Ser-estar - suggested references

[Carmen Silva-Corvalan]

               Heartfelt thanks to the colleagues who responded to my request for information on studies of the acquisition of ser-estar:
               Eve Clark, Ruth Berman, Kelly Nett Cordero, John Grinstead, Donna Jackson, Megan R. Luce, Ana Pérez-Leroux, Rebecca Perham, Nan Bernstein Ratner, Jennifer Schwade, and Emma Ticio.

              The following studies were suggested for their relevance to the question of Spanish copula acquisition:

Sera, M. D. (1992). To be or to be: Use and acquisition of the Spanish copulas. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 408-427.  (Note that the title does not include the negative “not”).

Sera, Maria D., Bales, Diane W., & del Castillo Pintado, Javier. (1997). Ser helps Spanish speakers identify "real" properties. Child Development, Child-Development.

Sera, M., Elieff, C., Forbes, J., Burch, M. Rodríguez, W., Poulin-Dubois, D. (2002) When Language Affects Cognition and When it Does Not: An Analysis of Grammatical Gender and Classification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 131(3), 377-397.

Alvino E. Fantini's Ph.D. dissertation/book, "Language Acquisition of a Bilingual Child," (1985, Multilingual Matters Ltd., England)

Maienborn, C. (2005). A discourse-based account of Spanish ser/estar. Linguistics, 43, 155-180.

Clark, E. V. (2001) Emergent categories in first language acquisition. In M. Bowerman & S. C. Levinson (Eds.), Language acquisition and conceptual development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 379-405.

Heyman, G. D. & Diesendruck, G. (2002). The Spanish ser/estar distinction in bilingual children’s reasoning about human psychological characteristics. Developmental Psychology, 38, 407-417.

Schmitt, Cristina, Carolina Holtheuer & Karen Miller. (2003). Acquisition of copulas ser and estar in Spanish: learning lexico-semantics, syntax and discourse. The 28th Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD 28): Boston, Oct. 31.




Carmen Silva-Corvalán
Professor of Spanish and Linguistics
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0358
Tel.: 213-740 1268;  Fax: 213-740-9463