The acquisition of<i>ser</i>,<i>estar</i>(and<i>be</i>) by a Spanish–English bilingual child: The early stages

Abstract

This article studies the acquisition of copulas by a Spanish–English bilingual between the ages of 1;6 and 3;0, examines the possibility of interlanguage influence, and considers the distributional frequencies of copular constructions in the speech of the child and in the language input from adults. The study is of interest because the bilingual child needs to acquire semantic and syntactic contrasts in Spanish that are not explicitly marked in English. This difference raises questions about the timing of acquisition of the Spanish copulas under pressure from a stronger language, in addition to the language-internal questions concerning the acquisition of the semantics and syntax of these verbs. The results show that copular constructions develop autonomously, but with a slight delay in the acquisition of estar interpreted as a possible type of influence from English. The distributional analysis reveals parallels between the child's and the adults' uses of copulas, thus supporting a process of acquisition guided by the nature of the interactions that the child enters into with the adults who surround him.