Acquisition of Functional Categories in Early Spanish: Evidence for the Strong Continuity Hypothesis

Abstract

This study examines empirical data from three monolingual Spanish-children and argues in favor of the strong continuity hypothesis and that the following functional categories are available in early Spanish grammar: agreement phrase (AgrP), tense phrase (TP), negation phrase (NegP), and complementizer phrase (CP). The distribution of the agreement paradigm suggests that the children in this study have knowledge of inflection very early in life, as they produce singular forms followed by plural forms. The data also reveal that children make present-past tense contrasts in early stages and pre-verbal negation is appropriately placed in early child utterances. Finally, the data provide empirical evidence that CP is available in early grammar, as seen in the movement of wh-elements and the production of true imperatives. The results from the Spanish data are discussed in light of other studies and support the view that functional structure is available throughout the course of first language acquisition.