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ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the knowledge young children have about

clitic pronouns. In particular, it examines whether children ever

make mistakes that suggest discontinuity between child and adult

Spanish. An elicited imitation task and spontaneous data are used

to study children’s responses to a number of constructions

involving clitics. Results indicate that, from the earliest testable

age, children have the grammatical competence for clitic placement

and never make certain logical, but unattested, errors.

KEYWORDS

Acquisition of pronouns; elicitation tasks; grammatical errors;

morpho-lexical development; syntactic development

INTRODUCTION

Even a cursory look at recent linguistics journals, dissertation abstracts

and book notices reveals a profound ongoing interest in the syntax

of clitics. Yet, despite the proliferation of publications on this subject,

very little research has been conducted into the acquisition

of clitics. For Spanish in particular, there are only a few studies

describing the acquisition process, usually based on case studies of single children, with little reference to proposals from current linguistic

theory. This disparity does not apply exclusively to the study of clitic

acquisition but is found also in other domains. Goodluck (1991: vii–viii)

First Language, 23(2), 193–211 Copyright © 2003 SAGE Publications

Clitics in child Spanish*

SUSANA EISENCHLAS, Griffith University

* I am grateful to Mary Laughren, Michael Harrington, Kevin Durkin and the two

anonymous reviewers for their very useful comments. Address for correspondence:Spanish & Applied Linguistics, School of Languages and Linguistics, GriffithUniversity, Nathan, Qld 4111, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]

0142-7237 [200302] 23:2; 193–211; 034994

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194 F I R S T L A N G U A G E

refers to this state of affairs as a ‘yawning gap’ problem: ‘namely, that

there is in general a large disparity between the level of detail provided

by linguistic theory in the description of adult languages and that

provided in language acquisition studies of the development of that

adult knowledge’.The acquisition of the clitic pronominal system is of particular

relevance to linguistic theory, since the mastery of the clitic system

entails internalized knowledge of different aspects of the grammar, such

as phonology, morphology, syntax, and the interface between syntax and

semantics.

From a phonological perspective, children need to have the ability to

distinguish between clitics and full pronouns. This distinction has

syntactic consequences, namely, that while full pronouns can standalone, clitics have to cliticize into a host. Moreover, children need to

know which elements can serve as hosts for clitics, and be able to

distinguish between finite and infinitival constructions, a distinction

that yields different derivations and offers different clitic insertion sites,

at least at surface structure level. Children should also have the

knowledge of the rules of clitic climbing and, with regard to verbs that

take verbal complements, should be able to distinguish between verbs

that allow climbing from the ones that do not. This in turn assumes the

ability to move constituents from deep to surface structure.From a semantic perspective, the correct use of clitics requires the

understanding of the thematic relations between the verb and its

objects, which determines the choice of direct or indirect object. In

addition, the rule of Accusative clitics entails the knowledge that only

objects that are specified as [+ definite] can be pronominalized. Pronouns

need to match the relevant features (such as gender and number) with

those of the nouns they substitute for, and therefore mastery of the

clitic system also entails knowledge of the rules of feature agreement.

Given the complexity of the system, it is remarkable that naturalistic

studies agree that very few mistakes are made during the acquisition

process. There are, however, some limitations to studies that rely

exclusively on naturalistic data. As Meisel (1992: 18) observes, ‘one

cannot be sure whether children do not know more than what they use’.

If we want to examine the grammatical knowledge underlying

children’s linguistic production, we have to use experimental techniques

to elicit structures that are not frequent in child language.

This study aims at filling one of the gaps in the area of cliticacquisition, through the analysis of experimental data collected cross-

sectionally from 71 children acquiring Argentinian Spanish as their first

language. It focuses on children’s knowledge of the clitic/non-clitic






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C L I T I C S I N C H I L D S PA N I S H 195

distinction and its syntactic consequences, to address the wider question:

Do children ever make mistakes that indicate discontinuity between the

child and the adult grammar, or is there early convergence between the

two systems?

Before presenting the experimental details of this study, it will beuseful to summarize the basic facts of cliticization in standard Spanish

and the syntactic proposals developed to account for these.

Clitics in adult Spanish

Spanish pronominal clitics are ‘weak’, unstressed pronouns, which,

unlike the ‘strong’ (or ‘free’) forms, cannot be used in isolation, cannot

receive contrastive stress, and cannot be topicalized, conjoined, or

modified (Hamann, Rizzi & Frauenfelder 1996, Kayne 1975). They arealways joined phonetically to the verb, ‘leaning on’ (Greek enklítikos)

it, either as proclitic to tensed verbs, as shown in (1), or as enclitic to

infinitive and imperative forms, as in (2) and (3).

(1) Lo veo y no lo creo. (Roldán 1974)

3SG.M.DO see:PRES:1SGandno 3SG.M.DO believe:PRES:1SG1

I see it and I don’t believe it.

(2) Vine para ver=te.

Come:PAST:1SG to see=2SG.DOI came to see you.

(3) Imitémos=lo.

imitate:IMPERAT:1PL=3SG.M.DO

Let’s imitate him.

When a clitic represents an argument of an infinitival complement of a

finite verb, it can either be proclitic to the higher finite verb (4) or enclitic

to the nonfinite verb (5).

(4) Lo quiero comer.

3SG.M.DO want:PRES:1SGeat

I want to eat it.

[1] The following abbreviations are used in this paper: 1 = first person, 2 = second

person, 3 = third person, AGR = Agreement, DO = Direct Object, DP =Determiner Phrase, F = Feminine, FUT = Future, Infl = Inflection, IMPERF= Imperfect IO = Indirect Object, LF = Logical Form, M = Masculine, NP =

Noun Phrase, PL = Plural, PRES = Present, REFL = Reflexive, SG = Singular,S = Subject, TNS = Tense.






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(5) Quiero comer=lo.

want:PRES:1SG eat=3SG.M.DO

I want to eat it.

Probably the feature that has generated most debate in the literature isthat clitics appear in a position other than the one favoured by their non-

cliticized counterpart, as shown in (6) to (8).

(6) Vi a Juan.

see:PAST:1SG to John

I saw John.

(7) Lo vi.

3SG.M.DO see:PAST:1SGI saw him.

(8) *Vi lo.

see:PAST:1SG 3SG.M.DO

Syntactic approaches to clitics

Syntactic approaches to account for clitic position at spell-out have

developed in two main directions: base generation, according to which

clitics are base-generated in their surface position (proclitic) and standin some relation (coindexed with) to the position typically occupied by

the non-clitic argument (Borer 1986, Jaeggli 1982, Strozer 1976, Suñer

1989), and movement, according to which clitics are generated in the

appropriate argument position to satisfy the verb’s argument structure,

and moved to the unmarked pre-verbal clitic position to satisfy

morphological requirements (Belletti 1990, Cardinaletti 1994, Kayne

1975 and subsequent work, Uriagereka 1995).

Recent versions of the base generation position treat the clitic as an

agreement marker (Borer 1986, Lyons 1990, Suñer 1988), identifying a

phonologically null pronominal in argument position. From this

perspective, subject-verb agreement and object clitics represent exactly

the same phenomenon, namely agreement between a head and its

governees. In neither case does the affix have a pronominal character. Just

as the governor of the subject, Infl, assumes subject agreement features,

so the governor of the object, V, assumes object agreement features in

the form of a clitic. This clitic is a spell-out of the features for number,

gender and case copied from a complement onto its governing head. Itshould be noted that while in standard Spanish only a null object

occasions agreement, subject agreement takes place whether the

subject is null or overt.






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There are some problems with this interpretation. As Everett (1996)

points out, proponents of this hypothesis have to address the problem

of the optionality and mobility of the Spanish clitics. Unlike subject-

verb agreement, object agreement appears to be arbitrary and, in many

instances, optional. Moreover, if clitics are agreement markers, the factthat they can appear away from the verb of which they are arguments,

as shown in Example 4, has to be accounted for. As Jaeggli (1982: 55)

notes, subject agreement markers ‘cannot wander off to a different

verb. They do not have the mobility granted to clitics’, which is evidence

in favour of the more independent status of clitics as compared to

agreement markers.

Furthermore, while agreement markers affect the stress pattern of the

verb to which they adjoin, as in (9a and 9b), clitics never do (9c–e).This suggests that the association of the clitic with its host is post-

lexical (i.e., syntactic) while, according to the minimalist programme,

agreement features are generated with the lexical heads in the lexicon.

(9) a. cánto ‘I sing’

b. cantámos ‘We sing’

c. cantándo ‘singing’

d. cantándo=te

‘singing to you’e. cantándo=te=la ‘singing it (the song) to you’

Another problem with this proposal is that clitics may optionally

appear in postverbal position following nonfinite verbal complements,

as shown in Example 4. Some mechanism has to be postulated to

account for the postverbal placement of clitics.

Many of these problems are avoided by adopting the movement

hypothesis, which postulates obligatory clitic movement in the syntax

triggered by the strength of the morphological features encoded in theclitic. Checking Theory explains how clitic movement obtains. Since

Chomsky (1995), it is generally accepted that the morphological features

associated with functional heads (person, gender, number, case, specificity

and the like) must be checked in a local configuration (Corder &

Delfitto 1999). Given that the clitic heads a defective DP (Cardinaletti

1994), it cannot check the phi-features within the NP domain. The clitic

cannot stay in its base position but has to undergo syntactic movement

to adjoin to a functional head that contains the relevant features (Kayne1991). Strong pronouns and full DPs, on the other hand, which contain

a NP projection, do not need to move.

One final point concerns the final landing site of cliticization.






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Following Pollock’s (1989) IP deconstruction, the question can be

asked as to whether clitics attach to AGR or TNS. The fact that Spanish

clitics do not interpolate between TNS and AGR, as in Berber, for

instance (Ouhalla 1991: 62), suggests that, in the case of finite verbs,

clitics attach to AGR. This generalization follows Baker’s Mirror

Principle (1988), which states that ‘Morphological derivations must

directly reflect syntactic derivations (and vice versa)’. The basic claim

is that given a complex of the form [Affix1 + Affix2 + Affix3 + V] the

process which attaches affix3 to the verb applies prior to the process

which attaches affix2 and so on (Ouhalla 1991). In the case of Spanish,

the complex [CL + AGR + TNS + V] would be derived by raising the

V to TNS before moving the complex to AGR. The clitic pronoun then

attaches to AGR to satisfy feature checking requirements. Furthermore,if Uriagereka (1995) is on the right track and clitics universally target

F, the interface between the levels of syntax and pragmatics, we would

assume that the clitic further moves to F, either overtly or at LF, unless

it is blocked by the verb moving into that position, as is the case with

imperatives. The situation is different with nonfinite constructions. It is

argued in Ouhalla (1991) that one of the features of AGR-initial

languages is the existence of non-inflected infinitives, i.e., infinitival

clauses which do not display an AGR element. If there is no position

higher than TNS, the clitic attaches to TNS. Finally, sentences with a

finite verb followed by a non-finite verbal complement present two

clitic insertion sites, as shown in Examples 4 and 5. According to Kayne

(1994), proclisis is costlier than enclisis, since it involves a further step

in the derivation. Kayne (1994: 137) argues that apparent instances of

clitics adjoined to the right (e.g., of an infinitive or imperative) should

be better analysed as ‘left-adjunction of the clitic to an abstract functional

head, plus movement of the infinitive past the clitic’. If Kayne’s proposal

is right, we can predict that children will show a marked preference for proclisis over enclisis, following economy principles.

To summarize, the following hypotheses were tested in this study:

1. If children have an early knowledge of the argumental status of

clitics, this knowledge will be reflected in the low rate of clitic

omission in the responses to the stimulus sentences. If, on the other

hand, clitics are acquired later in development, we can expect a high

level of clitic omissions, at least in the younger groups tested. A

high omission rate is particularly plausible given the fact that cliticsare bound morphemes and lack phonological saliency. Indeed, one of

Slobin’s Operating Principles (1973) predicts that children will pay

attention to stressed words and ignore unstressed elements.






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2. If children have mastered the morpho-lexical difference between

clitics and full pronominal expressions, they would not use them

interchangeably by replacing a clitic in the stimulus sentence with a

free pronoun or with a prepositional object pronoun. If, on the

contrary, children have not mastered the difference between pronoun types we can expect random substitutions.

3. Moreover, if children have acquired the difference between clitics

and full pronouns they would never place clitics in non-clitic

positions. This in turn entails knowledge of the morpho-syntactic

categorization requirements of clitics, i.e., the fact that Spanish clitics

attach preverbally to finite verbs, or, more precisely, to some

functional head adjacent to V (Kayne 1994, Uriagereka 1995). On

the other hand, if this distinction is not part of the child’sknowledge, it is expected that children would place clitics in

postverbal position following the canonical SVO order in Spanish

nominal syntax. This is plausible since the child is exposed to, and

has knowledge of, the postverbal placement of clitics following

imperatives and infinitival complements.

METHOD

Experimental task

The data for this study were collected using an Elicited Imitation Task.

The basic idea underlying this test is that, if the participant’s grammar

corresponds to the grammar of the stimulus sentence, the imitation is

likely to be accurate. Inaccurate answers, on the other hand, may reveal

specific differences between the participant’s grammar and the grammar

of the target stimulus sentence, or even the steps followed in the

derivation of sentences with clitics, as will be proposed in the

‘Discussion’ section. The rationale for this technique is based on the

assumption that imitation is not a passive copying of the stimulus, but

rather that it involves a reconstructive process by which the stimulus

might be altered in some ways (Lust, Chien & Flynn 1987, Menyuk

1963). It has been observed that when children are asked to repeat a

sentence that is beyond their short-term memory ability, they alter the

sentence not randomly but in ways that conform to their grammatical

system at the time (Ingram 1989: 256–7). These responses could

therefore be treated as analogues of grammaticality judgements.

Procedure

The tests were administered by the researcher, a native speaker of






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Argentinian Spanish. Children were tested individually in their daycare

centres. Three ‘pre-test’ sentences, similar in length to the test sentences

but unrelated to the structures to be tested, were given to ensure that the

children understood the task. Two batteries of tests were administered

in random order. Sentences were repeated only once, on request fromthe participant. The sessions were tape-recorded with a portable micro

recorder and transcribed in conventional spelling by the researcher.

Scoring

The data were scored following standardized criteria. Lexical errors

such as substitutions of proper names or prepositions were ignored.

Simplifications of the NPs (i.e., ‘la sirenita’ for ‘la linda sirenita’) or

changes in inflectional morphology (‘quería’ for ‘quiere’ ) were accepted.Major structural changes, on the other hand, such as subject drop, word

order changes, addition or omission of prepositions, were scored as

inaccurate.

Participants

The participants were 71 monolingual, middle-class, Spanish-speaking

children attending private daycare centres in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The participants were divided into seven developmental groups (3;0–3;6,3;7–4;0, 4;1–4;6, 4;8–5;0, 5;2–5;6, 5;7–6;0, 6;1–6;4). There were 11

participants in group 5 and 10 participants in the other groups. Gender

distribution was even across groups.

Design

The stimuli consisted of simple sentences, which included a modal

verb followed by a nonfinite complement and a direct or indirect object

DP of the nonfinite complement. These sentences were varied by twofactors: Type of determiner (DO, IO), and Position of the DP

(preverbal, postverbal). Thus, the design involved four sentence types:

(1) DO preverbal, (2) IO preverbal, (3) DO postverbal, (4) IO postverbal.

The third factor that was systematically varied in this study was age,

with seven levels (groups 1 to 7). Thus the design was a three factor

ANOVA: Position (2) × Type (2) × Age (7). Two sentence tokens were

presented for each of the sentence types, for a total of 8 sentences, and

score out of a total possible of 2. All sentences were 8–9 words long.

The stimulus sentences tested in this study are listed in the Appendix.






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RESULTS

Accurate responses

The overall percentage of accurate responses in this study was 58%.Table 1 shows the percentage of accurate responses for Type of

determiner and Position of the clitic pronouns as a function of Age. The

analysis indicates that the interactions between Age and Position, Type

and Position, and Age and Type did not significantly affect the success

rate of imitation. Significant main effects were found for the factors

Position ( F (1,6) = 60.18, p = 0.0002) and Age ( F (6,6) = 13.47, p =

0.003). With respect to the main effect of Position, results for sentences

with postverbal clitic pronouns (M = 42, SD = 25) were much lower

than those for sentences with preverbal clitics (M = 73, SD = 17). Withrespect to the main effect for Age, post-hoc tests (see Table 1) indicated

that groups 1 to 3 performed significantly lower than the older groups.

Among groups 4 to 7 there were no significant pairwise differences,

and this suggests that their responses have become stable. The effect

for the Type factor was not significant ( F (1,6) = 1.92 p = 0.215), i.e.,

children’s responses for DO and IO pronouns were comparable in overall

number of accurate responses, as can be seen in Table 1.

Thus far, the results point to the following conclusions that will bediscussed later in the paper: that the Type of determiner is irrelevant,

that there is a developmental curve which stabilizes at around age 4,

and that preverbal clitics are easier for children than postverbal clitics.

TABLE 1. Proportion of accurate responses (by Position, Type of determiner and Age), expressed as percentages

Preverbal Postverbal

Age group DO IO DO IO Group means* SD

1 47 45 0 26 30a 23

2 65 50 5 15 34a 24

3 65 75 30 44 54a 23

4 85 100 40 65 73 b 30

5 77 82 64 59 71 b 12

6 85 80 45 40 63 b 22

7 90 80 85 65 80 b 10Mean 73 73 39 45 58 b 18

SD 15 19 30 20 19 b

* The subscripts indicate the pattern of differences between the age groups. Thus, thegroups that do not share the same subscripts differ significantly.






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Inaccurate responses

The overall percentage of inaccurate responses for this study was 42%.

Of all errors, 73% were directly related to the clitic pronouns in the

stimulus sentences, and include clitic repositioning, mainly from post-verbal to preverbal position (46%), clitic omission (16%), phi-feature

changes (7%) and clitic copying (4%).

A detailed breakdown of error types, as differentiated by the main

factor Position, is given in Fig. 1. As can be seen, the distribution of

errors varies greatly according to the position of the clitic pronoun,

with 69% of the inaccurate responses occurring in sentences with the

clitic in postverbal position. The following sections examine in more

detail some of the error types produced.

Clitic repositioning

‘Clitic repositioning’ is used in this paper as a descriptive term to

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

M e a n n u m b e r i n c o r r e c t

Cliticomission

Cliticrepositioning

Clitic insertion Clitic phifeatures

Other Ungrammatical Overall

Error types

Fig. 1. Percentage of inaccurate responses by error types and by position

of the clitic pronoun

Preverbal

Postverbal






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characterize responses where the clitic is placed in a position that

differs from that of the stimulus sentence. The more theoretically

loaded term ‘movement’, is used to refer to a syntactic process that

moves constituents from a base to a surface position.

Clitic repositioning was the most frequent inaccurate response,accounting for 46% of all incorrect repetitions in this study. Since

naturalistic studies report a marked preference for preverbal clitics in

child Spanish (González 1978, López Ornat et al . 1994), no backward

repositioning was expected. And indeed, the percentage of preverbal to

postverbal repositioning was extremely low (6% of all repositioning

errors) and was found only in the older age groups.

A very different situation was found in the imitation of sentences

with clitics in postverbal position. As anticipated, the percentage of postverbal clitics repositioned preverbally was very high, accounting

for 93% of all repositioning responses, and was very frequent in all age

groups.

Examples of clitic repositioning responses are given below. In Example

10, the preverbal DO is repositioned postverbally, while in Example 11

the postverbal IO is repositioned preverbally. Note that, although these

responses were classed as ‘inaccurate’ following the strict scoring criteria

adopted in this study, both reconstructions produce grammatical results.

(10) Stimulus sentence:

La princesa Jasmín lo puede ver esta noche.

3SG.M.DO can see

Response:

La princesa Jasmín puede ver=lo esta noche. (5;1)

can see 3SG.M.DO

Princess Jasmine can see him tonight.


Por la noche la sirenita puede cantar=me una canción.

can sing 1SG.IO

In the evening the little mermaid can sing me a song

Response:

Por la noche la sirenita me quiere cantar . . . (3;0)

1SG.IO wants sing

In the evening the little mermaid wants to sing me a song.

Clitic omission

Clitic omission accounts for 16% of all errors in this study; 65% of the






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errors occurred in the two youngest groups. No significant difference

was found according to the Type of determiner, i.e., children omitted

nearly as many DOs as IOs. But there are some interesting differences

according to the position of the determiner, with the postverbal clitics

accounting for 60% of the omissions. This provides additional evidencethat children do not accept the two positions as equivalent.

Examples of clitic omission are given below. In Example 12, the

preverbal DO is omitted, while in Example 13 the postverbal IO is

dropped.


La linda sirenita la quiere invitar esta noche.

3SG.F.DO wants inviteThe pretty little mermaid wants to invite her tonight.

Response:

*La linda sirenita Ø quiere invitar a la noche. (3;6)

Ø wants invite

The pretty little mermaid wants to invite tonight.


Por la tarde Aladín quiere dar=me un caramelo.wants give=1SG.IO

In the afternoon Aladin wants to give me a lolly.

Response:

Por la tarde Aladín quiere dar=Ø un caramelo. (3;0)

wants give=Ø

In the afternoon Aladin wants to give a lolly.

It should be noted that the type of clitic omitted produced differences ingrammaticality. While DO omission always produced ungrammatical

results, omission of the IO yielded sentences that could be considered

grammatical, but had a less specific reading than the one intended in

the stimulus sentence.

Clitic copying

An interesting error that occurred with two sentence types was the

insertion of an extra clitic in preverbal position, which resulted in aclitic being doubled by a redundant copy. All the responses are

ungrammatical, as both clitic landing sites are filled. An example of

DO clitic insertion is given below.






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Después de comer Donald quiere invitar=la a su casa.

wants invite=3SG.F.DO

After eating Donald wants to invite her to his house.

Response: (3;2)

*Después de comer Donald la quiere invitar=la a su casa.

3SG.F.DO wants invite=3SG.F.DO

In all the examples of clitic copying, the additional clitic is an exact

copy of the clitic in the stimulus sentence, agreeing in gender, number

and case with it. This ‘copying-without-deletion’ phenomenon has been reported in the literature for a number of structures, such as

auxiliaries (Valian, Winzemer & Erreich 1981) and relative pronouns

(Crain & Thornton 1997: 41). The standard assumption is that the

copies are the lexical spell-out of the trace of a moved element that

fails to be deleted. If this interpretation is accurate then clitic insertion

responses could be used as evidence that clitics in fact move leftwards

from the canonical DO position to their surface position, leaving an

overt trace behind.

Phi-feature changes

These changes were not very frequent, accounting for 7% of the

inaccurate responses. Clitics in these responses were correctly imitated

in terms of position, but had undergone changes in one of the phi-

features, either in Case, Number, Person, or, in the case of DO

pronouns, Gender. No changes in Number occurred. However, all the

clitics in the stimulus sentences were singular, and it is a well known

fact that children use singular objects more frequently than plural(Clark 1985: 699, Hérnandez Pina 1990: 241).

It should be kept in mind that in these sentences the referent of the

pronoun was unknown. Changes in features, except for Case, do not

result in ungrammatical responses. Failure of children to imitate the

stimulus sentence might therefore reflect more a temporary distraction

rather than lack of knowledge of the relevant features. In fact,

naturalistic data collected from even younger children do not show

evidence of phi-feature changes.More significant for our study is the observation that, although some

features were replaced, there is not one single instance of substitution

of clitics with strong pronouns.






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DISCUSSION

The main goal of the study described above was to examine whether

children ever make mistakes that indicate discontinuity between thechild and the adult grammar, or whether there is early convergence

between the two systems. To answer this question, three hypotheses

were formulated, concerning children’s knowledge of the argumental

status of clitics (hypothesis 1), of the morpho-lexical differences

between clitic and non-clitic pronouns (hypothesis 2), and of the rules

that regulate clitic placement (hypothesis 3).

With regard to hypothesis 1, the data showed a high percentage of

clitic retention (84%). A higher rate of omissions could be expectedunder alternative analyses (such as Radford 1990, Slobin 1973) that

predict late acquisition based on the fact that clitics are functional

categories and lack phonological stress. The low incidence of clitic

omission serves as counter-evidence to one of Slobin’s Operating

Principles, according to which children are expected to pay attention to

stressed words and ignore unstressed elements. The fact that children

omitted relatively few unstressed clitics suggests that explanations

based on phonological or purely cognitive mechanisms are insufficient

in this case. Rather, children seem to be aware of the argument structureof the verbs and the syntactic requirements on their expression from a

very young age.

As described under ‘clitic omission’, 65% of the omissions occurred

in the two youngest groups. Yet, the same children that showed the

highest rate of omissions produced responses with clitics more often

than not. These data suggest the possibility that these children have

knowledge of the relevant categories, but they do not always link them

to a phonological form. This interpretation is consistent with cross-

linguistic studies, such as Schaeffer (2000), McKee and Emiliani (1992),

and Guasti (1994) for Italian, Kaiser (1994) and Hamann et al. (1996) for

French, which indicate early knowledge of clitics, despite performance

limitations.

With regard to hypothesis 2, we have to refer to the mistakes that

children did not make, even when these were logically possible errors.

The results indicate that children have already mastered the morpho-

lexical distinction between clitics and full pronominal expressions by

the youngest age tested. Although there were substitutions of phi-features,including case, these were restricted to dative-accusative. Not one single

response was found where a clitic was replaced with a strong pronoun,

an error frequently reported in the interlanguage of both bilingual






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children and adult second-language learners of Spanish (Eisenchlas

1994, Liceras 1985).

With regard to hypothesis 3, the results clearly indicate that even the

youngest children tested have knowledge of the syntactic implications

of the clitic/non-clitic distinction. Whenever clitics were repositionedfrom the surface position in the stimulus sentences, they were consistently

placed in the restricted clitic positions. There are virtually no examples

in the data of object clitics placed in the canonical direct object position,

another common occurrence in the interlanguage data (Eisenchlas

1994, Liceras 1985). Furthermore, not a single response was produced

where a clitic was adjoined to a non-verbal utterance, a fact that clearly

indicates mastery of the morphological and syntactic selectional

properties of clitics (Ouhalla 1991:15). As Hamann et al . (1996: 331)conclude, ‘the acquisition of the morpholexical properties of an item

goes hand in hand with the mastery of its syntactic properties’.

Finally, this study has also shown that there is a contrast between

children’s acceptance of clitics based on position, and that, given the

choice, children prefer proclisis to a tensed finite verb to enclisis to a

non-finite verb. A plausible explanation for this preference is found in

Kayne’s (1994) proposal. Recall that, for Kayne, clitics raise and

invariably left adjoin to a functional head. When the functional head

dominates the verb, this yields the order clitic=verb. The order verb=clitic involves a further movement of the verb to the left, past the

clitic and adjoining the single-bar projection whose head the clitic has

adjoined to. The basic claim, along the lines suggested in Chomsky

(1988), is that movement of the clitic to a preverbal position would be

easier, less costly, than enclisis, since it involves fewer steps in the

derivation. Universal Grammar (UG) principles can thus be seen as

guiding the child towards the preferred order.

We can conclude that children start the acquisition process by assuming

that all clitics appear in preverbal position before the AGR + TNS +

verb, and in time they accept that clitics can also follow nonfinite

verbal complements when the two options are present. This does not

necessarily imply that the clitic originates preverbally in situ. There are

some indications that movement is involved, mainly provided by two

error types found in this study: ‘backward’ repositioning and clitic

copying. With regard to the first error type, it should be noted that

despite the fact that children found the order Vinfinitival=clitic to be

marked, there were instances, albeit few, of clitic repositioning from preverbal to postverbal position, which was taken as an indication that

these two positions are related by movement. A second error found in

the data, which is traditionally assumed to reveal movement processes,






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is copying-without-deletion. This follows from the standard assumption

that copies are the lexical spell-out of the trace of a moved element. If

this interpretation is on the right track, children’s inaccurate responses

discussed under ‘clitic copying’ can be seen as evidence of the steps

taken in the derivation of clitics from base to surface position.

CONCLUSION

This paper has examined the knowledge that young children have

regarding the properties of single clitics. The results of the study show

that children have already mastered the morpho-lexical distinction

between clitics and full pronominal expressions by the youngest age

tested (i.e., three years), and have knowledge of the syntactic implicationsof this distinction. The study has also shown that the errors made by

children acquiring Spanish as a first language are few and limited in

kind, as would be expected if UG constrains the set of possible

hypotheses that the child formulates, speeding up the acquisition

process. The results have shown that, for the structures tested, there is

early convergence between the child and the adult grammar, and that

the acquisition curve stabilizes at around age four. It still remains to be

seen whether clitics are available from the very beginning, or whether

they emerge after other functional categories, such as Tense, areinstantiated. To settle this issue, data from children younger than those

tested in this study would have to be collected.

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APPENDIX

Stimulus sentences tested in this study

DO pre-verbal clitic

(1a) La linda sirenita la quiere invitar esta noche.The pretty little mermaid 3SG.F.DO wants invite tonight

The pretty little mermaid wants to invite her tonight.

(1b) La princesa Jasmín lo puede ver esta noche.

The princess Jasmine 3SG.M.DO can see tonight

Princess Jasmine can see him tonight.

IO pre-verbal clitic

(2a) Aladín le puede contar un secreto esta tarde.

Aladin 3SG.IO can tell a secret this afternoon

Aladin can tell her/him a secret this afternoon.

(2b) Hércules le quiere dar un regalo esta noche.

Hercules 3SG.IO wants give a present tonight

Hercules wants to give her/him a present tonight.

DO post-verbal clitic

(3a) Después de jugar Mickey puede ver lo en el parque.

After of play Mickey can see=3SG.M.DO in the park

After playing Mickey can see him in the park.






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(3b) Después de comer Donald quiere invitar la a su casa.

After of eat Donald wants invite=3SG.F.DO to his house

After eating Donald can invite her to his house.

IO post-verbal clitic

(4a) Por la tarde Aladín quiere dar me un caramelo.

In the afternoon Aladin wants give=1SG.IO a lolly

In the afternoon Aladin wants to give me a lolly.

(4b) Por la noche la sirenita puede cantar me una canción.

In the evening the little mermaid can sing=1SG.IO a song

In the evening the little mermaid can sing me a song.

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