Early exposure, crosslinguistic influence and input type in the acquisition of Spanish clitics among Chinese-Spanish bilinguals

This present study investigates the acquisition of Spanish clitics among 21 simultaneous and sequential Chinese/Spanish bilinguals from Peru and 21 Chinese L2 learners of Spanish from China. Results from a story-retelling task showed an advantage by the simultaneous bilinguals regarding target clitic use. However, the sequential bilinguals and the adult L2 learners did not show significant differences among themselves. Both groups showed non-canonical use of clitics and the L2 learners showed divergences with gender marking and clitic clusters. We argue that, while earlier exposure to Spanish facilitates the canonical use of clitic, especially in the complex structure of clitic clusters, instructional learning setting showed an effect similar to naturalistic learning regarding the production of clitics and gender specification. However, clitic cluster presents higher difficulty that may not be overcome by instruction only.