Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions:

This study examined whether school-aged second-generation heritage speakers exhibit knowledge of the semantic and pragmatic constraints on Spanish copula selection with adjectives, and whether experiential factors affect copula interpretation.

Design/methodology/approach:

Following a between-subjects design, we administered 2 Picture Selection Tasks to 50 second-generation bilingual children (ages 5;1–14;10) and 21 first-generation adults living in the same community in central Texas. Task 1 included real adjectives and Task 2 novel adjectives. We administered a morphosyntactic proficiency test in English and Spanish (BESA/BESA-ME) to the children and obtained language exposure and use data.

Data and analysis:

Using generalized linear mixed models, analyses compared bilingual children to first-generation adults in their selection of the temporary picture with each copula (ser vs. estar), and also examined the role of age, language exposure/use, and morphosyntactic proficiency.

Findings/conclusions:

Only children with high Spanish morphosyntactic proficiency approached adult-like sensitivity to the semantic and pragmatic distinctions between ser and estar with adjectives. Age, Spanish exposure and use, and English proficiency did not significantly influence performance on the tasks.

Originality:

This study provides the first detailed examination of the acquisition of copula selection with adjectives in Spanish-English school-aged heritage speakers living in the US.

Significance/implications:

This study offers evidence of the vulnerability of aspect, as instantiated in Spanish copula selection, among school-aged bilingual children. It also suggests low-proficiency children might be a catalyzing locus of the accelerated changes in copula use.

中文翻译：

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学龄双语儿童中带有形容词的西班牙语copula选择

目的和宗旨/目的/研究问题：

这项研究调查了学龄的第二代传承人是否表现出对西班牙语用形容词选择copula的语义和语用约束的知识，以及体验因素是否影响copula的解释。

设计/方法/方法：

按照受试者之间的设计，我们为50位第二代双语儿童（5; 1–14; 10岁）和21位生活在德克萨斯州中部同一社区的成年人提供了2个图片选择任务。任务1包括真实形容词，任务2包括新颖形容词。我们对孩子们进行了英语和西班牙语（BESA / BESA-ME）语素句法能力测试，并获得了语言暴露和使用数据。

数据与分析：

使用广义线性混合模型，分析比较了双语儿童和第一代成年人在选择每个伴动词（ser vs. estar）时的临时图片，还检查了年龄，语言暴露/使用和句法熟练程度的作用。

结果/结论：

只有具有较高西班牙句法句法能力的儿童才能对成人和成人使用类似形容词的形式，对ser和estar之间在语义和语用上的区分敏感。年龄，西班牙语的使用和使用以及英语水平并未显着影响任务的表现。

独创性：

这项研究首次对居住在美国的西班牙语-英语学龄传统语言使用者的形容词习得词类选择进行了详细的研究。

意义/含义：

这项研究提供了学龄双语儿童在西班牙copula选择中实例化方面的脆弱性的证据。这也表明低能力的儿童可能是copula使用加速变化的催化剂。