The Acquisition of Spanish active and passive voice: child bilinguals’ and monolinguals’ spontaneous production

This study focuses on the acquisition of Spanish active and passive voice in Spanish−English simultaneous bilingual children (n = 5) and monolingual children (n = 5), matched in mean length of utterance measured in words (MLUw). Spontaneous longitudinal data were extracted from CHIld Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES). Our results point to the similar emergence of active monotransitives and the two types of verbal passives (impersonal se-passives and canonical determiner phrase ([DP]-passives) in the two child groups. This convergence is observed despite the apparent morphological and distributional differences in the surface structure of the two passive types. This suggests that both Spanish passive types are construed under an analogous DP-movement syntactic mechanism. Moreover, the bilingual and the monolingual children’s preference for the use of actives over passives and the higher frequency rates of impersonal se-passives than canonical DP-movement passives seem to be associated with adult input frequency effects, which modulate the developmental incidence of these constructions but not their initial availability in the grammar. These findings support a grammar-driven view of early voice acquisition and show that the similar acquisition and incidence patterns of Spanish active and verbal passives in bilinguals and monolinguals argue for autonomous development. It also sheds light on the bilinguals’ absence of crosslinguistic influence effects from English into Spanish leading to delay or interference.