Early exposure and input type in the production of Spanish accusative clitics by Chinese-Spanish bilinguals

Abstract

The current study examines the production of object clitic pronouns among Chinese/Spanish bilinguals via an elicited narrative task. A total of 11 simultaneous bilinguals, 10 sequential bilinguals from Peru and 21 Chinese-speaking L2 learners from China participated in the study. Results showed an advantage by the simultaneous bilinguals regarding target clitic use. However, no significant differences were observed between the sequential bilinguals and the adult L2 learners. Both groups showed non-canonical clitic use, and the L2 learners did not produce any clitic clusters. We argue that while earlier exposure to Spanish facilitates target clitic use, especially with clitic clusters, an instructional learning setting might play a similar role to naturalistic learning regarding target use and gender specification. Clitic clusters, however, present higher difficulty that do not seem to be overcome by formal instruction only.