Omissions and Substitutions in Spanish Object Clitics: Developmental Optionality as a Property of the Representational System

Abstract

This study examined the existence of an object omission stage and the interaction between object omissions and substitution errors in the early stages of the development of Spanish syntax. One hundred and three Spanish-speaking children from Colombia completed an elicitation task evaluating the production of direct object pronouns. Results indicated that 3-year-olds were producing 35% of transitive structures with object omission, and 4- and 5-year-olds were producing around 15% of transitive structures with object omission. The production of clitic pronouns increased with age, and the change happened primarily between the ages of three and four. The results failed to find a relation between omissions and substitutions. These results suggest that there is an early object optionality stage for young Spanish-speaking children and are compatible with approaches that predict some degree of object optionality for all languages.