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Native Spanish language acquisition: the effect of age, schooling and context on responses to ‘dile’ and ‘pregúntale’*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Carole Edelsky  and
Virginia Muiña
Carole Edelsky
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
Virginia Muiña
Affiliation:
Florida International University
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Abstract

The ability to distinguish ask and tell in Spanish was studied with five groups of native Spanish speakers: adults, 7- and 10-year-olds in a full-bilingual-programme school (BISO), and 7- and 10-year-olds in a non-total BISO school. The interviews included context-present and context-absent items. Differences in these subjects' responses and those elicited by Chomsky (1969) among children acquiring English are explored. Increased age, bilingual schooling, and presence of contextual clues enhanced performance. Relative difficulty of dile and pregúntale, stages in distinguishing these in three types of constructions, and comparisons of first and second language performance are discussed.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , October 1977 , pp. 453 - 475
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

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