Resumen

AVELEDO, Fraibet  y  MARTINS, Isabel. La adquisición de las cláusulas interrogativas parciales en el español infantil: ¿Reglas innatas o fórmulas aprendidas?. Boletin de lingüistica [online]. 2009, vol.21, n.31, pp.005-036. ISSN 0798-9709.

According to Usage-based Theory (Tomasello 2006), children acquire wh- questions by initially producing concrete formula structures that happen to be very frequent in the input. In this research we analyze the wh-questions produced by three Spanish-speaking children (age range: 0;11-3;11) in longitudinal samples of spontaneous speech to determine whether the Usage-based Theory can explain the wh-question acquisition in Spanish. Results show that: i) the first wh-questions are formula, that appeared with few interrogative particles, and that are highly frequent in the input; ii) as the child develops, wh-questions become more complex, in which this structures are produced with more varied interrogative particles and different verbs; iii) the input seems to play a relevant role in the acquisition of wh-questions. Results seem to validate the Usage-based Theory.

Palabras clave : acquisition; wh- questions; Spanish.