Puerto Rican Children’s Knowledge of the Spanish Copulas Ser and Estar with Adjectives
نویسنده
چکیده
This study examines the comprehension of the Spanish copulas ser and estar by Puerto Rican children between the ages of 4;0-7;0 (M = 5;8). Fifty-two Spanish-speaking children (20 boys and 32 girls) were presented with a picture matching task that included known cartoon characters. After having heard and seen a story, children had to decide which character responds to a question that included one of the copulas. Our results showed that in the ser condition, participants chose the permanent picture 44% of the time; whereas in the estar condition they chose the temporary picture 86% of the time. This study shows that by the age of 4, children seem to understand the differences between Spanish copula + adjective.
منابع مشابه
Acquisition of copulas ser and estar in Spanish: learning lexico-semantics, syntax and discourse
Although there are a very large number of proposals in the literature to account for the complex distribution of the copulas ser and estar in Spanish and Portuguese (Bello 1951; Gili Gaya 1955; Querido 1976; Luján 1981; Lema 1995; Schmitt 1992, 2004; Maienborn 2000, 2003), very little is known about children’s acquisition of these two highly frequent copula verbs. The only acquisition study we ...
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