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Part of
East and West of The Pentacrest: Linguistic studies in honor of Paula Kempchinsky
Edited by Timothy Gupton and Elizabeth Gielau
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 33] 2021
► pp. 189–214

Chapter 9
Dual competence in dual language learners

Gradience and variability of object clitics in Spanish heritage language learners

| University of Michigan
This chapter focuses on grammatical variability in object clitic placement (omission and clitic climbing) and morphology (gender and number) in child heritage Spanish. Implementing Wexler’s (2003) Clitic Acquisition Theory (CAT), original corpus data from 60 U.S. Spanish heritage speakers (SHS), ages 4–7, are analyzed and compared to previous research on adult L1/L2/child L1 and bilingual acquisition on clitic expression and acceptability judgments. Results show SHS at all proficiency levels produce clitics to some degree; however compared to Wexler (2003) and subsequent CAT studies, SHS demonstrate ongoing clitic optionality. A high percentage of this variability is grammatical: for instance, no substantial difference in SHS frequencies for proclisis or enclisis occurs. In the spirit of L2 work by Slabakova, Rothman and Kempchinsky (2011), the Underlying and Surface Competence (Duffield, 2003) is tested as a generative-based account of variability in more mature child grammars, complementing CAT. The dual competence model provides a finer-grained snapshot of ‘adult-like’ Spanish clitic expression in children.
Keywords: Clitic Pronouns, Heritage Languages, Gradience, Child bilingualism
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Direct object clitics
    • 2.1Clitic distribution
    • 2.2Theoretical accounts of clitic acquisition and optionality
  • 3.The present study
    • 3.1Rationale and research hypotheses for the current study
    • 3.2Participants
    • 3.3Data collection
  • 4.Data, analysis and discussion
    • 4.1Clitic production data (simple and complex predicates)
    • 4.2Data interpretation and discussion
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 10 May 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.33.09sat
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Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Shin, Naomi L.
2023. Está abriendo, la abrió: Lexical knowledge, verb type, and grammatical aspect shape child heritage speakers’ direct object omission in Spanish. International Journal of Bilingualism 27:5 ► pp. 842 ff. DOI logo
Shin, Naomi
2022. Structured variation in child heritage speakers' grammars. Language and Linguistics Compass 16:12 DOI logo

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