The Acquisition of Passives in Spanish and the Question of A-Chain Maturation

Abstract

This article presents empirical evidence in favor of the theory of A-chain maturation (Borer & Wexler, 1987), or of a theory that similarly attributes the delay in the acquisition of the passive to young children's inability to accomplish non-local assignment of features. Two experiments testing monolingual Spanish-speaking children's knowledge of the passive are discussed. In Experiment 1, children's comprehension of the full periphrastic passive is compared to performance on actives. In Experiment 2, children's production of the morphological passive is compared with that of active reflexives and simple intransitives. The experimental results are analyzed in light of the theory of A-chain maturation. In particular, the finding that 3- to 5-year-olds perform significantly better in the production of morphological passives with postverbal subjects than in the production of those with preverbal subjects is attributed to the presence of an A-chain in the preverbal subject construction.