Papers by Raquel Fernández Fuertes
This paper analyzes the syntactico-semantic factors which trigger Dative shift in English dativiz... more This paper analyzes the syntactico-semantic factors which trigger Dative shift in English dativizable verbs, i.e. those verbs that allow alternation between double object and prepositional complement constructions. It also focuses on non-dativizable verbs that restrict their subcategorization framework to either double object or prepositional complement constructions. This syntactico-semantic relation between dativizable and nondativizable structures is addressed in acquisition by examining the incidence for the two verb types in a set of English/Spanish 2L1 bilingual twins. Our results show that the syntactic and semantic features that dativizable and non-dativizables present go hand in hand with the age of first occurrence and the language development of the participants. Hence, dativizable to-dative double object constructions (DOC) are the utterances produced the earliest at the age of 2, as opposed to dativizable to/for-datives and non-dativizable constructions, which begin to emerge at around the age of 3. Finally, our results also suggest that the high adult input frequency explains the twins' early production of dativizable structures and that, in the same way, the children's low exposure to non-dativizable utterances correlates with the later occurrence in the twins' spontaneous production.
… . Ed. Juana M. Liceras et al., …, 2003
Language Acquisition and Contact in the Iberian Peninsula, 2018
LANGUAGE …, 2006
Language contact which manifests itself as "code-mixing" constitutes a natural ground for investi... more Language contact which manifests itself as "code-mixing" constitutes a natural ground for investigating possible commonalities and differences between the L2 acquisition and pidginization/creolization processes. In this paper, we analyze spontaneous and experimental functional-lexical DP mixings in order to address the differences and similarities between the mental representation of language in the bilingual child, the bilingual adult and adult non-native language. Drawing a parallel with Pesetsky and Torrego's (2001) proposal concerning the relationship between nominative case (nominative case is a T feature on D) and agreement (phi) (agreement is a D feature on T), we assume that Gender is an N feature on D and Gender Agreement is a D feature on N. This dichotomy allows us to make a number of predictions as to how the native and non-native mental representation of these features determines the directionality of code-switching (which language contributes the functional or the lexical category). We will argue that the comparative priorities for the specification of uninterpretable features in a given pair of languages that are already present in the emergent bilingual grammar are transferred to the adult bilingual grammar but do not show up in the case of the non-native grammar. We attribute this to the fact that adult native speakers do not process and internalize formal abstract features from input in the same way as children do (Liceras 2003). Thus, in the spirit of Bickerton (1984, 1996, 1999), we will argue that adults do not "create" language and, in this respect, adult non-native systems and pidgins may share a number of properties, as initially proposed by Schumann (1978) or Andersen (1983) and recently discussed by DeGraff (1999) and Winford (2003), among others. However, in the case of the pidgin/creole continuum, the non-native system will eventually become a native-like system as it develops into a creole, although due to the special language contact situation, some formal features may only make it into the creole system in cases where contact between the creole and the lexifier persists through several generations. * We would like to thank E. Álvarez, S. Muñiz, C. Senn and M. Sikorska for their help with the data collection, as well as the many students from the University of Valladolid and the University of Ottawa who kindly volunteered as subjects for the experimental part of the study. The general issues that we discuss here are related to the joint research program on language development and language contact housed at the Language Acquisition Labs of the University of Ottawa (Canada) and the University of Valladolid (Spain).
for their help with the data collection and transcription. A previous version of this paper was p... more for their help with the data collection and transcription. A previous version of this paper was presented at the 2007 Hispanic Linguistic Symposium held at The University of Western Ontario, October 19-22, 2006. We would like to thank the audience there for their helpful comments and suggestions.
… Approaches to Second …, 2003
Behavior Research Methods, 2010
Ratings were collected from 102 native speakers of Spanish on the subjective frequency of occurre... more Ratings were collected from 102 native speakers of Spanish on the subjective frequency of occurrence of 330 Spanish words, including 120 deverbal compounds and their constituents. These ratings were found to be highly reliable, whether items were analyzed together or separately by type (i.e., compounds, nouns, verbs), as evidenced by indexes of internal consistency and test-retest reliability that were equal to or greater than .98. The validity of the normative ratings was attested to by statistically significant correlations with objective frequency, estimated at .63 for all items together, and .41, .51, and .78 for compounds, nouns, and verbs, respectively. Among the substantive issues addressed was the potential dependency in ratings for compounds and their associated verb-noun constituents. No relationship was discerned, supporting the idea that compound and constituent ratings are statistically independent in this experimental task. The theoretical and methodological implications of the findings are discussed. The ratings can be downloaded from http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.
Producción CientíficaThis study examines whether biological gender differences appear in the earl... more Producción CientíficaThis study examines whether biological gender differences appear in the early stages of acquisition in the case of English dative alternation (DA) structures (double object constructions (DOCs) and to/for-datives). Girls have been found to show faster syntactic development when compared to boys (Lovas, 2011). In the case of the acquisition of DA, an order in the emergence and in the incidence of English DA would entail a syntactic derivational status between DOCs and to/for-datives with one being the original structure and the other the derived one (Gu, 2010). However, analogous ages of onset and fairly similar frequency rates in the production could suggest the construction of two underived structures. We investigate whether biological gender differences appear in the case of DOCs and to/for-datives. We also investigate whether the exposure to English DA (adult input) results in differences between the girls’ output and the boys’ output. We analyze data from ei...
Supplemental material, sj-pdf-2-ijb-10.1177_13670069211056740 for The acquisition of English acti... more Supplemental material, sj-pdf-2-ijb-10.1177_13670069211056740 for The acquisition of English active and passive monotransitive constructions by English–Spanish simultaneous bilingual children by Silvia Sánchez Calderón and Raquel Fernández Fuertes in International Journal of Bilingualism
While null objects are possible and pervasive in Chinese, their occurrence in languages like Engl... more While null objects are possible and pervasive in Chinese, their occurrence in languages like English and Spanish is rather restricted. In the case of developing grammars, the omission of categories that characterizes the initial stages of acquisition also affects the object category, together with inflection, subjects, determiners, etc. The main goal of this article is to investigate the nature of interlinguistic influence from Chinese into English in a set of Chinese-English (C-E) bilingual children with a focus on bilingual children's early direct object (DO) realization in English and to provide new empirical evidence for the postulation that the development of the two languages is interdependent. In order to do so, a comparative study has been carried out: the English production of C-E bilinguals is analysed with regard to DOs and, in order to determine whether the possible overproduction of null DOs is due to influence from the other first language (L1) (i.e. Chinese) or is rather part of the developmental process, a double comparison is established with English monolinguals (E monolinguals) and with Spanish-English bilinguals (S-E bilinguals). The results show that C-E bilinguals' performance in terms of DO realization in English is significantly different from that of both E monolinguals and S-E bilinguals and that the latter two groups behave similarly. This finding supports the conclusion that, although null DOs occur in the initial stages of child language acquisition regardless of whether the adult grammar allows them (Chinese) or not (English and Spanish), in the case of C-E bilinguals' English development, interlinguistic influence from Chinese into English has a negative effect as reflected in null DOs being produced at a higher rate and until later in life.
Atlantis. Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies
This article aims to shed light on the syntactic status attributed to ditransitive constructionsd... more This article aims to shed light on the syntactic status attributed to ditransitive constructionsdouble object construction (DOC) and to/for-dative-with respect to which type of structure is syntactically transformed through a process analogous to that of passives. We will do so by providing an analysis of the ditransitives and passives that appear in the English production of a set of English/Spanish simultaneous bilingual twins. Our results show that DOCs start being produced earlier than to/for-datives. However, the age of onset of passives differs in the children though it is consistently produced later than ditransitives. Likewise, adult input goes hand in hand with the children's production of ditransitives and passives since the high frequency of DOCs in this input, as opposed to the low frequency of to/fordatives and passives, is reflected in child output. These findings thus suggest that to/fordatives could be said to be derived from DOCs although, given the later acquisition of passives, no firm conclusions can be drawn as to whether this is done via a passive-like process. Keywords: ditransitives; double object constructions; to/for dative structures; passives; bilingual acquisition; input. .. "¿Qué fue primero: el huevo o la gallina?" Las construcciones ditransitivas y pasivas del inglés en la producción de niños bilingües simultáneos El presente artículo pretende contribuir al debate sobre el estatus sintáctico que se atribuye a las construcciones ditransitivas-es decir, las construcciones de doble objeto (CDO) y las estructuras de dativo con to/for-respecto a qué tipo de estructura deriva sintácticamente por un proceso análogo a las construcciones pasivas. Para ello el estudio se centra en el análisis de las construcciones ditransitivas y pasivas en inglés que aparecen en la producción de dos gemelos bilingües simultáneos inglés-español. Nuestros resultados muestran que las CDOs comienzan a producirse antes que las estructuras de dativo. Sin embargo, la edad de inicio de producción de las construcciones pasivas difiere entre los dos niños aunque éstas se producen más tarde que las ditransitivas. Asimismo, existe una correlación directa con el input del adulto en la producción de ditransitivas y pasivas ya que la alta frecuencia de las CDOs en él mismo, a diferencia de la baja frecuencia de las estructuras de dativo y pasivas, se refleja en la producción de los niños. Por tanto, estos hallazgos sugieren que las estructuras de dativo pueden verse como estructuras que derivan de las CDOs aunque, dada la adquisición posterior de las pasivas, no se pueden extraer concusiones sólidas sobre si esta derivación se lleva a cabo por un proceso análogo a las pasivas. Palabras clave: ditransitivas; construcciones de doble objeto; estructuras de dativo con to/for;
Recent developments in linguistic theory carried out within the principles and parameter model an... more Recent developments in linguistic theory carried out within the principles and parameter model and the minimalist program provide an excellent framework for the comparison of languages. In this study we use said framework to analyze the nature of subjects and their positions in the sentence in English and Spanish. We specifically concentrate on lexical preverbal and postverbal subjects and on the special type of subject present in expletive constructions in order to provide a comparative account of word-order differences and similarities between English and Spanish. We show that the [+/-pronominal] agreement differences are responsible for: 1) the different nature of preverbal subjects in English and in Spanish; 2) the possibility of postverbal subjects in Spanish but not in English; and 3) the different agreement relationships established in existential constructions in both languages.
Epos : Revista de filología
Applied Psycholinguistics
Previous research suggests that native speakers quickly adapt to the properties of the language i... more Previous research suggests that native speakers quickly adapt to the properties of the language in the surrounding context. For instance, as they repeatedly read a structure that is initially nonpreferred or infrequent, they show a reduction of processing difficulty. Adaptation has been accounted for in terms of error-based learning: the error resulting from the difference between the expected and actual input leads to an adjustment of the knowledge representation, which changes future expectations. The present study tested whether experiencing an error is sufficient for adaptation. We compared native English speakers and second language (L2) learners’ processing of, and adaptation to, two types of temporarily ambiguous structures that were resolved toward the nonpreferred interpretation. Whereas both native English and L2 speakers showed increased reading times at the disambiguating word versus a nonambiguous control, our data suggest that only native English speakers adapted, and ...
Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics
Research on the acquisition of two first languages from birth (2L1A) has focused, among other iss... more Research on the acquisition of two first languages from birth (2L1A) has focused, among other issues, on how the grammars of the two languages being acquired interact (e.g.Bhatia & Ritchie, 2012;De Houwer, 2009;Deuchar & Quay, 2000;Döpke, 2000;Köppe & Meisel, 1995). A case in point is natural interpreting which evidences how bilingual children exposed to two languages from birth deal with the grammatical properties of the two languages and how this leads them to potentially convey the same message in either (or both) of these languages. More specifically, as part of the simultaneous processing of their two L1s, 2L1 bilingual children have been reported to often translate between their two L1s (Álvarez de la Fuente & Fernández Fuertes, 2012, 2015;Cossato, 2008;Harris, 1980a, 1980b;Harris & Sherwood, 1978), a phenomenon that has been called natural interpreting (Harris, 1977, 2003). In this respect, natural interpreting can be included with other language contact phenomena, such as in...
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory, 2000
El presente estudio se basa en esta equivalencia entre la concordancia pronominal como morfema in... more El presente estudio se basa en esta equivalencia entre la concordancia pronominal como morfema independiente de las lenguas [+ sujeto nulo], (ejemplo 3), y los pronombres independientes débiles de las lenguas [- sujeto nulo], (ejemplo 4); en la naturaleza de ambas categorías y en las consecuencias que tienen para el análisis de los diferentes tipos de sujetos que pueden aparecer en ambos grupos de len lenguas, centrándonos en este caso en el español y el inglés.
Partiendo de los avances recientes en lingüística teórica llevados a cabo dentro del modelo de pr... more Partiendo de los avances recientes en lingüística teórica llevados a cabo dentro del modelo de principios y parámetros, el programa minimalista y la teoría de la optimalidad, se ofrece un análisis comparado del sujeto oracional del inglés y del español. Específicamente, este trabajo se centra en cómo la riqueza de la flexión verbal, y en concreto la concordancia [+/- pronominal], y las operaciones de movimiento son responsables de: 1) la localización de los sujetos en posiciones preverbales y postverbales en español y posiciones preverbales en inglés; 2) la posibilidad de sujetos léxicos y sujetos vacíos en español y sujetos léxicos en inglés; y 3) las relaciones que se establecen en las construcciones existenciales que cuentan con un expletivo en posición de sujeto. El análisis refleja cómo la variación entre las lenguas tiene sus raíces en la morfología y de ahí el papel central que desempeñan los rasgos que son de algún modo la interface entre la morfología y la sintaxis. Departa...
Previous works on Interpreting Studies, and more specifically on Corpus-based Interpreting Studie... more Previous works on Interpreting Studies, and more specifically on Corpus-based Interpreting Studies (CIS), have pointed out the important role that data analysis plays in outlining the interpreting process internal to any bilingual (e.g. Tirkkonen-Condit and Jääskeläinen 2000; Schlesinger 2008; Bendazzoli and Sandrelli 2009). The present study is meant as a contribution to the CIS research field as it presents a tool available for the computerized analysis of interpretation that has not been previously considered, i.e. the CHAT/CLAN methodology freely available through the CHILDES project (MacWhinney 2000). By applying this methodology, we analyze data from a set of English/Spanish bilingual twins from the FerFuLice corpus (Fernández Fuertes and Liceras 2009) in CHILDES and we show how the CHAT transcription and codification system as well as the CLAN program can be successfully used in the linguistic analysis of the interpretation process. In particular, the quantitative and qualita...
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Papers by Raquel Fernández Fuertes