Child Bilingual Acquisition of Spanish Dative (Non-)clitic Doubling Structures: A Case Study Approach to Home and Community Input Conditions

We investigate the acquisition of dative clitic doubling (CD) and non-clitic doubling (NCD) in Spanish-English child bilinguals who are exposed to Spanish as their first language (L1) (a) in a minority language context (i.e., H(eritage) L(anguage) bilingual children) and (b) in a majority language context (i.e., L1 bilingual children) to address how input and social conditions shape the early bilingual language acquisition stages. These data are compared to those of Spanish monolinguals. The two constructions emerge at around the age of 2 in the two bilingual child groups and in the monolingual group. This points to the fact that the three child groups have equally acquired the shared complex predicate structure upon which dative CD and NCD structures are built. Moreover, dative NCD constructions are less frequent than dative CD in the two bilingual groups and in the monolingual group, which is in tune with the child-directed speech production patterns. Thus, taking the Spanish monolinguals' results as the baseline, the social and/or the family context in which Spanish is being acquired from early on as an HL or as an L1 does not seem to interfere in the acquisition of the grammatical properties and patterns of use of these constructions.