Children’s Knowledge of the Spanish Copulas Ser and Estar with Novel Adjectives

Abstract

Previous research suggests that children’s behavior with respect to the interpretation of the Spanish copulas ser and estar may differ depending on their knowledge of the world and whether the copulas occur with real adjectives or novel adjectives in the experimental prompt: Whereas 5-year-old children associate estar + real adjective combinations to temporary properties (Schmitt & Miller 2007), children as old as 12 years of age are not adultlike in their interpretation of estar + novel adjective combinations, where novel adjectives are paired with properties for which children already have a Spanish word (Alonqueo 2007). In this article, we present two experimental studies on Puerto Rican children’s use of copulas and show that when novel adjectives are paired with novel properties and those novel adjectives occur in the experimental prompt with the copula estar, children associate the novel adjective to a temporary property by 4 years of age. These results highlight the importance of the copula to the meaning of the copula + adjective combination.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful to the parents, teachers, and children in Puerto Rico for allowing us to carry out this study. We would like to thank Carolina Holtheuer, Cristina Schmitt, Silvina Montrul, John Grinstead, Alejandro Cuza, and the Penn State University Center for Language Science for their very helpful comments on various versions of the experimental tasks. We also thank Lauren Tusar for her help with drawing the experimental materials. This study was presented to audiences at the 2012 Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (University of Florida) and the 2013 Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD 38).

Notes

¹ See Becker (2002, 2004) for a discussion of the English copula and a description about how it is acquired in English-speaking children.

² Further differences between Alonqueo’s study and the present design were that Alonqueo’s experiment used the copula when first introducing the novel adjective, involved inanimate characters, and asked children to choose from a set of three options, rather than just two options.