Vulnerability of clitics and articles to bilingual effects in typically developing Spanish-English bilingual children

Anny Castilla-Earls, Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux, Lourdes Martinez-Nieto, Maria Adelaida Restrepo, Christopher Barr

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

14 Scopus citations

Abstract

This study examines bilingual effects in Spanish-English bilingual children with good maintenance of the minority language. The present study compares the performance of a group of Spanish-monolingual children (MON; n = 30) with two groups of Spanish-speaking bilingual children (Low English proficiency group: LEP; n = 36; High English proficiency group, HEP; n = 36) on the elicited productions of Spanish articles and object clitics. Our results suggest that children with LEP performed significantly lower than MON children of the same age on both articles and clitics in Spanish. However, children with HEP, who were a year older on average, performed similarly to the MON group. Both groups of bilingual children produced errors of clitic omission and substitution, but these errors were minimal in the MON group. The results suggest that Spanish clitics and articles are vulnerable to bilingual effects for English/Spanish speaking children with good Spanish maintenance.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)825-835
Number of pages11
JournalBilingualism
Volume23
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 1 2020

Keywords

  • Spanish
  • articles
  • clitic pronouns

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Education
  • Language and Linguistics
  • Linguistics and Language

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