The Acquisition of Passives in Spanish and the Question of A-Chain Maturation

Pierce, Amy E.

doi:10.1207/s15327817la0201_3

Cited by 39 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Berman & Slobin, 1994). Based on the comprehension studies, the developmental course in the acquisition of passives appears to be similar in English-and Spanish-speaking monolinguals (deVilliers & deVilliers, 1973 ;Pierce, 1992). Despite the infrequent use of fue-passives in spoken language, their comprehension is above chance in five-to six-year-old Spanish speakers (Pierce, 1992).…”

Section: Passive Voice : Commonalities and Differences Between Englismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It should be noted, though, that this form is viewed as rather formal in Spanish and it is not common in everyday speech (e.g. Despite the infrequent use of fue-passives in spoken language, their comprehension is above chance in five-to six-year-old Spanish speakers (Pierce, 1992). The use of this form by both children and adults is less frequent than the use of the parallel passive in English (Jisa et al, 2002).…”

Section: Passive Voice : Commonalities and Differences Between Englismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although English and Spanish monolinguals can produce passives and comprehend them above chance by the age of five or six years, there are also clear indications that passives still pose challenges for this age group (Pierce, 1992 ;Vasilyeva, Huttenlocher & Waterfall, 2006). Although English and Spanish monolinguals can produce passives and comprehend them above chance by the age of five or six years, there are also clear indications that passives still pose challenges for this age group (Pierce, 1992 ;Vasilyeva, Huttenlocher & Waterfall, 2006).…”

Section: Evidence For the Integration Of Syntactic Representations Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cross-linguistic syntactic priming in bilingual children

et al. 2009

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Previous research has used cross-linguistic priming methodology with bilingual adults to explore the nature of their syntactic representations. The present paper extends the use of this methodology to bilingual children to investigate the relation between the syntactic structures of their two languages. Specifically, we examined whether the use of passives by the experimenter in one language primed the subsequent use of passives by the child in the other language. Results showed evidence of syntactic priming from Spanish to English: hearing a Spanish sentence containing a passive led to the increase in children's production of the parallel structure in English. However, there was no priming in the other direction: hearing an English sentence containing a passive did not increase children's use of the parallel structure in Spanish. These results provide evidence for both the integration of syntactic representations in bilingual children and the asymmetry of the relation between their two languages.

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Section: Passive Voice : Commonalities and Differences Between Englismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Passive Voice : Commonalities and Differences Between Englismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Evidence For the Integration Of Syntactic Representations Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cross-linguistic syntactic priming in bilingual children

et al. 2009

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“…A study by Pierce (1992) is instructive regarding the issue of holding all variables constant except the one(s) under study.…”

Section: P R E D I C T I O N S Of a G R A M M A T I C P E R F O R M Amentioning

confidence: 99%

The derivation of postverbal subjects: Evidence from agrammatic aphasia

Beretta

Harford

Patterson

et al. 1996

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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The study reported in this paper appeals to data from agrammatic aphasia to confront two competing analyses of the derivation of postverbal subjects in languages which permit free inversion. In one of the analyses, postverbal subjects are derived by movement, while in the other, they are base-generated in situ.According to a prominent hypothesis which attempts to explain the pattern of sparing and loss in agrammatism in terms of current linguistic theory, the only syntactic deficit is the loss of trace. This movement-derived 'trace-deletion' hypothesis has been successful in predicting what agrammatics can and cannot comprehend. In the present study, these predictions are first of all confirmed for Spanish-speaking agrammatics on a range of structures for which predictions are identical under both movement and non-movement analyses. These structures serve as a control, establishing that the claims of the trace-deletion hypothesis are valid. They pave the way for the critical test of the VS passive, the only structure for which the competing analyses yield different predictions. Agrammatic data on the VS passive are used to adjudicate between the competing analyses. Since agrammatic subjects perform randomly on VS passives, it is concluded that the postverbal subject is derived by movement.

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“…The acquisition of verbal passive is delayed in numerous languages; amongst them English (Maratsos, Fox, Becker and Chalkley 1985), Spanish (Pierce 1992), Dutch (Verrips 1996), Japanese (Sugisaki 1999), Greek (Terzi and Wexler 2002), Russian (Babyonyshev and Brun 2003) and Catalan (Parramon 2009). Some authors have argued that this late comprehension of passives can be attributed to their sparse presence in the input: in many languages of the world passives are uncommon in colloquial speech and thus in child-directed speech.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An investigation on the comprehension of Persian passives in typical development and autism

Gavarró

Heshmati

2014

catjl

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Autism Spectrum disorders have attracted the attention of many researchers working on communicative and pragmatic competence, but much less attention has been paid to the investigation of narrow syntax in this condition. On the other hand, in the field of acquisition, passive sentences (and related constructions) are known to be a late acquisition, and have been argued to be a case of late maturation. In this paper we report results on the comprehension of passive sentences in Persian-speaking children with typical development and with Autism Spectrum Disorders. In our findings, not all ASD children perform in the same way, rather those considered to be high-functioning perform like the typically developing, and the low-functioning have a clearly poorer performance. These results shed some light on former studies , Terzi et al. 2014, with seemingly inconsistent results due to the fact that heterogeneous populations were tested.Keywords: passives; comprehension; acquisition; Autism Spectrum Disorders; Persian. Resum. Una investigació sobre la comprensió de les passives del persa en casos de desenvolupament típic i d'autismeEls desordres d'espectre autista han interessat molts investigadors de la competència comunicativa i pragmàtica, però no s'ha parat gaire atenció a l'estudi de la sintaxi estricta d'aquesta condició. Per altra banda, en l'àmbit de l'adquisició, s'ha observat que les oracions passives (i construccions relacionades) s'adquireixen tard i s'ha proposat que són un cas de maduració tardana. En aquest * The authors would like to genuinely thank Mr. Zojaji, founder of the Autism Children Charity Foundation, for his support, and all participants for their willingness to take part in our experiment. We have greatly benefited from discussion with Fatemeh Nemati and from the suggestions of an anonymous reviewer. We also wish to thank Anna Espinal and Ester Boixadera (of the Servei d'Estadística Aplicada at the UAB) for the statistical analysis, and projects FFI2011-29440-C03-03 and 2009SGR 1079 for financial support. The experimental materials were used by courtesy of Kristine Jensen de López and Kenneth F. Drozd. The artist Justyna Kamykowska reserves the copyright of the drawings. CatJL 13, 2014Anna Gavarró; Yalda Heshmati article descrivim els resultats d'un experiment de comprensió de les oracions passives en nens parlants del persa amb desenvolupament típic i amb autisme. Les nostres investigacions mostren que no tots els nens autistes tenen el mateix comportament: mentre que els nens autistes amb elevada funcionalitat obtenen resultats similars als dels nens amb desenvolupament típic, els nens autistes amb funcionalitat baixa tenen uns resultats clarament pitjors. Aquestes dades aporten una nova perspectiva als estudis previs , Terzi et al. 2014, que mostraven resultats aparentment inconsistents a causa de l'heterogeneïtat de les poblacions analitzades.

show abstract

The Acquisition of Passives in Spanish and the Question of A-Chain Maturation

Cited by 39 publications

References 6 publications

Cross-linguistic syntactic priming in bilingual children

Cross-linguistic syntactic priming in bilingual children

The derivation of postverbal subjects: Evidence from agrammatic aphasia

An investigation on the comprehension of Persian passives in typical development and autism

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