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Textbook Language Development and Disorders in Spanish Speaking Children 1St Edition Alejandra Auza Benavides Ebook All Chapter PDF
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Literacy Studies: Perspectives from Cognitive Neurosciences,
Linguistics, Psychology and Education
Language
Development
and Disorders in
Spanish-speaking
Children
Literacy Studies
Volume 14
Series Editor:
R. Malatesha Joshi, Texas A&M University, College Station, USA
Editorial Board:
Rui Alves, University of Porto, Portugal
Linnea Ehri, CUNY Graduate School, New York, USA
Usha Goswami, University of Cambridge, UK
Catherine McBride Chang, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
Jane Oakhill, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
Richard Olson, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
Rebecca Treiman, Washington University in St. Louis, USA
While language defines humanity, literacy defines civilization. Understandably,
illiteracy or difficulties in acquiring literacy skills have become a major concern of
our technological society. A conservative estimate of the prevalence of literacy
problems would put the figure at more than a billion people in the world. Because
of the seriousness of the problem, research in literacy acquisition and its breakdown
is pursued with enormous vigor and persistence by experts from diverse back-
grounds such as cognitive psychology, neuroscience, linguistics and education.
This, of course, has resulted in a plethora of data, and consequently it has become
difficult to integrate this abundance of information into a coherent body because of
the artificial barriers that exist among different professional specialties.
The purpose of this series is to bring together the available research studies into
a coherent body of knowledge. Publications in this series are of interest to educa-
tors, clinicians and research scientists in the above-mentioned specialties.
Some of the titles suitable for the Series are: fMRI, brain imaging techniques and
reading skills, orthography and literacy; and research based techniques for improv-
ing decoding, vocabulary, spelling, and comprehension skills.
Language Development
and Disorders in Spanish-
speaking Children
Editors
Alejandra Auza Benavides Richard G. Schwartz
Hospital General “Dr. Manuel Gea Program in Speech and Hearing
González” CUNY Graduate Center
Mexico City, Mexico New York, NY, USA
v
vi Preface
The relationship between language and cognitive abilities has long been a topic
of interest for linguists, psychologists, and psycholinguists. Thus, we felt it was
important that some of chapters address cognitive abilities along with the typical
and atypical development of language. Proposals regarding this relationship have
varied widely from viewing them as completely independent to viewing language as
one of a set of cognitive abilities and to being interactive (e.g., see the overview in
Rice 1983). Abilities and deficits in cognitive performance are also characterized as
domain general, affecting multiple modalities of cognitive task performance and
language, or domain specific, affecting only language or only a limited set of cogni-
tive abilities (see review in Schwartz 2017b). Among the cognitive abilities related
to language processing and acquisition are working memory (see reviews in
Schwartz 2017a, b), long-term memory (e.g., Marton and Eichorn 2014), and exec-
utive functions including shifting, updating, and inhibition among others (Miyake
et al. 2000). Cognitive abilities such as working memory and executive functions
(e.g., inhibiting proactive interference) are impaired in children with language dis-
orders compared to their typically developing peers (e.g., Leonard et al. 2007;
Marton et al. 2014, 2016). Children with different developmental language disor-
ders, such as specific (primary) language impairment, autistic spectrum disorders,
or intellectual disabilities, exhibit various profiles of cognitive deficits and different
profiles of language production and comprehension deficits. One of the many chal-
lenges that remain is establishing connections among these various profiles.
Another general issue addressed in some of the chapters is the diverse cultural
and socioeconomic circumstances in children’s home environments. In the United
States, 21% of all children live in poverty, and another 21% of all children live in
low-income families. Estimates indicate that 3 and 16% of all children have speech
and language disorders, with 26% of children with these disorders living in poor or
low-income homes (McNeilly 2016; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering,
and Medicine 2016). Children from poor or low-income homes are more likely to
exhibit speech and language disorders, with approximately 40% of these children
exhibiting more severe disorders accompanied by attention deficit hyperactivity dis-
orders, autism, or intellectual deficits. This has implications for academic and life
achievement, employment, and quality of life. Although it seems unlikely that pov-
erty alone directly leads to atypical language acquisition, poverty may be associated
with many mediating factors such as nutrition, health, and environmental factors
(e.g., lead exposure) that in turn affect language development. In Mexico, 53 million
people live in poverty; the economic situations of these families reduce the oppor-
tunity to interact with children and may affect the quality and amount of language
input, because parents often work far away from their homes and have to work long
hours. People in other Central and South American countries live in similar situa-
tions. A more complete picture of typical and atypical language acquisition needs to
include studies of children living in poverty.
Another sociocultural context of language acquisition is multilingualism (see
review in Peña and Bedore 2017). We already know that language development in
bilingual speakers does not correspond directly to the development in monolingual
speakers of the home, first, or heritage language or to the development of monolingual
Preface vii
speakers of the second language. One outcome is the apparently slower develop-
ment in L1 and L2 compared to monolingual speakers of both languages, compli-
cating the identification of language impairment in these children. In general, it
seems inappropriate to compare children who are bilingual to monolingual speak-
ers, but it is the case with many standardized tests that have norms for monolingual
speakers only. Furthermore, the variety of the heritage or L1 may also differ from
that of monolingual speakers because of L2 contact in immigrant populations. The
minority status of the child’s heritage language may also have an impact. A great
deal of research is needed to fully develop an understanding of the nature and course
of bilingual or multilingual language development under a variety of
circumstances.
This book is a collection of previously unpublished, original research reports
carried out by researchers working with monolingual children in Chile and Mexico
and monolingual and bilingual children in the United States and Spain. The chapters
cover a wide range of dimensions in acquisition (comprehension and production)
and cognitive abilities (memory, attention, cognitive flexibility). Considering the
prevalence of bilingualism, we included research on children acquiring languages in
addition to Spanish (i.e., English, Catalan, or Basque). These studies are especially
important because of their potential to inform language acquisition theory and clini-
cal linguistics. The chapters examine how language comprehension, production,
and use relate to associated cognitive functions, from different perspectives and
methodologies in child language acquisition. The first part of the book focuses on
the monolingual and bilingual typically developing Spanish-speaking children.
These studies examine the question of how the cognitive system and language inter-
act when children are acquiring Spanish as their native first language (L1) or as a
second language (L2). It is crucial to understand how language is understood, pro-
duced, and used in these two populations for theoretical, clinical, and educational
purposes. The second part of the book is dedicated to children who are at risk of
language impairment or delay. These studies examine how domains of cognition
interact with language during development in children who live in socially or devel-
opmentally vulnerable conditions. This section is valuable because the research
reported reveals how environmental and social conditions affect the trajectory of
language development. The final part of the book addresses how Spanish-speaking
children with specific language impairment and other, more general developmental
disorders (e.g., genetic syndromes) use and understand language when cognitive
functions and processing information are affected.
Our goal for the book is to add to the understanding of typical and atypical lan-
guage acquisition, related cognitive development, and their sociocultural contexts.
We hope that the topics covered in this volume will be incorporated into courses on
language development and disorders, will provide some new insights into language
assessment and intervention, and will generate more research on typical and atypi-
cal Spanish acquisition.
We would also like to acknowledge two persons who contributed to the prepara-
tion of this volume. Katya Robledo helped us with professional language transla-
tions from Spanish to English in some of the chapters of the book. We want to thank
viii Preface
as well to Ofelia Benavides, for this silent work which sometimes is not seen. She
helped us in organizing the abstracts, tables, and manuscripts, ensured that all the
required content was there, and helped us with the formatting preparation. Katya
and Ofelia’s patience and help were invaluable. Thank you to all the students,
patients, and family (especially Mau, Coco, and Anne) who contributed or encour-
aged in some way to the outcome of this book. Richard Schwartz was supported by
NIH Grant R01DC011041. Alejandra Auza was supported by CONACyT, Ciencia
Básica 2013-220634.
References
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bilingualism from language impairment. Bristol: Channel View Publications/Multilingual
Matters.
Berry, M. (1969). Language disorders of children: The bases and diagnoses. East Norwalk:
Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Bloom, L. (1973). One word at a time: The use of single-word utterances before syntax. The
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Braine, M. D. S. (1963). On learning the Grammatical order of words. Psychological Review, 70,
323–348.
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Guo, J., Lieven, E., Budwig, N., Ervin-Tripp, S., Nakamura, K., & Özçalışkan, Ş. (Eds.). (2009).
Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the tradition of Dan
Isaac Slobin. New York/London: Psychology Press.
Instituto Cervantes. (2015). El español, una lengua viva. Informe 2015 [The Spanish: An alive
language. Report 2015]. Retrieved from http://eldiae.es/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/espanol_
lengua-viva_20151.pdf
Leonard, L. (1972). What is deviant language? Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 37,
427–446.
Leonard, L. (1998). Children with specific language impairment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Leonard, L. (2014a). Children with specific language impairment (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Leonard, L. (2014b). Specific language impairment across languages. Child Development
Perspectives, 8, 1–5.
Leonard, L., Ellis Weismer, S., Miller, C., Francis, D., Tomblin, J. B., & Kail, R. V. (2007). Speed
of processing, working memory, and language impairment in children. Journal of Speech,
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Marton, K., & Eichorn, N. (2014). Interaction between working memory and long-term memory:
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Marton, K., Eichorn, N., Campanelli, L., & Zakarias, L. (2016). Working memory and interference
control in children with specific language impairment. Language and Linguistics Compass, 10,
211–224.
Preface ix
Marton, K., Campanelli, L., Eichorn, N., Scheuer, J., & Yoon, J. (2014). Information processing
and proactive interference in children with and without specific language impairment (SLI).
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The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal lobe”
tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41, 49–100.
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Contents
xi
xii Contents
xiii
xiv Contributors
xvii
Part I
Typical Language Development in
Monolingual and Bilingual Children
Typical Language Development
of Monolingual Spanish-Speaking Children
S. Mariscal (*)
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid, Spain
e-mail: smariscal@psi.uned.es
A. Auza Benavides
Hospital General “Dr. Manuel Gea González”, Mexico City, Mexico
e-mail: alejandra.auza@yahoo.com
Spanish has 5 vocalic sounds and 19 consonant phonemes (24 in English). Syllabic
structures include CV as the most frequent (56%), followed by CVC (20%), CCV
(10%) and VC (3%) (see Bosch 2004). Prosodically, rhythm in Spanish is syllable-
dependent in contrast to English, which is a stressed-time language. The fact that
English non-stressed syllables are reduced compared to stressed ones is a difficult
trait for Spanish learners of English as L2.
Spanish has a rich and complex verbal and nominal morphology. New words can
be constructed by derivation or by composition. Most derivation is through the addi-
tion of suffixes to the root word (zapato: zapatería [shoe: shoe-store]), and compo-
sition (sacapuntas [pencil sharpener]) is more infrequent than in Germanic
languages.
As in many other Romance languages (see, for example, Clark 1985), the basic
word order in Spanish is SVO. The basic order changes from SVO to SOV when the
direct object is pronominalized. Pronominalized indirect objects also precede the
verb, except for the imperative verbal form:
Noun and verb morphology in Spanish are much more abundant and varied than
in languages such as English. And it is the main difficulty L2 learners in Spanish.
Moreover, this morphological richness enables Spanish to be a pro-drop language.
Subjects are frequently omitted, as the information regarding the subject is included
in verb morphology. Thus, VsO is a common structure in oral Spanish (Vs being the
inflected verb) (López-Ornat 1992; Gallo 1994). The next example is extracted from
the Ornat corpus, (MacWhinney 2000). In the child’s sentence, produced when she
was 23 months of age, the use of first person present is underlined and the explicit
subject is omitted.
6 S. Mariscal and A. Auza Benavides
In Spanish all nouns referring to beings, objects and events are marked as masculine
(masc) or feminine (fem). The gender and number of the noun must agree with other
elements in the definite article (in Spanish, el/los ‘the_masc, sg/pl’ and la/las ‘the_
fem, sg/pl’), which occurs more frequently in adult language than the indefinite
article un/unos (‘a_masc., sg/some_masc,pl.’ and una/unas ‘a_fem, sg/some_fem,
pl’). Other less frequently occurring form classes are adjectives (for example,
pequeño/a ‘small_masc/fem’), personal pronouns él/ellos ‘he/they’, ella/ellas ‘she/
they’ and other kinds of determiners and pronouns (for example, demonstratives
este/esta‘this_masc/fem’, indefinite otro/otra ‘another_masc/fem’ and possessives
mío/mía‘my_masc/fem.’). A second source of information is sublexical (phonetic),
and it derives from the fact that the endings of many nouns in Spanish are more
often associated with one gender than with the other: an –a ending is usually associ-
ated with feminine gender, and an – o ending usually indicates masculine gender.
There are exceptions. For example, number of masculine nouns end in –a, and a
very small number of feminine nouns ending in –o. Albeit some less frequent end-
ings such as –e or –l refer to an arbitrary gender: la fuente:fem [the fountain] – el
puente:masc [the bridge] or el árbol:masc [the tree] – la piel:fem [the skin]. There
are also nouns with no overt gender marking, such as botón [button].
Similarly, many adjectives show gender agreement by means of the same end-
ings found in nouns (−o and –a), but there is also an important group of adjectives
lacking these two endings; for example, grande [big] is invariant. According to
some linguistic proposals (see Harris 1991), −o and –a are word markers, rather
than gender markers, because they are not confined to lexical items that have gen-
der, being found also in adverbs. These sublexical cues seem to be treated as gender
markers both for L1 and L2 learners.
Besides gender, the number of Spanish nouns, determiners, pronouns and adjec-
tives is expressed in a bound morpheme. This is –s or –es at the end of the root. For
instance:
Typical Language Development of Monolingual Spanish-Speaking Children 7
In Spanish, interrogatives do not require special verb forms nor word movement
(e.g., Te doy leche versus ¿Te doy leche? [I give you milk]. The Wh-words (what/
qué, who/quién etc.) and rising intonation are the unique requirements.
For all kind of sentences subjects must agree in person and number with the verb.
For example, in ‘me gusta tu camisa versus me gustan tus camisas’, the subjects (tu
camisa and tus camisas/ ‘your shirt’ and ‘your shirts’), which appear after the
verb – the prototypical position of the direct object -, agree in number with it (gusta_
sg/‘likes’ vs.gustan_pl/‘like’). The formation of complex sentences is similar to
English, but it includes compulsory verb agreement and its varied forms, allowing
pronoun drop and varied word orders. For example:
(5) Este libro que leí en el instituto es una de las mejores novelas que he leído
en mi vida
[This book that I read in high school is one of the best novels that
I have read in my life].
Many complex sentences (mainly object and subject clauses) in Spanish need
subjunctive verbal forms, although in English the indicative form is used. For
example:
Spanish verbs are inflected for person, number, tense, aspect and mood. There are
three conjugations (1st, 2nd and 3rd) and a typical verb can have around 100 differ-
ent forms (see Table 1). For regular verbs, this variability is found at the end of the
word, so attention final sounds and syllables is crucial to learning Spanish morphol-
ogy. On the contrary, for irregular verbs morphological changes frequently imply
changes in the verbal stem.
The next few sections include a selection of research on Spanish language acquisi-
tion. The number of studies conducted since the 1980s has increased rapidly, so this
is not an exhaustive review. Special attention will be paid to some characteristics of
its acquisition that make it particularly interesting, such as early phonology, verb
morphology, gender agreement and lexical development.
The first year of life is crucial for learning the “sound substance” of a language.
From around nine months of age infants become tuned in with the phonological
properties of their L1; that is, its prosodic, phonetic and phonotactic characteristics.
(Werker and Tees 1984; Mehler et al. 1988; Nazzi et al. 1998). However, most of the
evidence comes from studies with English participants and research in Spanish is
very scarce. Bosch and Sebastián-Gallés (2001), working with babies in a labora-
tory in Barcelona, showed early sensibility to phonotactic clusters in 10-month old
monolingual and bilingual (Spanish-Catalan) children. In a more recent paper,
Bosch et al. (2013) found very early segmentation abilities in infants from six months
of age. Children that young were able to segment new words in fluent speech when
these items matched the rhythmic units of Spanish and Catalan, which are syllable-
timed languages. For this study, three different language groups (two monolingual
and one Catalan-Spanish bilingual) and two age groups (8-and 6-month-old infants)
were tested using natural language and a modified version of the Head Turn
Preference Procedure (HTPP). All groups at both ages exhibited word segmenta-
tion, but the preference pattern differed by age. A novelty preference was exhibited
by older children, while the expected familiarity preference was only found at the
younger age tested, suggesting a more advanced segmentation ability with an
increase in age. This is the first evidence of an early ability for monosyllabic word
Typical Language Development of Monolingual Spanish-Speaking Children 9
Table 1 Conjugation and examples of the verb ‘to love’ (118 word forms)
Indicative Subjunctive
Present Present perfect Present Present perfect
amo he amado ame haya amado
amas has amado ames hayas amado
aman ha amado ame haya amado
amamos hemos amado amemos hayamos amado
amáis habéis amado améis hayáis amado
aman han amado amen hayan amado
Imperfective past Past perfect Imperfective Past perfect
past
amaba había amado amara hubiera amado
amabas habías amado amaras hubieras amado
amaba había amado amara hubiera amado
amabamos habíamos amado amáramos hubiéramos amado
amabáis habíais amado amárais hubiérais amado
amaban habían amado amaran hubieran amado
Perfective past Preterite perfect Future Future perfect
imperfect
amé hube amado amare hubiere amado
amaste habiste amado amares hubieres amado
amó hubo amado amare hubiere amado
amamos hubimos amado amáremos hubiéremos amado
amásteis hubísteis amado amáreis hubiereis amado
amaron hubieron amado amaran hubieren amado
Future imperfect Future perfect Imperative Impersonal forms
amaré habré amado ama (tú) Simple infinitive/
amarás habrás amado ame (él) compound
amará habrá amado amemos amar/haber amado
amaremos habremos amado (nosotros)
amaréis habréis amado améis Gerund
(vosotros)
amarán habrán amado amen (ellos) amando/habiendo
amado
Participle amado
Conditional/condicional Compound conditional/
simple condicional compuesto
amaría habría amado
amarías habrías amado
amaría habría amado
amaríamos habríamos amado
amaríais habríais amado
amarían habrían amado
10 S. Mariscal and A. Auza Benavides
400
300
Vocabulary
200
100
0
8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Fig. 1 Mean of words understood and produced from 8 to 15 months of age and development of
word production up to 30 months (compiled by the author from López-Ornat et al. 2005)
MCDI derived for a sample of children from Spain (López-Ornat et al. 2005).
Analysis showed the well-known imbalance between comprehension and produc-
tion of words and the quick developmental trend of acquiring new words after the
first 50 items are acquired (see Fig. 1).
An interesting research tool- CLEX (Cross-linguistic Lexical Norms) - devel-
oped by Rune et al. (2010) and accessible at http://www.cdi-clex.org, includes
vocabulary data from Mexican Spanish children, 8–30 months of age, for cross-
linguistic comparisons. The database (n = 1872 children) was contributed by
Jackson-Maldonado’s team, the authors of the Mexican Spanish version of the
MCDI. CLEX can be used to explore trajectories of individual words and word
categories, to depict vocabulary size curves and for many other analyses.
After the first words are acquired (comprehended and produced), the pace at which
vocabulary is learned is accelerated. Many studies of different languages have
reported on vocabulary spurts and other lexical trajectories (for a review in Spanish,
see Mariscal and Gallo 2015a).
In the case of Spanish, the same database gathered by López-Ornat et al. (2005)
was analyzed by Gallego and Mariscal (2007) in an effort to learn about vocabulary
12 S. Mariscal and A. Auza Benavides
composition after first words. Their results showed that the early lexicon in Spanish
children under 30 months of age includes a higher percentage of nouns in all ages
(60%), followed by predicates (verbs and adjectives), which increase from 8% at 16
months to 18% at 30 months. Function words were produced at a rate of around
10% in all ages (starting from 16 months), although during the first months children
produce fillers or protomorphemes instead of proper function words. Organizing
these data as a function of vocabulary size (0–50 words, 51–100, 101–200 and so on
up to 600 words) yields a developmental sense of the emerging picture. Although
nouns are still dominant in every age range, their trajectory shows an increase from
the initial 0–50 word-stage to 101–200. It then stabilizes at around 60% in compari-
son with total vocabulary and decreases (40%) after 400 words are produced. Verbs
and function words represent only 10% of total vocabulary when it is under 50
words, and then its evolution differs: verbs begin to increase in frequency and reach
20% by the end of the study, while function words maintain their percentage of use
below verbs. However, given the methodology used to gather these data (parent
report), it is necessary to specify if these words change their representational status
as the acquisition process develops from the initial phases. At the beginning of the
developmental process, function words are attached to content words, as in auxil-
iary verbs - for example, a’oto (se ha roto) [it’s broken] -, or they are only produced
in a fuzzy form apota instead of la pelota [the ball] that make it difficult to assign
them a syntactic representational status (see, for example, Mariscal (2009) - for the
case of determiners).
The form that words take in children’s vocabularies before they have mastered
the phonological and articulatory properties of the language have been examined in
detail elsewhere (Bosch 2004). This work provides not only important developmen-
tal data (ages of acquisition, typical phonological processes in Spanish children,
etc.), but also serves as a tool to assess children’s phonological abilities from 3 to 7
years of age.
Going back to Fig. 1, the change in the pace at which new words are acquired
after the first 50 is remarkable.
In morphologically rich languages, children begin to use morphemes as a cue to
learn new words from early on. Although vocabulary studies only tend to consider
new roots, in Romance languages an important way for vocabulary to grow is
through the acquisition of inflectional and derivational morphology. Given that the
latter is a key for vocabulary expansion in Spanish, children start using derivational
morphemes productively since the age of three. This has been observed in different
languages (Clark 1993, 1997) includying Spanish, specifically using frequent mor-
phemes such as the agentives -ador, -ero [-er] or the adjectives -ón, -oso [-y] which
continue to be productive until the school years (Auza 2005, 2006, 2008; Auza and
Hernández 2005).
As Hoff (2009) summarized, morphemes that are frequent and have a stable and
recognizable form are easier and consequently, are acquired early. There are three
sources of empirical evidence that corroborate this acquisition pattern in Spanish:
(1) parent-report data; (2) longitudinal naturalistic studies; and (3) experimental
research on language comprehension and production. We will review the main
Typical Language Development of Monolingual Spanish-Speaking Children 13
As mentioned in the first section of this chapter, gender agreement is one of the main
morpho-syntactic phenomena in Spanish. In spite of this fact, only a few recent stud-
ies regarding the use of this cue to identify words and help in vocabulary acquisition
have been published. As noted above, there are methodological reasons for this.
Fortunately in recent years researchers of Mexican-Spanish have conducted several
studies with young children on the importance of gender information in the segmen-
tation and acquisition of new nouns (Alva-Canto et al. 2014; Arias-Trejo & Barrón,
this volume; Arias-Trejo and Alva-Canto 2012; Arias-Trejo et al. 2013, 2014b).
In an initial experiment using the Intermodal Preferential Looking Paradigm
(IPLP), Arias-Trejo et al. (2013) showed that 30- and 36-month old infants, but not
24-month olds, can anticipate the referent of common objects when they listen to
definite articles paired with their regular and irregular object nouns. However, for
those 30 month-old children the identification of the objects with regular nouns
depended on the fact that they were paired with distractors that also had regular
nouns. In contrast, the 36-month old children were also able to identify objects
paired with irregular endings. In a second experiment, indefinite articles were used
in noun phrases. The results showed that children as young as 24 months of age
were able to anticipate the target nouns, but again if they were paired with regular
nouns for the distractors. Thus, Mexican-Spanish children were able to anticipate a
referent like globo [balloon_masc_regular]’ if it appeared with muñeca [doll_fem_
regular], but they failed if it was paired with flor [flower_fem_irregular]; or they
could identify manzana [apple_fem_regular] if shown together with caballo
[horse_masc_regular] as a distractor, but they could not if it appeared with pastel
[cake_masc_irregular].
As the authors stated: “(Spanish-speaking) infants, from 2 to 3 years of age, are
sensitive to the information included in article-noun pairs. At the beginning, around
24 months of age, infants rely on phonological regularities for anticipating which
referent will be named; however, at 3 years of age infants are flexible in their use of
strategies: depending on the information available, they are able to use phono-
morphological or syntactic cues” (Alva-Canto et al. 2014: pp.99; translated from
the original in Spanish).
In another experiment, Arias-Trejo et al. (2014b) showed that Spanish 30-month
old children were able to use gender phono-morphological cues (the endings –a and
–o) present in adjectives to learn new nouns. Using IPLP and testing two
pseudonames (feminine betusa and masculine pileco), they showed that children at
this age were able to associate the new names with the appropriate objects by r elying
14 S. Mariscal and A. Auza Benavides
"Todella, niin!"
"Kalle puhuu ihan oikein", sanoi Pekka, "ja kylläpä se poika tietää;
hän on niin paljon oppinut!"
"Minäkö oppinut," sanoi Kalle, "enhän minä ole oppinut mitään!
Lukemalla olen tosin tullut tuntemaan yhtä ja toista, jota en muuten
voisi aavistaakkaan, hm! Jospa olisin edes päivänkään istunut
koulunpenkillä opetusta nauttimassa, saattaisi olla toista!"
Tieto siitä, että Kalle häntä rakasti, oli aina ollut Miinan suurin ilo.
Hän itse rakasti tulisesti, tulisemmin kuin luulikaan. Hän piti Kallea
erinomaisena, jalona ja viisaana miehenä ja kunnioitti häntä; mutta
sittenkin olisi hän tahtonut Kallea yhtä iloiseksi veitikaksi kuin hänkin,
tai oikeammin, hän ei tiennyt mitä oikeastaan tahtoi. Hän tahtoi vaan
toisinaan tehdä Kallelle pientä kiusaa, ilveillä hänen kanssaan,
hiukan huviksensa, se viehätti tytön mieltä. Mutta nyt oli hän
ohjannut koko onnellisuutensa väärälle tolalle, tehnyt rakkautensa
leikin asiaksi. Hän tiesi mitä hänen käytöksensä Kalleen vaikutti.
Pitihän heidän yhdessä kotia palata, vaan nyt souti Kalle yksin ja hän
tiesi minkätähden! Hän istui järven rannalle sammaltaneelle kivelle ja
itki siinä iloisen yön jälkeen, itki toivottomuuden itkua! Tyyneenä
lepäsi järven pinta hänen edessään. Kuinka se saattoi olla niin
rauhallinen? Rauhallinen saattaisi hänkin olla, jos ei niin
kevytmielisellä tavalla olisi hänen tunteitaan loukannut! Muisti hän
toisenkin kevätaamun, silloin oli hän onnellisin kuolevaisista; samoin
saattaisi hän nytkin olla, mutta onnestaan teki hän pilkkaa.
"No mitä nyt", huudahti Pekka, "mikä sinulle nyt tuli? Onko
onnettomuuksia tapahtunut? Helkkarin tuutissa, onko ketään järveen
pudonnut?"
"No mutta mikä riivattu sinun sitte on? Semmoista niistä tanssista!
Kyllä sinne mennään ilolla ja riemulla, mutta tullaan itku silmissä
takaisin. Mitä pitää minun tästä ajatteleman?"
*****
"Varo ett'et toista kertaa kohtele minua tuolla tavalla!" sanoi Kalle,
ja heitti Erkin vähän matkan päähän polulle, otti pyssynsä ja läksi
päätään kääntämättä astuskelemaan kotiansa kohden.
"Toivo vaan! Jos Jumala suo, voitte vielä olla onnelliset. Jumala
sinua siunatkoon! Oletpas vielä hyvä tyttö, ja minäkin olen
onnellinen!"
"Ei, minä tahtoisin aina olla täällä, sinun seurassasi. Oi Kalle, älä
minusta päätä mitään ylön pahaa!"
Näin puhui Miina itkien, mutta Kalle sulki itkevän tytön syliinsä:
"kuinka saatoinkaan sinusta niin väärin päättää, pitihän minun tuntea