Spanish-speaking childrenʹs use of verbal inflection in comprehension

Abstract This paper examines childrenʹs use of verbal agreement in comprehension in two varieties of Spanish with the goal of determining how the input affects their behavior. Both dialects are identical in allowing null subjects and having rich verbal morphology in contrast to English. The dialects differ however in that in Chilean Spanish a phonological lenition process affects the realization of second person singular /-s/. In Mexican Spanish, no such variation is found for the second singular. The results indicate that children acquiring languages with rich verbal morphology use agreement in comprehension in much the same way as children acquiring a language with less robust agreement. Moreover, we find that variable input for the second singular marker affects acquisition.