Clitics in L1 bilingual acquisition

Abstract

Data from two bilingual Basque–Spanish children are analysed with respect to the grammatical domain of clitic drop, involving the interface between pragmatics and syntax. Basque Spanish allows for clitic drop in referential contexts, an option that does not exist in standard Spanish. The data suggest that the early high rate of clitic drop is most probably due to two factors: first, cross-linguistic influence from Basque because Basque lacks clitics – and hence the complement position is either occupied by a DP or pro – and both children studied in the present article drop more clitics in Spanish than the monolinguals reported in the literature (Fujino & Sano, 2002); and second, because children seem to have a notion of topic that equals information recoverability.

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