Abstract
This article examines the second language acquisition (SLA) of Spanish dative clitics in clitic doubling (CLD) structures that are closely related to the double object construction (DOC) in English and Dutch. It also addresses the question of how adult English and Dutch speakers learning L2 Spanish in a formal setting develop knowledge and use of the animacy constraint in the target language, which is different from the first language (L1) counterparts. The role of transfer in acquiring new syntactic structures has been taken into account, where dative clitics appear and animate objects are marked by the dative preposition ‘to.’ New findings are obtained on CLD and the Spanish animacy constraint from a grammaticality judgement task (GJT), completed by English and Dutch learners at B1 and B2 CEFR levels. The difficulties learners experienced were not always due to negative L1 transfer, but also related to the complexity of the argument structure where the clitic is inserted. This has clear implications for the teaching of pronominal elements which are closely related to different syntactic configurations in Spanish.
Highlights
Dative alternation is a well-known phenomenon in second language acquisition (SLA)
The presence of dative clitics with clitic doubling (CLD) was generally accepted by the Dutch learners, who demonstrated a better level of Spanish according to our placement test results
We have examined the L2 acquisition of Spanish dative clitics by English and Dutch learners
Summary
Dative alternation is a well-known phenomenon in second language acquisition (SLA). Recent studies, including Bresnan, Cueni, Nikitina, and Baayen (2007) forL2 English, and Jäschke and Plag (2016) for German-English interlanguage, have shown that the two alternative forms are not acquired at the same time.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call