6. Prosodic Cues to Contrastive Focus in the Acquisition of Spanish as a First Language

Abstract

This study reports the Spanish language development of eight ( ) Puerto Rican children, whose ages ranged form 17 to 39 months throughout the study. Four(4) of the children were taped in Boston (BelEndez, 1980), the other four (4) were taped in Puerto.Rico. This report discuStes in detail the analysis of the speech of the;children taped in Puerto Rico: Lina, Ginnie, Adrian and Javier. These findings were compared with that of the Boston children: Rafael, Felix, Carlos and Amed. The children were taped in natural situations while interacting with the researchers, who were familiar with them. The analysis performed was on the accuracy and complexity of the verb system, which in,Spanish is highly inlfected, and Aiffers markedly from its English counterpart. Utterances with explicit veil) forms were extracted from the corpus and classified as contextually "appropriately " -or "inappropriately" inflected for tense and person. These forms were further classified as repetitions and spontaneous. Each of these sets was analyzed separately in order to determine if imitation was influencing the development of the verb system; The "errOrs" were further analyzed. A common developmental pattern of the acquisition and appearance of the verb system was found, similar to that previously found for the Boston children. In the majority of the children, repetitions seemed to influence the development of the verb system, as the accuracy of the set of repetitions was significantly lower than that for the spontaneous set. The comparisonof the Boston and Puerto_Rico children revealed that there was more diversity in the patterns of the Puerto Rico children than the Bostanchildren. In general, the Puerto Rico children were more Similar in their development to the Boston children (individually) than to each other. These differencet and similarities could not be attributed to age, social class, or exposure to English. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Page 1 Rationale 1 Methodology 3 Scope 4 Relevance 4 II LITERATURE REVIEW ON SPANISH LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 6 III THE BOSTON STUDY ,14 IV THE PUERTO RICO STUDY 26 Personnel' 26 Identification of-the children 27 Data gathering 30 Analysis 32 V ANALYSIS OF LINA'S VERB SYSTEM 34 General information 34 Analysis of the "errors" 35 Comparison of Spontaneous and repetitions sets36 Differential influence of repetitions 41 Summary of Lina's verb system development 44 VI ANALYSIS OF GINNIE'S VERB SYSTEM 46 General information 46 Analysis of the "errors" 47 CompariSon of spontandoug an repetitions sets48 Differential influence of repetitions 54 Summary of Ginnies verb system development 58 VII ANALYSIS OF ADRIAN'S VERB SYSTEM 59 General information 59 Analysis of the "errors"_ 61 Comparison of spontaneous and repetitions sets61 Differential influence of repetitions 77 Summary of Adrign'S'Nerb system development -81 VIII ANALYSIS OF JAVIER'S VERB SYSTEM 82 General information 82 Analysis of the "errors" 85 /Comparison of Spontaneous and repetitions setS85 Summary of Javier's verb system development 99 IX -COMPARISON OF THE PUERTO RICO CHILDREN 100 X COMPARISON BETWEEN THE BOSTON AND THE PUERTO RICO CHILDREN 106