Bilingual acquisition data: Dative Alternation_DA-L1 dataset

Abstract

This study aims to explore how monolingual and bilingual children acquire two types of English and Spanish dative alternation (DA) structures, namely, prepositional and double object constructions. We examine the spontaneous oral production of these children, as available in the CHILDES project (Child Language Data Exchange System; https://childes.talkbank.org/) (MacWhinney 2000) (i.e., English monolingual corpora: Brown, Cruttenden, MacWhinney, Sachs, Suppes and Wells; Spanish monolingual corpora: Linaza, Marrero and Ornat; and English-Spanish bilingual corpora: Deuchar, FerFuLice, Pérez-Bazán and Ticio). In these corpora, the children interact with adults (mainly, parents, but also caregivers or researchers). The analysis of how these monolingual and bilingual children acquire their first language(s), in general, and the constructions at stake, in particular, sheds light on the relationship that is present in the acquisition of process of these constructions across English and Spanish. In this respect, the findings elucidate whether the syntactic derivational relationship (or lack thereof) between prepositional and double object constructions is similar or differs across the two languages under investigation and across the two child groups (monolinguals and bilinguals).