her thorough feedback provided in several drafts of this dissertation, in papers and in conference abstracts; let alone her kindness and her emotional support. I give her thanks for her contagious enthusiasm and for the knowledge she has shown me through her unimpeachable attributes as a researcher. I will be eternally thankful. I would also like to thank the financial support provided by the University of Valladolid, Spain, co-funded by Santander bank from 06/02/2014 to 14/10/2014, and by the Castile and León Regional Government, Spain (ORDEN EDU/1083/2013, 27 December), co-funded by the European Social Funding from 17/10/2014 to 31/04/2018. This dissertation is framed in the project ‘la transmisión de estereotipos de género a través de la canción y su relación con la violencia de género’ (‘the conveyance of gender stereotypes through song and its relation with domestic violence’), granted by the Women Institute (Health, Social Services and Equality Department, Spain), BOE 22 February 2013, 039/12. I am very grateful to the principal investigator, Laura Filardo Llamas, for her worthwhile comments, her advice and her generous help whenever I needed them. During the realization of this dissertation, I had the opportunity of carrying out a research stay at the Institute of Linguistics (University of Malta) from 01/06/2015 to 01/09/2015 where I benefitted from several experts’ knowledge on quantitative and qualitative techniques of selection and classification of data. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Marie Alexander, Stavros Assimakopoulos, Ray Fabri, Albert Gatt, Sarah Grech, Natalie Schembri and Lonneke van der Plas. I am immensely grateful for their advice, their kind words, their involvement and their encouragement. My statistical results would not have been possible without the help of Albert Gatt (University of Malta), Andrés Palacios Picos (University of Valladolid) and Qianting iii Acknowledgements Yuan (University of Valladolid). I benefitted enormously from their expertise, their comments and their suggestions. I would like to give thanks to the audience for their valuable comments and their helpful discussions while presenting results at the XXIX Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Jóvenes Lingüistas (University of Murcia, Spain, 2014), the VII Congreso Internacional de Lingüística de Corpus (University of Valladolid, Spain, 2015), the Linguistics Circle (University of Malta, Malta, 2015), the I International UCM Predoctoral Conference on English Linguistics (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain, 2015), the XXXIII International Conference of the Spanish Society for Applied Linguistics (AESLA, University of Alicante, Spain, 2016), the IV Congreso Internacional de Lingüística y Literatura (University of Cantabria, Spain, 2016), the XXXIV International Conference of the Spanish Society for Applied Linguistics (AESLA, University of Jaén, Spain, 2017), the Multilingual Language Theories and Practices (University of Valladolid, Spain, 2018) and the III Lancaster Conference on Infant and Early Child Development (University of Lancaster, UK, 2018). I would like to mention those professors who played an important role in the first stages of my knowledge on linguistic theory (Cayetano Estébanez Estébanez, University of Valladolid, Spain; Axiotis Kechagias, University of Salford, UK; Luis Santos Domínguez, University of Valladolid, Spain). Special thanks go to Ismael Iván Teomiro García, who served as my supervisor during my Master’s thesis at the National University of Distance Education (Spain), for having introduced me to the study of child language acquisition. My fellow colleagues at the Department of English studies have also provided me with much-needed moral support and wise advice. I am particularly thinking of Esther Álvarez de la Fuente, Diana Carrascal Tris, Laura Filardo Llamas, Eduardo Gómez Garzarán, Sonja Mujcinovic, Ana Sáez Hidalgo, Radoslava Stankova and Qianting Yuan. I would also like to give thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and for providing insightful comments and suggestions. Their valuable supportive work has considerably improved this dissertation. This dissertation owes a special word of thanks to my parents and my sister for their unconditional love and their generosity; I am very grateful for their continuous support and their understanding. A big ‘thank you’ also goes to my partner, James, for iv Acknowledgements having answered innumerable questions about my English whenever my native-like intuitions faltered; I wish to
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