2003 Eisenchlas 193 211

Vol 23-Pt2-Susana Eisenchlas
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First Language, 23(2), 193211 Copyright 2003 SAGE Publications
Clitics in child Spanish*

SUSANA EISENCHLAS,
Griffith University
ABSTRACT
This paper investigates the knowledge young children have about

clitic pronouns. In particular, it examines whether children ever
make mistakes that suggest discontinuity between child and adult
Spanish. An elicited imitation task and spontaneous data are used
to study childrens responses to a number of constructions
involving clitics. Results indicate that, from the earliest testable
age, children have the grammatical competence for clitic placement
and never make certain logical, but unattested, errors.
KEYWORDS
Acquisition of pronouns; elicitation tasks; grammatical errors;

morpho-lexical development; syntactic development
INTRODUCTION
Even a cursory look at recent linguistics journals, dissertation abstracts

and book notices reveals a profound ongoing interest in the syntax
of clitics. Yet, despite the proliferation of publications on this subject,
very little research has been conducted into the acquisition
of clitics. For Spanish in particular, there are only a few studies
describing the acquisition process, usually based on case studies of
single children, with little reference to proposals from current linguistic
theory. This disparity does not apply exclusively to the study of clitic
acquisition but is found also in other domains. Goodluck (1991: viiviii)
I am grateful to Mary Laughren, Michael Harrington, Kevin Durkin and the two
anonymous reviewers for their very useful comments. Address for correspondence:
Spanish & Applied Linguistics, School of Languages and Linguistics, Griffith
University, Nathan, Qld 4111, Australia. E-mail: S.Eisenchlas@griffith.gu.edu.au
0142-7237 [200302] 23:2; 193211; 034994
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refers to this state of affairs as a yawning gap problem: namely, that

there is in general a large disparity between the level of detail provided
by linguistic theory in the description of adult languages and that
provided in language acquisition studies of the development of that
adult knowledge.
The acquisition of the clitic pronominal system is of particular
relevance to linguistic theory, since the mastery of the clitic system
entails internalized knowledge of different aspects of the grammar, such
as phonology, morphology, syntax, and the interface between syntax and
semantics.
From a phonological perspective, children need to have the ability to
distinguish between clitics and full pronouns. This distinction has
syntactic consequences, namely, that while full pronouns can stand
alone, clitics have to cliticize into a host. Moreover, children need to
know which elements can serve as hosts for clitics, and be able to
distinguish between finite and infinitival constructions, a distinction
that yields different derivations and offers different clitic insertion sites,
at least at surface structure level. Children should also have the
knowledge of the rules of clitic climbing and, with regard to verbs that
take verbal complements, should be able to distinguish between verbs
that allow climbing from the ones that do not. This in turn assumes the
ability to move constituents from deep to surface structure.
From a semantic perspective, the correct use of clitics requires the
understanding of the thematic relations between the verb and its
objects, which determines the choice of direct or indirect object. In
addition, the rule of Accusative clitics entails the knowledge that only
objects that are specified as [+ definite] can be pronominalized. Pronouns
need to match the relevant features (such as gender and number) with
those of the nouns they substitute for, and therefore mastery of the
clitic system also entails knowledge of the rules of feature agreement.
Given the complexity of the system, it is remarkable that naturalistic
studies agree that very few mistakes are made during the acquisition
process. There are, however, some limitations to studies that rely
exclusively on naturalistic data. As Meisel (1992: 18) observes, one
cannot be sure whether children do not know more than what they use.
If we want to examine the grammatical knowledge underlying
childrens linguistic production, we have to use experimental techniques
to elicit structures that are not frequent in child language.
This study aims at filling one of the gaps in the area of clitic
acquisition, through the analysis of experimental data collected crosssectionally from 71 children acquiring Argentinian Spanish as their first
language. It focuses on childrens knowledge of the clitic/non-clitic
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distinction and its syntactic consequences, to address the wider question:

Do children ever make mistakes that indicate discontinuity between the
child and the adult grammar, or is there early convergence between the
two systems?
Before presenting the experimental details of this study, it will be
useful to summarize the basic facts of cliticization in standard Spanish
and the syntactic proposals developed to account for these.
Clitics in adult Spanish
Spanish pronominal clitics are weak, unstressed pronouns, which,
unlike the strong (or free) forms, cannot be used in isolation, cannot
receive contrastive stress, and cannot be topicalized, conjoined, or
modified (Hamann, Rizzi & Frauenfelder 1996, Kayne 1975). They are
always joined phonetically to the verb, leaning on (Greek enkltikos)
it, either as proclitic to tensed verbs, as shown in (1), or as enclitic to
infinitive and imperative forms, as in (2) and (3).
(1) Lo
veo
y no lo
creo. (Roldn 1974)
1
3SG.M.DO see:PRES:1SG and no 3SG.M.DO believe:PRES:1SG
I see it and I dont believe it.
(2) Vine
para ver=te.
Come:PAST:1SG to see=2SG.DO
I came to see you.
(3) Imitmos=lo.
imitate:IMPERAT:1PL=3SG.M.DO
Lets imitate him.
When a clitic represents an argument of an infinitival complement of a
finite verb, it can either be proclitic to the higher finite verb (4) or enclitic
to the nonfinite verb (5).
(4) Lo
quiero
comer.
3SG.M.DO want:PRES:1SGeat
I want to eat it.
[1] The following abbreviations are used in this paper: 1 = first person, 2 = second
person, 3 = third person, AGR = Agreement, DO = Direct Object, DP =
Determiner Phrase, F = Feminine, FUT = Future, Infl = Inflection, IMPERF
= Imperfect IO = Indirect Object, LF = Logical Form, M = Masculine, NP =
Noun Phrase, PL = Plural, PRES = Present, REFL = Reflexive, SG = Singular,
S = Subject, TNS = Tense.
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(5) Quiero
comer=lo.
want:PRES:1SG eat=3SG.M.DO
I want to eat it.
Probably the feature that has generated most debate in the literature is
that clitics appear in a position other than the one favoured by their noncliticized counterpart, as shown in (6) to (8).
(6) Vi
a Juan.
see:PAST:1SG to John
I saw John.
(7) Lo
vi.
3SG.M.DO see:PAST:1SG
I saw him.
(8) *Vi
lo.
see:PAST:1SG 3SG.M.DO
Syntactic approaches to clitics
Syntactic approaches to account for clitic position at spell-out have
developed in two main directions: base generation, according to which
clitics are base-generated in their surface position (proclitic) and stand
in some relation (coindexed with) to the position typically occupied by
the non-clitic argument (Borer 1986, Jaeggli 1982, Strozer 1976, Suer
1989), and movement, according to which clitics are generated in the
appropriate argument position to satisfy the verbs argument structure,
and moved to the unmarked pre-verbal clitic position to satisfy
morphological requirements (Belletti 1990, Cardinaletti 1994, Kayne
1975 and subsequent work, Uriagereka 1995).
Recent versions of the base generation position treat the clitic as an
agreement marker (Borer 1986, Lyons 1990, Suer 1988), identifying a
phonologically null pronominal in argument position. From this
perspective, subject-verb agreement and object clitics represent exactly
the same phenomenon, namely agreement between a head and its
governees. In neither case does the affix have a pronominal character. Just
as the governor of the subject, Infl, assumes subject agreement features,
so the governor of the object, V, assumes object agreement features in
the form of a clitic. This clitic is a spell-out of the features for number,
gender and case copied from a complement onto its governing head. It
should be noted that while in standard Spanish only a null object
occasions agreement, subject agreement takes place whether the
subject is null or overt.
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There are some problems with this interpretation. As Everett (1996)

points out, proponents of this hypothesis have to address the problem
of the optionality and mobility of the Spanish clitics. Unlike subjectverb agreement, object agreement appears to be arbitrary and, in many
instances, optional. Moreover, if clitics are agreement markers, the fact
that they can appear away from the verb of which they are arguments,
as shown in Example 4, has to be accounted for. As Jaeggli (1982: 55)
notes, subject agreement markers cannot wander off to a different
verb. They do not have the mobility granted to clitics, which is evidence
in favour of the more independent status of clitics as compared to
agreement markers.
Furthermore, while agreement markers affect the stress pattern of the
verb to which they adjoin, as in (9a and 9b), clitics never do (9ce).
This suggests that the association of the clitic with its host is postlexical (i.e., syntactic) while, according to the minimalist programme,
agreement features are generated with the lexical heads in the lexicon.
(9) a. cnto
b. cantmos
I sing
We sing
c. cantndo
singing
d. cantndo=te
singing to you
e. cantndo=te=la singing it (the song) to you
Another problem with this proposal is that clitics may optionally
appear in postverbal position following nonfinite verbal complements,
as shown in Example 4. Some mechanism has to be postulated to
account for the postverbal placement of clitics.
Many of these problems are avoided by adopting the movement
hypothesis, which postulates obligatory clitic movement in the syntax
triggered by the strength of the morphological features encoded in the
clitic. Checking Theory explains how clitic movement obtains. Since
Chomsky (1995), it is generally accepted that the morphological features
associated with functional heads (person, gender, number, case, specificity
and the like) must be checked in a local configuration (Corder &
Delfitto 1999). Given that the clitic heads a defective DP (Cardinaletti
1994), it cannot check the phi-features within the NP domain. The clitic
cannot stay in its base position but has to undergo syntactic movement
to adjoin to a functional head that contains the relevant features (Kayne
1991). Strong pronouns and full DPs, on the other hand, which contain
a NP projection, do not need to move.
One final point concerns the final landing site of cliticization.
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Following Pollocks (1989) IP deconstruction, the question can be

asked as to whether clitics attach to AGR or TNS. The fact that Spanish
clitics do not interpolate between TNS and AGR, as in Berber, for
instance (Ouhalla 1991: 62), suggests that, in the case of finite verbs,
clitics attach to AGR. This generalization follows Bakers Mirror
Principle (1988), which states that Morphological derivations must
directly reflect syntactic derivations (and vice versa). The basic claim
is that given a complex of the form [Affix1 + Affix2 + Affix3 + V] the
process which attaches affix3 to the verb applies prior to the process
which attaches affix2 and so on (Ouhalla 1991). In the case of Spanish,
the complex [CL + AGR + TNS + V] would be derived by raising the
V to TNS before moving the complex to AGR. The clitic pronoun then
attaches to AGR to satisfy feature checking requirements. Furthermore,
if Uriagereka (1995) is on the right track and clitics universally target
F, the interface between the levels of syntax and pragmatics, we would
assume that the clitic further moves to F, either overtly or at LF, unless
it is blocked by the verb moving into that position, as is the case with
imperatives. The situation is different with nonfinite constructions. It is
argued in Ouhalla (1991) that one of the features of AGR-initial
languages is the existence of non-inflected infinitives, i.e., infinitival
clauses which do not display an AGR element. If there is no position
higher than TNS, the clitic attaches to TNS. Finally, sentences with a
finite verb followed by a non-finite verbal complement present two
clitic insertion sites, as shown in Examples 4 and 5. According to Kayne
(1994), proclisis is costlier than enclisis, since it involves a further step
in the derivation. Kayne (1994: 137) argues that apparent instances of
clitics adjoined to the right (e.g., of an infinitive or imperative) should
be better analysed as left-adjunction of the clitic to an abstract functional
head, plus movement of the infinitive past the clitic. If Kaynes proposal
is right, we can predict that children will show a marked preference for
proclisis over enclisis, following economy principles.
To summarize, the following hypotheses were tested in this study:
1. If children have an early knowledge of the argumental status of
clitics, this knowledge will be reflected in the low rate of clitic
omission in the responses to the stimulus sentences. If, on the other
hand, clitics are acquired later in development, we can expect a high
level of clitic omissions, at least in the younger groups tested. A
high omission rate is particularly plausible given the fact that clitics
are bound morphemes and lack phonological saliency. Indeed, one of
Slobins Operating Principles (1973) predicts that children will pay
attention to stressed words and ignore unstressed elements.
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2. If children have mastered the morpho-lexical difference between

clitics and full pronominal expressions, they would not use them
interchangeably by replacing a clitic in the stimulus sentence with a
free pronoun or with a prepositional object pronoun. If, on the
contrary, children have not mastered the difference between
pronoun types we can expect random substitutions.
3. Moreover, if children have acquired the difference between clitics
and full pronouns they would never place clitics in non-clitic
positions. This in turn entails knowledge of the morpho-syntactic
categorization requirements of clitics, i.e., the fact that Spanish clitics
attach preverbally to finite verbs, or, more precisely, to some
functional head adjacent to V (Kayne 1994, Uriagereka 1995). On
the other hand, if this distinction is not part of the childs
knowledge, it is expected that children would place clitics in
postverbal position following the canonical SVO order in Spanish
nominal syntax. This is plausible since the child is exposed to, and
has knowledge of, the postverbal placement of clitics following
imperatives and infinitival complements.
METHOD
Experimental task
The data for this study were collected using an Elicited Imitation Task.
The basic idea underlying this test is that, if the participants grammar
corresponds to the grammar of the stimulus sentence, the imitation is
likely to be accurate. Inaccurate answers, on the other hand, may reveal
specific differences between the participants grammar and the grammar
of the target stimulus sentence, or even the steps followed in the
derivation of sentences with clitics, as will be proposed in the
Discussion section. The rationale for this technique is based on the
assumption that imitation is not a passive copying of the stimulus, but
rather that it involves a reconstructive process by which the stimulus
might be altered in some ways (Lust, Chien & Flynn 1987, Menyuk
1963). It has been observed that when children are asked to repeat a
sentence that is beyond their short-term memory ability, they alter the
sentence not randomly but in ways that conform to their grammatical
system at the time (Ingram 1989: 2567). These responses could
therefore be treated as analogues of grammaticality judgements.
Procedure
The tests were administered by the researcher, a native speaker of
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Argentinian Spanish. Children were tested individually in their daycare

centres. Three pre-test sentences, similar in length to the test sentences
but unrelated to the structures to be tested, were given to ensure that the
children understood the task. Two batteries of tests were administered
in random order. Sentences were repeated only once, on request from
the participant. The sessions were tape-recorded with a portable micro
recorder and transcribed in conventional spelling by the researcher.
Scoring
The data were scored following standardized criteria. Lexical errors
such as substitutions of proper names or prepositions were ignored.
Simplifications of the NPs (i.e., la sirenita for la linda sirenita) or
changes in inflectional morphology (quera for quiere) were accepted.
Major structural changes, on the other hand, such as subject drop, word
order changes, addition or omission of prepositions, were scored as
inaccurate.
Participants
The participants were 71 monolingual, middle-class, Spanish-speaking
children attending private daycare centres in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The participants were divided into seven developmental groups (3;03;6,
3;74;0, 4;14;6, 4;85;0, 5;25;6, 5;76;0, 6;16;4). There were 11
participants in group 5 and 10 participants in the other groups. Gender
distribution was even across groups.
Design
The stimuli consisted of simple sentences, which included a modal
verb followed by a nonfinite complement and a direct or indirect object
DP of the nonfinite complement. These sentences were varied by two
factors: Type of determiner (DO, IO), and Position of the DP
(preverbal, postverbal). Thus, the design involved four sentence types:
(1) DO preverbal, (2) IO preverbal, (3) DO postverbal, (4) IO postverbal.
The third factor that was systematically varied in this study was age,
with seven levels (groups 1 to 7). Thus the design was a three factor
ANOVA: Position (2) Type (2) Age (7). Two sentence tokens were
presented for each of the sentence types, for a total of 8 sentences, and
score out of a total possible of 2. All sentences were 89 words long.
The stimulus sentences tested in this study are listed in the Appendix.
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TABLE 1.
Proportion of accurate responses (by Position, Type of

determiner and Age), expressed as percentages
Preverbal
Postverbal
Age group
DO
IO
DO
IO
Group means*
SD
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Mean
47
65
65
85
77
85
90
73
15
45
50
75
100
82
80
80
73
19
0
5
30
40
64
45
85
39
30
26
15
44
65
59
40
65
45
20
30a
34a
54a
73b
71b
63b
80b
58b
19b
23
24
23
30
12
22
10
18
SD
* The subscripts indicate the pattern of differences between the age groups. Thus, the
groups that do not share the same subscripts differ significantly.
RESULTS
Accurate responses
The overall percentage of accurate responses in this study was 58%.
Table 1 shows the percentage of accurate responses for Type of
determiner and Position of the clitic pronouns as a function of Age. The
analysis indicates that the interactions between Age and Position, Type
and Position, and Age and Type did not significantly affect the success
rate of imitation. Significant main effects were found for the factors
Position (F (1,6) = 60.18, p = 0.0002) and Age (F (6,6) = 13.47, p =
0.003). With respect to the main effect of Position, results for sentences
with postverbal clitic pronouns (M = 42, SD = 25) were much lower
than those for sentences with preverbal clitics (M = 73, SD = 17). With
respect to the main effect for Age, post-hoc tests (see Table 1) indicated
that groups 1 to 3 performed significantly lower than the older groups.
Among groups 4 to 7 there were no significant pairwise differences,
and this suggests that their responses have become stable. The effect
for the Type factor was not significant (F (1,6) = 1.92 p = 0.215), i.e.,
childrens responses for DO and IO pronouns were comparable in overall
number of accurate responses, as can be seen in Table 1.
Thus far, the results point to the following conclusions that will be
discussed later in the paper: that the Type of determiner is irrelevant,
that there is a developmental curve which stabilizes at around age 4,
and that preverbal clitics are easier for children than postverbal clitics.
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70%
Preverbal
Postverbal
Mean number incorrect
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Clitic
omission
Clitic
Clitic insertion
repositioning
Clitic phi
features
Other
Ungrammatical
Overall
Error types
Fig. 1. Percentage of inaccurate responses by error types and by position
of the clitic pronoun
Inaccurate responses
The overall percentage of inaccurate responses for this study was 42%.
Of all errors, 73% were directly related to the clitic pronouns in the
stimulus sentences, and include clitic repositioning, mainly from postverbal to preverbal position (46%), clitic omission (16%), phi-feature
changes (7%) and clitic copying (4%).
A detailed breakdown of error types, as differentiated by the main
factor Position, is given in Fig. 1. As can be seen, the distribution of
errors varies greatly according to the position of the clitic pronoun,
with 69% of the inaccurate responses occurring in sentences with the
clitic in postverbal position. The following sections examine in more
detail some of the error types produced.
Clitic repositioning
Clitic repositioning is used in this paper as a descriptive term to
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characterize responses where the clitic is placed in a position that

differs from that of the stimulus sentence. The more theoretically
loaded term movement, is used to refer to a syntactic process that
moves constituents from a base to a surface position.
Clitic repositioning was the most frequent inaccurate response,
accounting for 46% of all incorrect repetitions in this study. Since
naturalistic studies report a marked preference for preverbal clitics in
child Spanish (Gonzlez 1978, Lpez Ornat et al. 1994), no backward
repositioning was expected. And indeed, the percentage of preverbal to
postverbal repositioning was extremely low (6% of all repositioning
errors) and was found only in the older age groups.
A very different situation was found in the imitation of sentences
with clitics in postverbal position. As anticipated, the percentage of
postverbal clitics repositioned preverbally was very high, accounting
for 93% of all repositioning responses, and was very frequent in all age
groups.
Examples of clitic repositioning responses are given below. In Example
10, the preverbal DO is repositioned postverbally, while in Example 11
the postverbal IO is repositioned preverbally. Note that, although these
responses were classed as inaccurate following the strict scoring criteria
adopted in this study, both reconstructions produce grammatical results.
(10) Stimulus sentence:
La princesa Jasmn lo
puede ver esta noche.
3SG.M.DO can
see
Response:
La princesa Jasmn puede ver=lo
esta noche. (5;1)
can
see 3SG.M.DO
Princess Jasmine can see him tonight.
Por la noche la sirenita puede cantar=me una cancin.
can
sing 1SG.IO
In the evening the little mermaid can sing me a song
Response:
Por la noche la sirenita me
quiere cantar . . . (3;0)
1SG.IO wants sing
In the evening the little mermaid wants to sing me a song.
Clitic omission
Clitic omission accounts for 16% of all errors in this study; 65% of the
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errors occurred in the two youngest groups. No significant difference

was found according to the Type of determiner, i.e., children omitted
nearly as many DOs as IOs. But there are some interesting differences
according to the position of the determiner, with the postverbal clitics
accounting for 60% of the omissions. This provides additional evidence
that children do not accept the two positions as equivalent.
Examples of clitic omission are given below. In Example 12, the
preverbal DO is omitted, while in Example 13 the postverbal IO is
dropped.
La linda sirenita la
quiere invitar esta noche.
3SG.F.DO wants invite
The pretty little mermaid wants to invite her tonight.
Response:
*La linda sirenita quiere invitar a la noche. (3;6)
wants invite
The pretty little mermaid wants to invite tonight.
Por la tarde Aladn quiere dar=me
un caramelo.
wants give=1SG.IO
In the afternoon Aladin wants to give me a lolly.
Response:
Por la tarde Aladn quiere dar= un caramelo. (3;0)
wants give=
In the afternoon Aladin wants to give a lolly.
It should be noted that the type of clitic omitted produced differences in
grammaticality. While DO omission always produced ungrammatical
results, omission of the IO yielded sentences that could be considered
grammatical, but had a less specific reading than the one intended in
the stimulus sentence.
Clitic copying
An interesting error that occurred with two sentence types was the
insertion of an extra clitic in preverbal position, which resulted in a
clitic being doubled by a redundant copy. All the responses are
ungrammatical, as both clitic landing sites are filled. An example of
DO clitic insertion is given below.
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Despus de comer Donald quiere invitar=la a su casa.
wants invite=3SG.F.DO
After eating Donald wants to invite her to his house.
Response:
(3;2)
*Despus de comer Donald la
quiere invitar=la a su casa.
3SG.F.DO wants invite=3SG.F.DO
In all the examples of clitic copying, the additional clitic is an exact
copy of the clitic in the stimulus sentence, agreeing in gender, number
and case with it. This copying-without-deletion phenomenon has
been reported in the literature for a number of structures, such as
auxiliaries (Valian, Winzemer & Erreich 1981) and relative pronouns
(Crain & Thornton 1997: 41). The standard assumption is that the
copies are the lexical spell-out of the trace of a moved element that
fails to be deleted. If this interpretation is accurate then clitic insertion
responses could be used as evidence that clitics in fact move leftwards
from the canonical DO position to their surface position, leaving an
overt trace behind.
Phi-feature changes
These changes were not very frequent, accounting for 7% of the
inaccurate responses. Clitics in these responses were correctly imitated
in terms of position, but had undergone changes in one of the phifeatures, either in Case, Number, Person, or, in the case of DO
pronouns, Gender. No changes in Number occurred. However, all the
clitics in the stimulus sentences were singular, and it is a well known
fact that children use singular objects more frequently than plural
(Clark 1985: 699, Hrnandez Pina 1990: 241).
It should be kept in mind that in these sentences the referent of the
pronoun was unknown. Changes in features, except for Case, do not
result in ungrammatical responses. Failure of children to imitate the
stimulus sentence might therefore reflect more a temporary distraction
rather than lack of knowledge of the relevant features. In fact,
naturalistic data collected from even younger children do not show
evidence of phi-feature changes.
More significant for our study is the observation that, although some
features were replaced, there is not one single instance of substitution
of clitics with strong pronouns.
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DISCUSSION
The main goal of the study described above was to examine whether
children ever make mistakes that indicate discontinuity between the
child and the adult grammar, or whether there is early convergence
between the two systems. To answer this question, three hypotheses
were formulated, concerning childrens knowledge of the argumental
status of clitics (hypothesis 1), of the morpho-lexical differences
between clitic and non-clitic pronouns (hypothesis 2), and of the rules
that regulate clitic placement (hypothesis 3).
With regard to hypothesis 1, the data showed a high percentage of
clitic retention (84%). A higher rate of omissions could be expected
under alternative analyses (such as Radford 1990, Slobin 1973) that
predict late acquisition based on the fact that clitics are functional
categories and lack phonological stress. The low incidence of clitic
omission serves as counter-evidence to one of Slobins Operating
Principles, according to which children are expected to pay attention to
stressed words and ignore unstressed elements. The fact that children
omitted relatively few unstressed clitics suggests that explanations
based on phonological or purely cognitive mechanisms are insufficient
in this case. Rather, children seem to be aware of the argument structure
of the verbs and the syntactic requirements on their expression from a
very young age.
As described under clitic omission, 65% of the omissions occurred
in the two youngest groups. Yet, the same children that showed the
highest rate of omissions produced responses with clitics more often
than not. These data suggest the possibility that these children have
knowledge of the relevant categories, but they do not always link them
to a phonological form. This interpretation is consistent with crosslinguistic studies, such as Schaeffer (2000), McKee and Emiliani (1992),
and Guasti (1994) for Italian, Kaiser (1994) and Hamann et al. (1996) for
French, which indicate early knowledge of clitics, despite performance
limitations.
With regard to hypothesis 2, we have to refer to the mistakes that
children did not make, even when these were logically possible errors.
The results indicate that children have already mastered the morpholexical distinction between clitics and full pronominal expressions by
the youngest age tested. Although there were substitutions of phi-features,
including case, these were restricted to dative-accusative. Not one single
response was found where a clitic was replaced with a strong pronoun,
an error frequently reported in the interlanguage of both bilingual
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207
children and adult second-language learners of Spanish (Eisenchlas

1994, Liceras 1985).
With regard to hypothesis 3, the results clearly indicate that even the
youngest children tested have knowledge of the syntactic implications
of the clitic/non-clitic distinction. Whenever clitics were repositioned
from the surface position in the stimulus sentences, they were consistently
placed in the restricted clitic positions. There are virtually no examples
in the data of object clitics placed in the canonical direct object position,
another common occurrence in the interlanguage data (Eisenchlas
1994, Liceras 1985). Furthermore, not a single response was produced
where a clitic was adjoined to a non-verbal utterance, a fact that clearly
indicates mastery of the morphological and syntactic selectional
properties of clitics (Ouhalla 1991:15). As Hamann et al. (1996: 331)
conclude, the acquisition of the morpholexical properties of an item
goes hand in hand with the mastery of its syntactic properties.
Finally, this study has also shown that there is a contrast between
childrens acceptance of clitics based on position, and that, given the
choice, children prefer proclisis to a tensed finite verb to enclisis to a
non-finite verb. A plausible explanation for this preference is found in
Kaynes (1994) proposal. Recall that, for Kayne, clitics raise and
invariably left adjoin to a functional head. When the functional head
dominates the verb, this yields the order clitic=verb. The order
verb=clitic involves a further movement of the verb to the left, past the
clitic and adjoining the single-bar projection whose head the clitic has
adjoined to. The basic claim, along the lines suggested in Chomsky
(1988), is that movement of the clitic to a preverbal position would be
easier, less costly, than enclisis, since it involves fewer steps in the
derivation. Universal Grammar (UG) principles can thus be seen as
guiding the child towards the preferred order.
We can conclude that children start the acquisition process by assuming
that all clitics appear in preverbal position before the AGR + TNS +
verb, and in time they accept that clitics can also follow nonfinite
verbal complements when the two options are present. This does not
necessarily imply that the clitic originates preverbally in situ. There are
some indications that movement is involved, mainly provided by two
error types found in this study: backward repositioning and clitic
copying. With regard to the first error type, it should be noted that
despite the fact that children found the order Vinfinitival=clitic to be
marked, there were instances, albeit few, of clitic repositioning from
preverbal to postverbal position, which was taken as an indication that
these two positions are related by movement. A second error found in
the data, which is traditionally assumed to reveal movement processes,
208
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FIRST LANGUAGE
is copying-without-deletion. This follows from the standard assumption

that copies are the lexical spell-out of the trace of a moved element. If
this interpretation is on the right track, childrens inaccurate responses
discussed under clitic copying can be seen as evidence of the steps
taken in the derivation of clitics from base to surface position.
CONCLUSION
This paper has examined the knowledge that young children have
regarding the properties of single clitics. The results of the study show
that children have already mastered the morpho-lexical distinction
between clitics and full pronominal expressions by the youngest age
tested (i.e., three years), and have knowledge of the syntactic implications
of this distinction. The study has also shown that the errors made by
children acquiring Spanish as a first language are few and limited in
kind, as would be expected if UG constrains the set of possible
hypotheses that the child formulates, speeding up the acquisition
process. The results have shown that, for the structures tested, there is
early convergence between the child and the adult grammar, and that
the acquisition curve stabilizes at around age four. It still remains to be
seen whether clitics are available from the very beginning, or whether
they emerge after other functional categories, such as Tense, are
instantiated. To settle this issue, data from children younger than those
tested in this study would have to be collected.
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APPENDIX
Stimulus sentences tested in this study
DO pre-verbal clitic
(1a) La linda sirenita la quiere invitar esta noche.
The pretty little mermaid 3SG.F.DO wants invite tonight
The pretty little mermaid wants to invite her tonight.
(1b) La princesa Jasmn lo puede ver esta noche.
The princess Jasmine 3SG.M.DO can see tonight
Princess Jasmine can see him tonight.
IO pre-verbal clitic
(2a) Aladn le puede contar un secreto esta tarde.
Aladin 3SG.IO can tell a secret this afternoon
Aladin can tell her/him a secret this afternoon.
(2b) Hrcules le quiere dar un regalo esta noche.
Hercules 3SG.IO wants give a present tonight
Hercules wants to give her/him a present tonight.
DO post-verbal clitic
(3a) Despus de jugar Mickey puede verlo en el parque.
After of play Mickey can see=3SG.M.DO in the park
After playing Mickey can see him in the park.
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(3b) Despus de comer Donald quiere invitarla a su casa.

After of eat Donald wants invite=3SG.F.DO to his house
After eating Donald can invite her to his house.
IO post-verbal clitic
(4a) Por la tarde Aladn quiere darme un caramelo.
In the afternoon Aladin wants give=1SG.IO a lolly
In the afternoon Aladin wants to give me a lolly.
(4b) Por la noche la sirenita puede cantarme una cancin.
In the evening the little mermaid can sing=1SG.IO a song
In the evening the little mermaid can sing me a song.
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Vol 23-Pt2-Susana Eisenchlas

First Language, 23(2), 193211 Copyright 2003 SAGE Publications

Clitics in child Spanish*

This paper investigates the knowledge young children have about

Acquisition of pronouns; elicitation tasks; grammatical errors;

Even a cursory look at recent linguistics journals, dissertation abstracts

0142-7237 [200302] 23:2; 193211; 034994

Vol 23-Pt2-Susana Eisenchlas

refers to this state of affairs as a yawning gap problem: namely, that

Vol 23-Pt2-Susana Eisenchlas

distinction and its syntactic consequences, to address the wider question:

Vol 23-Pt2-Susana Eisenchlas

Vol 23-Pt2-Susana Eisenchlas

There are some problems with this interpretation. As Everett (1996)

Vol 23-Pt2-Susana Eisenchlas

Following Pollocks (1989) IP deconstruction, the question can be

Vol 23-Pt2-Susana Eisenchlas

2. If children have mastered the morpho-lexical difference between

Vol 23-Pt2-Susana Eisenchlas

Argentinian Spanish. Children were tested individually in their daycare

Vol 23-Pt2-Susana Eisenchlas

Proportion of accurate responses (by Position, Type of

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Mean number incorrect

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characterize responses where the clitic is placed in a position that

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errors occurred in the two youngest groups. No significant difference

Vol 23-Pt2-Susana Eisenchlas

(14) Stimulus sentence:

Vol 23-Pt2-Susana Eisenchlas

Vol 23-Pt2-Susana Eisenchlas

children and adult second-language learners of Spanish (Eisenchlas

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is copying-without-deletion. This follows from the standard assumption

Vol 23-Pt2-Susana Eisenchlas

Eisenchlas, S. A. (1994). A case study of first language Spanish-English bilingual

Vol 23-Pt2-Susana Eisenchlas

Schaeffer, J. (2000) The Acquisition of Direct Object Scrambling and Clitic

Vol 23-Pt2-Susana Eisenchlas

(3b) Despus de comer Donald quiere invitarla a su casa.

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