RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 Are there biological gender differences at the early stages of first language acquisition when producing double object constructions and to/for-datives?
A1 Sánchez Calderón, Silvia
A1 Fernández Fuertes, Raquel
K1 Género biológico
K1 Biological gender
AB This 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 eight monolingual English girls and five monolingual English boys, and the adults that interact with them, as available in CHILDES. Our findings reveal that monolingual girls and monolingual boys pattern closely in the acquisition of the syntactic non-derivational relationship between DOCs and to/for-datives, as seen in their similar emergence. Biological gender differences are not seen either in the acquisition of the additional properties of to/for-datives given their later onset and their lower incidence when compared to DOCs. These production patterns also correlate with the frequency with which these structures are heard in the adult input.
PB Universidad Católica de Chile
SN 0718-5758
YR 2023
FD 2023
LK http://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/40903
UL http://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/40903
LA eng
NO Onomázein: Revista de lingüística, filología y traducción, 2023 (issue 61)
NO Producción Científica
DS UVaDOC
RD 21-nov-2024