Ricardo Maldonado

Reflexive and middle markers in early child language acquisition: evidence from Mexican Spanish

Use of the clitic se was analysed in 28- and 36-month-old Spanish-speaking toddlers using a Cognitive Grammar model (Langacker 1987, 1992, Maldonado 1992). The data demonstrate that the first forms of the clitic se focus on the critical moment of change (middle forms) rather than true reflexives. This aspectual phenomenon is based on cognition. We argue, therefore, that the earliest uses of se by Spanish-speaking children occur because of the cognitive salience of the action described by the verb. These results provide strong support for cognitive models of language acquisition and evidence against the claim that all non-reflexive uses of se are either derived from a subject deletion rule or simple exceptional uses that should be listed in the lexicon.

Grammaticality Differences between Spanish-Speaking Children with Specific Language Impairment and Their Typically Developing Peers.

BACKGROUND A limited number of studies have analyzed grammaticality in monolingual Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI). Most of the available data are based on bilingual speakers. AIMS To extend previous studies by doing a more detailed analysis of grammatical types in monolingual Spanish-speakers with and without SLI. METHODS & PROCEDURES Forty-nine Spanish-speaking children (18 with SLI, 17 age-matched typically developing controls, 14 language-matched controls) were recruited from schools in Mexico and observed in a spontaneous narrative task. OUTCOMES & RESULTS The findings were inconsistent with those of previous studies. Significant differences were found for article, connector and preposition omissions, and the per cent of ungrammatical utterances. There were no significant differences found for clitics and verb phrases, though clitic substitutions were frequent. Language-matched controls did not produce different frequencies of ungrammatical utterances. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS Significant differences were found for three main items: the per cent of ungrammatical utterances, the omission of articles and the omission of prepositions. Therefore, we propose these components be taken into consideration when distinguishing typically developing children from children with SLI.

Niveles de subjetividad en la deixis. El caso de aquí y acá

El presente ensayo se encarga de analizar el contraste entre dos formas deicticasde proximidad aqui y aca. Si bien el estudio se centra en el espanol de Mexico estanbajo consideracion los dialectos de Madrid, Venezuela, Argentina y Colombia.En contraste con aproximaciones anteriores que, o bien no reconocen diferenciaalguna, o siguen la tradicion latina al asignar a aca un significado dinamico ya aqui uno estatico, el presente estudio muestra que el contraste responde a unproblema de proximidad. Si bien ambos adverbios atienden a regiones cercanasa ego, aca implica una proximidad mayor que da paso a la emergencia de unaamplia gama de significados subjetivos asociados a la experiencia del hablante.Por su parte, aqui se especializa en demarcar una region, que si bien es proxima,cuenta la suficiente distancia para ver la cosas con una mayor objetividad. Losespacios en que ambos adverbios contrastan operan tanto en el tiempo comoen el espacio, asi como en el discurso. Sin embargo cada uno opera en formaparticular en ambitos especificos. Asi como la anafora es privativa de aqui, lasescalas valorativas son propias de aca.