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Article published In: Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 7:5 (2017) ► pp.477–513

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Catalan-Spanish bilingualism continuum

The expression of non-personal Catalan clitics in the adult grammar of early bilinguals

 | The University of Western Ontario
Published online: 1 February 2016
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.15004.per
Abstract
This study investigates the expression of Catalan clitics en and hi, which have no grammatical equivalent in Spanish, in the adult grammar of Catalan-Spanish early bilinguals. Participants (N = 57), born and raised in Catalonia, are divided into 3 groups according to their onset of acquisition and language use: Spanish-dominant (n = 20), Balanced Bilinguals (n = 15) and Catalan-dominant (n = 22). The results of an Acceptability Judgment Task and an Elicited Production Task indicated that Spanish-dominant bilinguals have a divergent grammar compared to that of the Catalan-dominant speakers, overaccepting ungrammatical omission and doubling of the clitics. The bilingual group patterned with the Catalan-dominant group in some of their judgments, but with the Spanish-dominant group in their production. It is argued that onset of acquisition cannot be the only explanation for the differences between the bilingual groups, and that quantity and quality of input play an important role in the acquisition process.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theories of Early Language Acquisition
  • 3.The Linguistic Phenomenon: Oblique Clitics in Catalan
    • 3.1Descriptive facts
    • 3.2Syntactic Analysis
    • 3.3Catalan vs. Spanish: Learnability Tasks
  • 4.Previous Studies
    • 4.1The Acquisition of Clitics
    • 4.2Child Bilingualism
  • 5.The Present Study: Methodology
    • 5.1Participants
    • 5.2Materials
      • 5.2.1Linguistic Background Questionnaire
      • 5.2.2Acceptability Judgment Task
      • 5.2.3Oral Production Task
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1Linguistic Background Questionnaire
    • 6.2Results of the Acceptability Judgment Task
    • 6.3Results of the Oral Production Task
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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