To be or to be: Use and acquisition of the Spanish copulas

JOURNAL OF MEMORY AND LANGUAGE 31,408-427 (I%!)

To Be or to Be: Use and Acquisition of the Spanish Copulas

MARIA D. SERA

University of Minnesota

Four studies investigated adults’ uses and children’s acquisition of the two Spanish synonyms of to be, ser and estar. The first study consisted of a distributional analysis of ser and estar in Spanish spoken by children and adults. The results revealed that the copulas were used contrastively across different syntactic contexts. Forms of ser were used exclusively with nominals, forms of estar were used as auxiliaries and with locations, and both forms were used with adjectives. Study 2 documented a semantic difference between ser and estar with adjectives for adults such that adjectives that were labelled with ser were weighed more heavily than attributes that were labelled with estar in a categorization task. In Study 3, a semantic contrast between objects and events with locations in adults was empirically demonstrated. Study 4 examined the use of the Spanish copulas with adjectives and locations by Spanish-speaking children from 3 to 11 years of age. The findings from Study 4 suggest that Spanish-speaking children honored fewer semantic contrasts than adults, and that their uses have a more syntactic basis. The study’s implications for the structure of language and its acquisition are discussed. Q IWZ Academic press. hc.

Crosslinguistic studies provide a basis for examining the relations between language and cognition. Languages of the world dif-

This article is based on a doctoral dissertation sub- mitted to the Psychology Department of Indiana Uni- versity, and subsequent work conducted at the Uni- versity of Iowa and the University of Minnesota. The research was supported by a Grant-in-Aid and an Gff- campus Research Fellowship to the author from Indi- ana University, a Summer Faculty Fellowship and a Spelman Rockefeller Seed Grant from the University of Iowa, and by a Graduate School Grant-in-Aid from the University of Minnesota. The author thanks the dissertation committee, consisting of L. B. Smith, D. B. Pisoni, J. Johnston, J. Clements, and E. Thelen, and extends a special thanks to Linda B. Smith, for supporting the research financially and conceptually. Thanks also go to Brian MacWhinney for providing the Spanish transcripts from the Child Language Data Exchange System, and Dan I. Slobin for the Spanish Frog Story Data. The Spanish Frog Story Data were used with the written permission of M. Eugenia Se- bastian, who directed the collection of these data. The author also thanks the children, parents, and staff of Lavemia Bilingual School for their participation. And finally, thanks go to M. Eugenia Sebastian, Jose Luis Linaza, and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on a previous draft of the paper. Portions of this research were presented at the Tenth Biennial Conference on Human Development in Charleston, South Carolina, March, 1988. Please send correspondence and reprint requests to Maria D. Set-a, Institute of Child Development, University of Minne- sota, 51 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455.

fer in the ways they classify experiential attributes. However, they do not differ ar- bitrarily. The work of Berlin and Kay (1969) and Rosch and her colleagues (e.g., Rosch, 1973) on the relation between basic color terms and the representation of the color spectrum have shown that the categories that are expressed in language refer to important psychological reference points. Thus, the distinctions expressed in different languages offer a “window” through which one can examine the structure of underlying cognition. By examining the nature of semantic contrasts that are not explicitly marked in English, we stand to gain new insights into the structure of thought.

In this paper, I focus on the two Spanish forms of the verb to be, on the distribution of these forms, and on developing knowledge of their use. I focus on these copular forms because of their frequency and the important meanings they carry. In fact, the verb to be and its derivatives (e.g., am, are, is, etc.) form the second most common word class in the English language (Kucera & Francis, 1967) and interest in the meaning of the verb can be traced back to the ancient Greeks. Aristotle, for example, noted two senses of the Greek verb: (1) ex-

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pressing the existence of individuals, and (2) expressing objects as being of a certain kind. Since Aristotle, there has been much philosophical and linguistic debate about which of the meanings of to be-existence, identity, class inclusion, or predication-is the most basic. Note, however, that ali of the meanings expressed by the copula are highly relevant to attribution and categorization. First, existence is the primary con- cern of ontology, the field that attempts to identify the basic categories of existence and conceptual kinds. A second meaning of to be, identity, conveys one of the most significant relations that may exist among entities. Identity relations allow us to make powerful inferences about the elements involved. For example, if we know that X is (identical to) Y, we know that what applies to X applies to Y and vice versa. A third meaning, class inclusion, allows for the construction of sets and subsets, or hierar- chies. If items are hierarchically related such that for example, all X’s are Y’s, doz- ens of inferences follow-that there are more Y’s than X’s in the world, that the properties that define Y’s are also present in X, that the properties that define X are not present in all Y’s, and so on. Finally and perhaps the most general of the meanings, predication, identifies properties of individuals. Consequently, differences between languages in the structure of this verb would seem to offer a rich territory for investigating the underlying psychological structure of these important relations.

The Spanish language offers a rather unique case of a dual-form copula, as there are two verbs that are usually translated into other languages as to be. The meanings of the Spanish copulas, ser and ester, have been thoroughly studied and debated by linguists who have put forth several parame- ters to account for the choices between the two verbs (e.g., Bello, 1860; Bull, 1965; Na- vas Ruiz, 1963; Roldan, 1974; Falk, 1979; De Mello, 1979; Lujan, 1981; Pountain, 1982; France, 1984; Clements, 1988). One of the forms, estur, comes from the Latin

verb STARE which means “to stand.” The meaning of estar has become more general in modem Spanish leading to its occurrence in an increasing number of contexts. Per- haps, it is the historical change in the distribution of ser and estar that has made the contrast particularly difficult to capture (Pountain, 1982). However, despite the controversy surrounding the exact definitions of ser and es&r, the traditional description of the two verbs offers a simple heuristic for understanding the choices between ser and estur and may capture the essence of the contrast. By this account, ser is used to denote permanence, and estur is used to denote temporariness (Bello, 1860). For example, if one believes that the shape of apples is a relatively stable property whereas cleanliness is not, one would use a form of ser to say, Las munzunus son redondus, meaning “Apples are round,” but a form of estur to say, Las munzunus estcin sucius, meaning “The apples are dirty.”

However, traditional and similar unified semantic accounts seem to fall short of ac- counting for all of the choices between the two Spanish copulas. For example, sentences such as, Elisu fue reinu por un diu, meaning “Elizabeth was queen for a day,” and, Pepe es un empleudo temporurio, meaning “Joe is a temporary employee,” both contain forms of ser, but the attribute assigned to the subject seems to be transient . Alternatively, sentences such as, Cuba estci en el curibe, meaning “Cuba is in the Caribbean,” and, La tierru estci en el sistemu solar, meaning “The earth is in the Solar System,” contain forms of estur yet express what seem to be permanent relations between the subject and the attribute assigned to it. Such occurrences of ser and estur appear to violate the meanings of the two verbs as they have been traditionally described. To account for these violations, descriptions that emphasize the syntactic contexts in which ser and estur occur have been proposed (see, e.g., De Mello, 1979; Terre11 and Salgues de Cargill, 1979; Poun-

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tam, 1982; France, 1984; Clements, 1988). These distributional accounts have focused on the choices between ser and estar when they function as main verbs in three contexts: (1) with nominals-Subject + Be + Noun Phrase, (2) with adjectives-Subject + Be + Adjective, and (3) with locations- Subject + Be + Location. Less regard has been given to ser and estar when they function as auxiliaries because the grammatical category “auxiliary” is presumed to carry less semantic information than the category “main verb.” Additionally, forms of estar are used as auxiliaries in all but a few prin- cipled exceptions. For example, forms of ser may be used as auxiliaries in passive sentences. I, too, will focus on the distribution of ser and estar when they function as main verbs because it is in these contexts that they carry maximum semantic force and are thus most likely to yield information about the conceptual organization of attributes.

With nominals, in Subject + Be + Noun frames, linguists have claimed that ser is the correct form. Thus, one would use forms of ser to say, Este es Pepe, meaning “This is Joe,” Pepe es un hombre, meaning “Joe is a man,” and, Pepe es un empleado temporario, meaning “Joe is a temporary employee.” The sole use of ser across these contexts implies a judgment on the basis of the syntactic context. The meaning of be in these contexts has been associated with identity and class inclusion in English (Russell, 1919), so it is not too surprising that forms of ser, the “permanent” form, dominate these constructions.

It is with adjectives, in Subject + Be + Adjective frames, that the semantic contrast between ser and estar continues to be debated by linguists. Ser has been described as being used with attributes considered permanent, inherent, typical, essential, or absolute of the referent in question, and estar as being used with temporary, atypical, accidental, or circumstantial attributes (Bello, 1860; Bull, 1965; Roldan, 1974). This distinction seems to be

productive. Thus, there are two ways of saying “Joe is fat” in Spanish. Pepe es gordo implies that fatness is a permanent, inherent, typical, essential, and/or absolute characteristic of Joe. Whereas, Pepe estri gordo implies that fatness is a temporary, atypical, accidental, and/or circumstantial characteristic of Joe. In these contexts, ser and estar also distinguish between different predicates. For example, Pepe es malo and Pepe estci mafo, both literally translate to “Joe is bad” in English. However, Pepe es malo is understood to mean “Joe is (mor- ally) bad or naughty,” but, Pepe estli malo is understood to mean “Joe is sick, or ill.” Thus, even though there has been considerable debate among linguists about the exact meanings of ser and estar with adjectives, all of the accounts seem to be highly similar. They all suggest that the choice between ser and estar with adjectives is a semantic one which has to do with the conceptual status of an attribute.

With locations, in Subject + Be + Loc- ative frames, the choice between ser and estar has also been described by linguists as being semantic in nature. In these contexts, forms of estar are used if the subject refers to a physical object and forms of ser are used if the subject refers to an event (De Mello, 1979; Pountain, 1982; France, 1984). Thus, one would say, La fiesta es en mi casa, meaning “The party is at my house,” but, La gata estd en mi casa, meaning “The cat is at my house.” The difference between objects and events has recently been proposed to play an important role in conceptual structure. Keil(1979) for example, argues that these categories are distinct ontological kinds. The serlestar contrast between objects and events that has been described by linguists may provide converging evidence of a fundamental psychological distinction between these conceptual kinds.

To summarize, there are two ways that one can conceptualize the choices between the Spanish synonyms of to be. First, each context-nominal, adjectival, locative, can

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be considered separately, operating under its own syntactic and semantic rules. A second possibility is that a single, unified conceptual organization holds them together. More specifically, the semantic contrast as applied to adjectives may be the central or- ganizing force for nominals and locatives as well. One might explain the use of ser with nominals as implying inherence or permanence by considering the meaning of be in these contexts. Russell (1919) described the meaning of be with nominals as expressing the relations of identity and class inclusion. Perhaps ser, the “permanent” form, domi- nates these Spanish constructions because it expresses identity and class inclusion and these relations are generally stable and permanent. Indeed, it would seem that an object’s identity as expressed in sentences like “This is Joe,” and an object’s membership in a class which is expressed by sentences such as “Birds are animals,” are usually permanent relations. However, in a few cases the class in question might be a temporary one. Thus, one can explain the use of ser in sentences such as, Pepe es un empleado temporario, meaning “Joe is a temporary employee,” because ser is used to express the permanent relation of class inclusion, and the stability of that relation overrides the temporariness of membership in a particular class.

The distinction between ser and estar based on objects and events is also consistent with a unified semantic explanation in which ser is taken to mean something like “permanence” and estar to mean something like “temporariness.” Individual events are bounded in time so that for any individual event there is a clear temporal starting point and an ending point. For example, a particular party may take place only at a single point in time and thus only at a single point in space. By this point of view, the use of ser in sentences such as La fiesta es en mi casa, meaning “The party is at my house” is straightforward because a particular party’s location can be thought of as a permanent, unchangeable property of

that event. In contrast, an individual object can be thought of as an entity that transcends temporal boundaries and so is moveable across time and space. If we think of “Cuba” as a physical object that transcends temporal boundaries, its spatial location constitutes a changeable or temporary property. Thus, one can explain the occurrence of estar in sentences such as Cuba estci en el caribe meaning “Cuba is in the Caribbean,” because conceptually Cuba is an object, and an object’s spatial location is capable of change and the locations of objects are typically transient, so this usage may be simply an extension of the usual semantic case. In short, it is possible to explain the distribution of ser and estar across different contexts on the basis of a cohesive set of semantic values. Thus, the different ways of linguistically charac- terizing the serlestar contrast may not be so different after all. Moreover, it is important to recognize the underlying similarity in the different ways that the Spanish copulas have been described so that we may begin to focus on the psycholinguistic implications of the contrast.

The psycholinguistic implications of the Spanish copular contrast are straightforward. Indeed, the controversy and debate among linguists about the meanings of ser and estar parallels the controversy and debate among cognitive psychologists about the organization of categories (see, e.g., Smith & Medin, 1981). The classification of attributes as permanent, essential, inherent, typical, and defining, or as temporary, circumstantial, accidental and atypical with ser and estar explicitly by speakers of Spanish may provide new information about the dimensions along which conceptual attributes are organized, about the role of specific attributes in specific concepts, about the psychological status of particular categories (e.g., as objects or events), and about what features “count” when judging category membership. There are no pub- lished experimental data on adult uses of ser and estar, nor on how Spanish-speaking

412 MARIA D. SERA

children acquire these forms. In this paper, I offer such an analysis. I ask whether Spanish-speaking adults indeed use the copulas as linguists have claimed and whether Spanish-speaking children use the forms in the same way that adults do. This is the first step towards an empirical account of what the Spanish copulas might reveal about the organization of language and underlying categories.

STUDY 1

The purpose of this analysis was to examine the distribution of ser and estar in Spanish spoken by children and adults. I examined the distribution of the Spanish copulas when they function as main verbs with nominals, adjectives, and locations, and when they function as auxiliaries. Such an analysis provided initial evidence of how the copulas are actually used by children and adult speakers of Spanish. The occurrences of ser and estar from two samples of monolingual speech were tabulated. One sample consisted of spontaneous speech by two monolingual children and their parents. The other speech sample was elicited by a picture book from 51 monolinguals. The occurrences of ser and estar with nominals, adjectives, locations, and as auxiliaries are reported separately for each sample.

Method

Subjects. Two monolingual boys from the ages of 1;6 to 3;6 and their parents from Madrid, Spain provided the spontaneous speech sample. Eleven 3-year-olds (M = 3;10), twelve 4-year-olds (M = 4;7), eleven S-year-olds (M = 5;6), twelve 9-year-olds (M = 9;7), and five adults who lived in Madrid, Spain provided the data that were elicited by the picture book.

Procedures. The spontaneous speech samples were collected, transcribed, and entered into the Child Language Data Ex- change System (CHILDES) by Jose Luis

Linaza. This sample included 2419 adult utterances and 25 14 utterances that were produced by the two boys across nearly a two- year period. See MacWhinney and Snow (1985) for an explanation and description of the entire CHILDES system. The data from the picture book (the Frog Story data) were elicited by a book entitled, “Frog, Where Are You?” written by Mercer Mayer (1969). The Frog Story data were collected and transcribed by Eugenia Se- bastian. Before the story was elicited, the entire book was shown to the subject one page at a time. Then, the subject was asked to tell the story. The experimenter pointed to each page and occasionally prompted the child by asking, for example, &Qut pasa?, meaning “What’s happening?” See Sebas- tian (1989) for a more comprehensive analysis of the Spanish Frog Story Data.

Scoring. The occurrences of ser and estar with nominals, adjectives, locations, and as auxiliaries were classified according to the following criteria. Forms of ser and estar were classified as occurring with nominals if a determiner such as un, una, el, and la, meaning “a” and “the,” respectively, headed the predicated argument, or if the predicated argument referred to a proper noun or a pronoun. For example, the forms of ser in Y tsta es la rana, meaning “And this is the frog,” and in Es Juan, meaning “It is John” were classified as occurring with nominals. Forms of ser and estar were classified as occurring with adjectives if the predicated argument referred to a quality or quantity of a noun-the traditional, prescriptive definition of the form class “adjective.” Thus, forms of ser and estar were respectively classified as occurring with adjectives in sentences such as, Es malo, meaning “He is bad,” and, Estci despierto, meaning “He is awake.” Forms of ser and estar were classified as occurring with locations if the predicated argument was headed by a spatial preposition such as en, meaning “in” or “on,” or if the predicated argument referred to a spatial location such as aqui, meaning “here.” For ex-

TOBE ORTOBE 413

ample, the forms of estar in sentences such as, Las zapatillas estaban en el suelo, meaning “The shoes were on the floor,” and, La rana estaba aqui, meaning “The frog was here” were classified as occurring with locations. Finally, forms of ser and esfar were classified as auxiliaries if they occurred with another verb. So, for example, the form of estar in, El niiio estci mirando las tres ranas, meaning “The boy is looking at the three frogs” was classified as an auxiliary. Occurrences of ser and estar that did not clearly fall into one of the classes above were classified as “Other.” Repeated occurrences of a form such as, jEs! jes! jes! were counted only once.

Results and Discussion

The number of times forms of ser and estar were used as main verbs with nominals, adjectives, and locations, and as auxiliaries were tabulated for each subject in each sample. From these tabulations, I also calculated the percentage of times forms of ser and estar were used. I begin with general aspects of the distribution of the copulas in the two samples. The CHILDES Sample contained 497 copular occurrences and the Frog Story Sample contained 500. In the CHILDES sample, 426 occurrences came from the two adults’ utterances and 71 came from the children’s utterances. In the Frog Story sample, 150 occurrences

came from the 3-year-olds’ utterances, 132 from the 4-year-olds’ , 82 from the S-year- olds’ ,85 from the 9-year-olds’ , and 51 from the adults’. Table 1 shows the percentage of times copulas appeared in each context (i.e., with nominals, adjectives, locations, and auxiliaries) as a function of age for each sample. As is evident from Table 1, the two samples differed considerably in the sentential contexts in which the copulas appeared. For example, most copulas in the CHILDES sample appeared with nominals, whereas most copulas in the Frog Story sample occurred with locations and as auxiliaries. The Frog Story elicited very few copulas with nominals and adjectives. Per- haps for this reason, the two samples differed in the proportion of forms of ser and estar that they contained-the CHILDES sample contained about equal numbers of both forms (54% forms of ser vs 46% forms of estar), whereas the Frog Story sample primarily contained forms of estar (82% of the copular occurrences). Of course the CHILDES sample, being of spontaneous speech, is more likely to represent the ac- tual distribution of the copulas in Spanish.

Figure 1 shows the percentage of times forms of estar were used in the CHILDES sample and in the Frog Story sample as a function of age (this percentage subtracted from 100 is equal to the percentage of times forms of ser were used). In the CHILDES

TABLE 1

THE PERCENTAGE OF TIMES A SPANISH COPULA APPEARED WITH NOMINALS, ADJECTIVES, LOCATIONS, AS AUXILIARIES, AND IN OTHER CONTEXTS AS A FUNCTION OF AGE IN EACH SAMPLE OF STUDY 1

Nominals Adjectives Locations Auxiliaries Others

CHILDES sample Children 45 17 32 6 0 Adults 44 15 28 10 3

Means 44.5 16 30 8 1.5

Frog Story sample 3’s 8 14 39 35 4 4’s 7 14 40 37 2 5’s 6 2 45 44 2

9’s 25 2 45 27 1 Adults 22 22 37 16 4

Means 13.6 10.8 41.2 31.8 2.6

414 MARIA D. SERA

Children Adults Age

- Nouns - AdjecWes - Locallons - Auxlllaries - Other

3 4 5 9 Adulls Age (in years)

FIG. 1. The percentages of occurrences of estar as a main verb with Nominals, Adjectives, Locations, and as an Auxiliary. This percentage subtracted from 100 is equal to the percentage of occurrences of the forms of ser. The top panel shows the data from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) and the bottom panel shows the data that were elicited from the story book about the frog, entitled “Frog Where Are You?”

sample, the overall pattern of distribution of the two Spanish copulas was similar for both age groups. Both groups used only forms of ser with nominals, only forms of estar with main verbs or as auxiliaries, forms of estar with locations, and both forms of ser and estar with adjectives (55% forms of estar for the adults vs 58% for the children). The speech sample that was elicited by the Frog Story provides converging evidence on the distribution of the copulas, although this sample contained many more forms of estar. Here, too, only forms of ser were used with nominals, only forms of estar were used with locations and as auxiliaries, and both forms of ser and estar were used with adjectives. The pattern of occurrences of ser and estar in the Frog Story sample further indicates that uses of estar decrease with age and/or that uses of ser increase: 3-, 4-, 5-, 9-year-olds, and adults used forms of estar 88%, 87%, 91%, 76%,

and 63% of the time overall, respectively, in the Frog Story data.

I now turn to the uses of ser and estar with adjectives. The consistent marking of certain adjectives with “ser” and others with “estar” by speakers of Spanish suggests that there are different kinds of semantic attributes. By closely examining which adjectives are used with each copula (ser or estar), one can begin to map out the conceptual distinction in Spanish. Table 2 shows the adjectives that were used with ser and estar by children and adults in this study. What is most striking from these data is that most adjectives were used with either ser or estar but not with both copulas. Only three adjectives, bueno meaning “good,” largo meaning “long,” and guapalo meaning “attractive” appeared with forms of both ser and estar. This finding raises the question of whether knowledge and acquisition of ser and estar with adjectives merely consists of rotely memo- rizing the adjectives that correspond to each form. In other words, these results leave unanswered whether ser and estar actually mean different things to speakers of Spanish.

What about the contrast between objects and events? Only forms of estar, the verb that has been described as being used with objects, occurred in this analysis. How- ever, one shortcoming of this kind of analysis is that one cannot control which nouns people choose to talk about. In fact, subjects in this study always described the location of objects. Thus, it is not possible to tell from this analysis whether speakers of Spanish actually honor the distinction between objects and events because the relevant data were not available.

To summarize, the findings from this analysis provide preliminary evidence about the use and acquisition of ser and estar. Monolingual Spanish speakers use ser and estar contrastively from very early on, at least on distributional grounds. For example, they use only forms of ser with nominals and only forms of estar as auxiliaries. However, these results leave a number of

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TABLE 2 THE ADJECTIVES THAT APPEARED WITH sm AND

ESTAR IN STUDY 1

Ser

CHILDES sample alta (tall)

amarillo (yellow) az61 (blue) bonita (pretty) bueno (good) chiquito (small) cuantos (many) fea 0-d~) grande (large) guapo (attractive) larga (long) largo (long) list0 (clever) mala (bad) peligroso (dangerous) pequefio (small) rojo (red) sinvergtienza (shameless) tonta (foolish) verdad (true)

Frog Story sample chiquita (small) conocido (well-known) tinito (thin) list0 (clever) malo (bad) mayor (older) pequeiio (small) profundo (deep)

- Estar

bien (well) bueno (good) caido (fallen) caliente (hot) desnudo (naked) despierto (awake) dormido (asleep) guapa (attractive) kg0 (long) llena (full) meado (wet) muerto (dead) perdidos (lost) prisionero (captive) quiet0 (quiet) rota (broken) sentado (seated) sordo (deaf) sucio (dirty)

abierta (open) apagada (off) caido (fallen) callado (quiet) content0 (happy) despierto (awake) doblada (folded) dormido (asleep) encendida (on) enfadado (angry) feliz (happy) llena (full) mojado (wet) mejor (better) patoso (duck-like) quiet0 (still) roto (broken) satisfecho (satisfied) sola (alone) subido (raised) tapado (covered) tumbado (tumbled) vacio (empty)

unanswered questions as well: Do adult speakers of Spanish take the copulas to mean different things with adjectives? Do they actually honor the distinction between objects and events that has been described

by linguists? How do Spanish-speaking children learn to use the forms? In the following three experiments, I sought answers to those questions.

STUDY 2

The goals of this experiment were two- fold. One goal was to examine the use of be, ser, and estar with adjectives. I specifically asked whether the use of be with adjectives has the same implication for English speakers as the uses of ser and estar have for speakers of Spanish. The second goal of this experiment was to assess whether certain object attributes-shape, texture, size, and color-are used similarly by speakers of English and Spanish to categorize objects. Speakers of Spanish may consistently classify certain object attributes as holding either a “ser” or an “estar” status. For example, the results from Study 1 suggest that size attributes such as big and small are mostly described with forms of ser. A study by Landau, Smith, and Jones (1988) indicates that English speakers generally classify objects on the basis of shape. The question arises whether Spanish speakers represent object attributes in the same way as English speakers because they seem to consistently mark size attributes as, for example, “permanent.” Thus, the degree to which English and Spanish speakers rely on object properties when attributes were not labelled was also examined.

English and Spanish speakers participated in a task in which they learned two categories. The members of each category varied along the four highly salient dimensions of shape, size, color, and texture. In one condition, two of the concept’s properties were verbally described to the subjects with adjectival copular sentences. For the English speakers, the adjectives were described with forms of TO be. For the Spanish speakers, one adjective was used with a form of estar and the other was used with a form of ser. Then, the degree to which subjects relied on the described attributes to categorize the members in each class was

416 MARIA D. SERA

measured. In a second condition, none of the category’s attributes were described. In this way, the interpretations of to be, ser, and es&r were compared, and the reliance on different object properties by English and Spanish speakers when no attribute was labelled was also measured.

Method

Subjects. The subjects were 24 under- graduate native speakers of English en- rolled in an introductory psychology course and 24 native speakers of Spanish. The Spanish speakers were recruited through advertisements in local university newspa- pers in Bloomington, Indiana. Most of the Spanish speakers were also university stu- dents. All of the Spanish speakers had enough knowledge of English to answer the advertisement. The Spanish speakers who participated in the study began to learn En- glish after 13 years of age.

Materials. Two sets or classes of objects were constructed. Each set consisted of five objects-one “prototype” and four test objects. Each test object differed from the prototype on one of four dimensions: size, shape, color, and texture. In other words, within each set, one test item differed only in shape from the prototype, one differed only in size, one differed only in texture, and one differed only in color. In one set (Set A), the prototype was a round, “large” (17.8 cm in diameter), red, furry, object. The test objects were: (1A) an el- lipse that was the same size, color, and texture as the prototype; (2A) a green object that was the same size, shape, and texture as the prototype; (3A) an object that was covered with smooth fabric (instead of fur like the prototype) that was the same shape, color, and size as the prototype; and (4A) a “smaller” object than the prototype (8.9 cm in diameter) that was the same shape, color, and texture as the prototype.

The prototype of the second set (Set B) was a 17.8 cm by 5.1 cm (7” x 2”) yellow, wooden, crown-shaped object. The other objects in the second set were: (IB) a

“large” (35.6 cm by 5.1 cm) object that was the same in shape, color, and texture as the prototype; (2B) a blue object that was the same shape, size, and texture as the prototype; (3B) a sponge that was the same in shape, size, and color as the prototype; and (4B) a bread-shaped object that was the same size, texture, and color as the prototype.

Design and procedures. Each subject participated in two conditions, a Mention condition and a No-Mention condition. In the Mention condition, two of the object’s attributes were described. Thus, for example, the subjects might be shown the prototype from Set A and told, “This is a wug, it is round and it is red.” In the No-Mention condition, none of the prototype’s attributes were described. Thus, subjects were shown the prototype and simply told “This is a wug.” Subjects received a different set of objects in each condition. Half of the subjects participated in the Mention condition first and half the subjects participated in the No-Mention condition first. Within the Mention condition, each attribute was paired an equal number of times with every other attribute, and every attribute was mentioned an equal number of times. The following English and corresponding Span- ish adjectives were used to describe the prototype’s attributes: big-grunde, short- corto, red-rojo, yellow-umarillo, round- redondo, sharp-puntiagudo, hard-duro, and furry-peludo. For the Spanish- speaking subjects, one attribute was mentioned with ser and the other with esrar. So, for example, an English-speaking subject might be told, “This is a wug, it is round, and it is red,” whereas a Spanish-speaking subject would be told, Esto es un wug, es redondo, y estci rojo. Across the Spanish- speaking subjects, each adjective was mentioned with forms of ser and estar an equal number of times. For half of the Spanish- speaking subjects an adjective was mentioned with ser first, and for the other subjects it was mentioned with estar first. So, for example, there were six Spanish speak-

TO BE OR TO BE 417

ers who heard color described with ser, six who heard color described with estar, six who heard size with ser, six who heard size with estur, and so on. The English speakers received exactly the same descriptions in exactly the same order as the Spanish speakers, except that both attributes were described with forms of to be for the En- glish speakers.

After subjects were shown a prototype and, in half of the cases, told about two of its properties, they were shown pairs of test objects from the same set and were asked to choose the best “wug” from each pair. Neither object in the pair matched the prototype. For each attribute that was mentioned, three unique pairs of test objects were chosen so that one object in the pair differed from the prototype in the attribute that was mentioned, and the other object in the pair differed from the prototype on one of the other three dimensions. This strategy basically involved pitting each mentioned attribute against each of the other three attributes in the set. Since two attributes were mentioned per set, this strategy resulted in six trial types which were presented twice. So, for example, if a subject was shown the prototype from the first set, and the attributes “red” and “round” were mentioned, s/he had to choose the best “wug” from pairs of test objects in which at least one object in each pair was green or elliptical. For this example, the six test pairs were: (1) Objects 1A vs 2A; (2) Ob- jects 1A vs 3A; (3) Objects 1A vs 4A; (4) Objects 2A vs 1A; (5) Objects 2A vs 3A; and (6) Objects 2A vs 4A. Each trial was presented twice resulting in 12 randomly ordered trials per condition. This strategy resulted in four test trials pitting the mentioned attributes against each other (objects 1A and 2A in this example). For these four trials, two were predetermined as trials for one of the mentioned attributes and the other two trials were predetermined to correspond to the other mentioned attribute. The number of times subjects chose an object according to the described attributes

was tabulated. In the example above, the number of times a subject chose red or round objects was scored. The number of times subjects chose according to each attribute could range from 0 to 6.


English and Spanish speakers’ choices by each dimension were tabulated when no attribute was mentioned, and when attributes were mentioned with forms of be, ser, and estar. The number of choices per dimension ranged from 0 to 6, with 0 indicat- ing no reliance on the dimension and 6 in- dicating maximum reliance on the dimension when it was pitted against each of the other three. The mean number of choices by each dimension appear in Fig. 2.

Four analyses of variance (ANOVAS) were used to examine the pattern of choices. The first analysis examined subject’s choices when no attribute was mentioned. This analysis consisted of a 2-factor design with Dimension (Shape, Color, Size, and Texture) and Language (English and Spanish) as between-subjects factors. This analysis yielded a statistically significant main effect of Dimension (F(3,88) = 20.158, p < .OOl), but no effects of Lan- guage and no interaction. Thus, the means in Fig. 2 of the choices in the No-Mention condition represent the mean of both En- glish and Spanish speakers. Post hoc

SW as Estar No Mention

3 Shape Size CObX

Dimension FIG. 2. The mean number of choices by adult speak-

ers of English and Spanish by each dimension when the corresponding dimensional adjectives were labelled with forms of ser, estar, and to be and when no attribute was mentioned.

418 MARIA D. SERA

(Tukey’s HSD = .%, p < .05) analyses revealed that all subjects chose an instance according to shape more frequently than by other dimension-a result consistent with those of Landau, Smith, and Jones (1988). The degree to which Shape, Size, Color, and Texture were used by subjects when judging category membership was 88%, 42%, 33%, and 4%, respectively. This is an important finding because even though the verb to be and its Spanish counterparts were not used with adjectives in this condition, ser and estar may not be distributed equally in the Spanish language across all of the dimensional adjectives used, as the results from the first study suggest. Never- theless, regardless of the language spoken, most subjects chose the best “wug” to be an object that was the same in shape as the prototype, at least when none of the object’s attributes was mentioned.

Each of the remaining three ANOVAS examined choices when no attribute was mentioned versus when the attributes were mentioned with to be, ser, and estar, respectively. In each of these analyses, Di- mension (i.e., Shape, Size, Color, and Tex- ture) was a between-subjects factor and Condition (i.e., Mention vs No-Mention) was a within-subjects factor. Three sepa- rate analyses were used to ensure that the comparisons in question differed only in the comparison in question and not also in, for example, order of presentation.

One ANOVA compared Spanish speakers’ choices when attributes were not mentioned to when they were mentioned with a form of ser through a Dimension (Shape, Size, Color, and Texture) by Condition (Mention vs No-Mention) design. This analysis yielded main effects of Dimension and Condition (F(3,20) = 6.22, p < .Ol and F(1,20) = 22.2, p < .OOl) but no Dimension by Condition interaction. For every dimension, mentioning an attribute with ser led to more choices by that dimension than when no attribute was mentioned (see Fig. 2). The second ANOVA compared Spanish speakers’ choices when attributes were not

mentioned to when they were mentioned with a form of estar through a Dimension (Shape, Size, Color, and Texture) by Con- dition (Mention vs No-Mention) design. This analysis yielded a main effect of dimension (F(3,20) = 7.1, p < .Ol), but no effect of Condition nor a Condition by Di- mension interaction. Apparently, mentioning an attribute with estar neither increased nor decreased the number of choices by that dimension (see Fig. 2).

The last ANOVA examined English speakers’ choices when attributes were not mentioned and when they were mentioned with a form of to be through a Dimension (Shape, Size, Color, and Texture) by Con- dition (Mention vs No-Mention) analysis. This analysis yielded main effects of Di- mension and Condition, F(3,44) = 9.03, p < .OOl and F(1,44) = 30.77, p < .OOl, respectively, and a Dimension by Condition interaction (F(344) = 11.15, p < .Ol). This result indicates that the labelling of a shape attribute does not increase choices by that dimension, which is already quite high, but the mentioning of color and texture attributes with be does increase the numbers of choices by those dimensions for English speakers (see Fig. 2).

The final statistical analysis directly compared Spanish speakers’ choices in the Mention condition when adjectives were described with ser to when they were described with estar. For this analysis, I cat- egorized each Spanish-speaking subject according to whether they chose more “ser- mentioned” or more “estar-mentioned” test objects. Nineteen of the 24 subjects chose more “ser-mentioned” than “estar- mentioned” objects, a difference that was statistically reliable (x20) = 8.16, p < .005). Apparently, mentioning an attribute with ser leads to a greater use of that attribute as a defining feature than mentioning the attribute with estar.

To summarize, the findings from this study provide new empirical evidence of a productive difference in meaning between ser and estar. The use of ser to describe an

TOBEORTOBE 419

attribute seems to imply to speakers of Spanish that the attribute should weigh heavily in the definition of the category while the use of esrur seems to carry no such implication. Admittedly, the use of both ser and estar in one sentence might have enhanced the magnitude of the difference in meaning between the two Spanish verbs; however, it should not have influ- enced the nature of that difference. The results from this study also illustrate how linguistic information can influence reliance on different attributes in a categorization task. For the English speakers, the mentioning of attributes such as color and texture leads to more choices by those attributes than when those attributes are not mentioned. Other attributes such as shape and size are less susceptible to linguistic manipulation for speakers of English. For Spanish speakers, the mentioning of an attribute with ser leads to more choices by that attribute. However, the mentioning of attributes with estur has little effect on the degree of reliance on that attribute. In the next experiment, I asked whether adult speakers of Spanish honor the distinction between objects and events with locations that linguists have described.

STUDY 3

The goal of this experiment was to ask whether adult speakers of Spanish use ser and estar to describe the locations of events and objects, respectively. No evidence of this contrast was found from the distributional analysis performed in Study 1, and this contrast rarely appears in Spanish texts (e.g., Bull, 1965). Perhaps, no contrast actually exists for speakers of Spanish.

Subjects. Six native adult speakers of English participated in a preliminary task and 12 native speakers of Spanish from the same population as in Study 2 participated in the main experiment.

Muteriuls and procedures. Sixteen locative copular sentences that contained a blank instead of a verb (i.e., Subject + Lo- cation) were constructed from 16 nouns-

eight nouns referred to physical objects and eight referred to events according to the English speakers’ judgments. (The speakers of English rated 60 nouns as referring to either objects or events.) Two sentences were constructed for each of eight locations such that the subject of one sentence referred to a physical object and the other to an event (e.g., “The cat is at my house,” and, “The party is at my house.“). Re- sponse sheets were constructed that contained eight incomplete sentences in a ran- dom order. Half of the sentential subjects of these incomplete sentences referred to events and the other half referred to objects, according to the English speakers’ judgments. The Spanish-speaking subjects’ task was to complete the sentences, in writ- ing, with a form of either ser or esfur.

Results and discussion. Each Spanish- speaking subject’s responses for object terms and event terms were scored separately. Scores ranged from zero to four and reflected the number of times the subject used ser, which was equal to four minus the number of times s/he used estur. The number of times subjects used forms of ser with objects and events was statistically ana- lyzed by a t test for matched samples which yielded a highly significant difference (t( 11) = 47, p < .OOl). The use of ser (and estur) in these sentences was perfectly correlated with the referent of the sentential subject. That is, subjects used forms of ser and never used forms of estur if the sentential subject referred to an event, and subjects used forms of estur and never used forms of ser when the sentential subject referred to an object. See Table 3 for the sentences that the subjects completed in this experiment. It is worth noting that several subjects, after completing the task, said that they were surprised by their own judgments because they were not aware of any copular contrast between objects and events. Thus, subjects’ comments suggest that the locative contrast between objects and events is relatively inaccessible to speakers of Span- ish. In any case, the results from this study

420 MARIA D. SERA

TABLE 3

THE SPANISH SENTENCES THAT WERE USED IN STUDY 3, INCLUDING THE SPANISH COPULAR FORM THAT THE SPANISH-SPEAKING ADULTS PROVIDED

Spanish sentences English translations

El paquete estci en la sala. The package is in the living room. El baile es en la sala. The dance is in the living room. La boda es en la catedral. The wedding is in the cathedral. El perro est& en la catedral. The dog is in the cathedral. El barco estd en el lago. The boat is on the lake. Lu carrera de barcos es en el lago. The boat race is on the lake. La gata estd en mi casa. The cat is at my house. La fiesta es en mi casa. The party is at my house. La pelea es en el parque. The fight is in the park. El carro estct en el parque. The car is in the park. El artista estd aquf. The artist is here. El concierto es aqui. The concert is here. La mufieca estci en la escuela. The doll is at school. El banquete es en la escuela. The banquet is at school. La clase es en la cocina. The class is in the kitchen. El lapfz est& en la cocina. The pencil is in the kitchen.

are straightforward. They indicate that Spanish-speaking adults systematically mark the location of events with ser and the location of objects with estar in locative copular sentences, at least in contexts in which they are forced to predicate the location of objects and events with forms of ser and estur.

STUDY 4

The final experiment investigated the acquisition of the semantic contrast between ser and estar with adjectives and locations. Children’s uses of ser and estar were examined in two conditions. One condition elicited ser and estur with adjectives by having children describe pairs of objects to a puppet. The objects in the pairs consistently elicited ser and ester from adult speakers of Spanish. The second condition measured children’s knowledge of the contrast between ser and estur with locations. Chil- dren asked a puppet for the location of either an object or an event. Knowledge of the locative contrast between ser and estur should have yielded the use of ser with events and estur with objects in this condition.

Method

Subjects. Fifty-two children attending a bilingual school in Hialeah, Florida participated. These children were primarily from Cuban immigrant families so Spanish was the first language for these children and Spanish was the language primarily spoken in their homes. Nearly all of these children also knew some English. The children were divided into four age groups. One group ranged in age from 3;6 to 4;9 (M = 4;5) and consisted of 14 children. The second group ranged in age from 5;4 to 6;ll (M = 5;lO) and consisted of 10 children. The third group ranged in age from 7; 1 to 8; 11 (A4 = 7;ll) and consisted of 18 children. The fourth group ranged in age from 9;6 to 11 ;l (M = 1O;l) and consisted of 10 children. Eight native Spanish-speaking adults from the same populations as in Studies 2 and 3 also participated.

Materials. In the adjective condition, a puppet and eight pairs of objects (16 total objects) were used to elicit forms of ser and estur from children with adjectives. The stimuli were pretested with the Spanish- speaking adults who were presented with pairs of objects that were thought to elicit

TO BE OR TO BE 421

forms of ser and estar. The pairs that were maintained were items on which all six Spanish-speaking adults agreed on a response. Four of the pairs of objects differed by attributes that were described with ser by adults, and four differed by attributes that were described with e&at. The objects are described in Table 4. The eight attributes that elicited forms of ser were: largo- long, corto-short, grunde-big, pequefio- small, redondo-round, cuadrado-square, Verde-green, and amarillo-yellow. The eight attributes that elicited forms of estar were: limp&clean, sue&dirty, mojado- wet, seco-dry, contento-happy, triste-sad, roto-broken, and enfermo-sick.

In the second condition, a 19.2 cm by 30.5 cm by 46.6 cm (8 in. x 12 in. x 16 in.) cardboard box containing four 7.6 cm by 15.2 cm (3 in. x 6 in.) “rooms,” and a puppet Were used to elicit forms of ser and estar with locations. The rooms could be shut by two doors that could be tied together with a small string. Each door was covered with a different color contact paper-white, yellow, red, and blue. Four stimuli depict- ing two objects and two events were constructed to fit inside the rooms. One of the objects and one of the events were known to the children and the others were thought to be unfamiliar or novel. The known object was an orange toy motorcycle and the novel object, called a “wug,” was a wooden ball glued on to a wooden base.

The known event, a party, was depicted by a table on which sat a small plastic birthday cake and party hats. The unfamiliar event, a game, was depicted by six wooden figu- rines of children holding hands in a circle. The figures were glued to their own “floor” so that they could be moved from room to room as one entity. Each entity could be hidden in any of the rooms.

Verbal descriptions accompanied each entity to maximize the child’s interpretation of each entity as either an object or event proper. The four descriptions were: (1) Algo estd pasando en uno de estos cuartos. Es el cumpleaiios de alguien. Hay un cake con velitas. Niiios esth cantando y jugando. iQu& est6 pasando? Una fiesta. (Something is happening in one of these rooms. It is someone’s birthday. There is a cake with candles on it. Children are sing- ing songs and playing games. What is happening? A party.) (2) Hay algo en uno de estos cuartos. Tiene dos ruedas y un motor. LSabes lo que es? Una motocicleta. (There is something in one of these rooms. It has two wheels and a motor. Do you know what it is? A motorcycle.) (3) Algo esth pasando en uno de estos cuartos. Un grupo de nitios esth dando vueltas cogidos de mano. iQu6 es&i pasando? Un juego que se llama una ronda. (Something is happening in one of these rooms. A group of children are holding hands and running in circles. What is happening? A game called a round.) (4) Hay

TABLE 4 PAIRS OF OBJECTS THAT WERE USED TO ELICIT FORMS OF SER AND ESTAR WITH ADJECTIVES FROM

CHILDREN IN STUDY 4

Object Pairs Used to Elicit Forms of “Ser” 1 in. X 1 in. Styrofoam person VS 6 in. x 6 in. Styrofoam person green plastic triangle vs yellow plastic triangle 18 in. yellow string vs 4 in. yellow string 3.5 in. wooden blue house vs 3.5 in. wooden red house

Object Pairs Used to Elicit Forms of ’ ‘Estar” wet rag vs

clean yellow sponge vs picture of a smiling face vs pencil vs picture of a sick child vs

dryrag dirty yellow sponge

picture of a frowning face broken pencil picture of a child running

422 MARIA D. SERA

algo en uno de estos cuartos. Es coma de este tamaiio, es de madera, y se usa para jugar un juego. iSabes lo que es? Es un wug. (There is something in one of these rooms. It is about this big, it is made of wood, and it is used to play a game. Do you know what it is? It is a wug.)

Procedure. Before forms of ser and estar were elicited with adjectives, children were told in Spanish that they were going to play a game in which they were going to teach Spanish to a puppet. Then, they were shown a pair of objects. The experimenter pointed to one of the objects and asked the child if s/he could tell the puppet about each one. The experimenter would say, for example, Dile a Pepe de estt, meaning “Tell Joe about this one,” or Dile a Pepe de su color, meaning “Tell Joe about its color.” If the child did not use a complete sentence, or used a sentence without a form of ser or estar, the experimenter told the child, Pepe es muy lijoso, y necesita oir de las cosas de una manera especial, meaning “The puppet is very choosy, and needs to hear about the objects in a special way.” Then, the experimenter modelled one copular sentence for the child. Thus, the experimenter sometimes modelled the form of the sentence by describing the first pair of objects to the subject. The experimenter would say, for example, Este es grande y est& es pequeiio, meaning “This one is large and this one is small.” For half of the children for whom the sentences were modelled by the experimenter, the modelled sentence contained a form of ser and for the other half, the modelled sentence contained a form of estar.

Before forms of ser and estar were elicited with locations, children were shown the box with four rooms and were asked to name the color of each room. The experimenter would ask, for example, LPuedes decirme el color de cada cuarto?, meaning “Can you tell me the color of each room?” Then, the child was told that s/he had to ask Joe, the puppet, where to find things. The experimenter would say, Vamos a jugar un

juego de esconder y encontrar, y tu tienes que preguntarle a Pepe donde, meaning “We are going to play a game of hiding and finding things, and you have to ask Joe where.” Then, each of the four stimuli were described to the child one at a time in Spanish. After each description, with re- phrasings as necessary, the child was told to, Preglintale a Pepe donde, meaning “Ask Pepe where.” Thus, children were prompted about the identity of the hidden entity as an object or event, and the question of interest was which copular form they would choose to ask the puppet for its location. Most children readily supplied the prompted question form, such as iD)dnde estci la motocicleta? meaning “Where is the motorcycle?” And the puppet told the child the location of the item in question by saying, for example, Busca en el cuarto amarillo, meaning “Look in the yellow room.” If the child did not produce the correct question form, s/he was told the location of the entity anyway and another item was described. The experimental sessions with children were designed so that forms of ser and estar were elicited with adjectives first, and with locations second. Within each context, the items were queried in a ran- dom order. Each session lasted 10-20 min.

The location task was also pretested with Spanish-speaking adults to ensure that it elicited the serlestar contrast between objects and events with locations. The four entities were described to the eight adults, one at a time, in Spanish. After each description, the adults asked a puppet for the location of the entity. Adults used forms of estar to ask for the location of the objects 100% of the time, and forms of ser to ask for the location of the events 81% of the time.


The dependent measure in each condition was the percent correct of utterances within which the child produced copulas. Thus, if a child failed to produce a copula, the response was not scored. Correct usage

TOBEORTO BE 423

was defined as use of the form--ser or estar-that the adults used in each context. Two percentages were calculated in each condition. In the adjective condition, one percentage reflected correct copular use with “temporary” attributes, and the other percentage reflected correct use with “permanent” attributes. In the location condition, one percentage reflected correct use with objects, and the other with events. Figure 3 shows the mean percent correct in each condition as a function of age. Two analyses of variance were used to examine the children’s patterns of performance, one analysis examined performance with adjectives, the other with Iocations.

In the adjective condition, copular sentences were modelled for 10 of the 3- and 4-year-olds, five of the 5- and 6-year-olds, seven of the 7- and &year-olds, and two of the oldest children. Thus, the ANOVA of

- Temporary

- Permanent

0’ , 3-4 5-6 7-a 9-1 1 Adults

AGE (in years)

E&t6

oJ , 3-4 5-6 7-a 9-1 1 Adults

AGE (in years)

FIG. 3. The mean percentage of correct copular uses with adjectives (top panel) and locations (bottom panel) by children and adults in Study 4.

performance with the adjectives was a three-way mixed design with Context (Per- manent or Temporary) as a within-subjects factor and Age (W years, 5-6 years, 7-g years, and 9-11 years) and Modelling (whether or not a copular sentence was modelled) as between-subjects factors. This analysis yielded a significant effect of Age (F(3,44) = 4.685,~ < .Ol), but no effects of Context and Model@, and no significant interactions. The results indicated that correct use of the Spanish copulas with adjectives steadily increases with age, although even the youngest children performed above chance (70% correct, t = 4.29, p < .002).

A second ANOVA was used to examine performance with locations. This analysis involved a two-way mixed design with Con- text (Object or Event) as a within-subjects factor and Age as a between-subjects factor. This analysis yielded a main effect of Context (F(1,44) = 126.7, p < .OOl), but no main effect of Age nor a significant interaction. Children of all ages performed nearly perfectly when asking about the location of the objects (percentage correct ranged from 90 to 100). However, they performed very poorly when asking about the location of events (percentage correct ranged from 15 to 28).

A tabulation of the form--ser or estar- that was used by children and adults clari- fies the pattern of errors with locations. Adults honored the distinction between objects and events in this task by producing forms of ser to ask for the location of events (81% of the time), and forms of estar to ask for the locations of objects (100% of the time). However, children failed to honor the object/event distinction in this task. They used forms of estar to ask for the locations of objects 98% of the time but also used forms of estar to ask for the location of events 77% of the time. In other words, children nearly always asked the question in the Location Task but almost always asked it with a form of estar. Apparently, children tend to overuse forms of estar with

424 MARIAD.SERA

locations, thereby linguistically treating events as if they were objects.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

The primary goal of this research was to examine empirically adult usage and acquisition of the contrast between ser and es&r. The results from Study 1 indicate that, indeed, there is a difference between the Spanish copulas. Ser and estur systematically convey the different meanings that are expressed by the single English verb, to be. The results from Studies 2 and 3 confirmed what linguists have claimed about the semantic contrasts between the Spanish copulas: adult speakers of Spanish use ser and estur with adjectives and locations, at least in part, on purely semantic grounds. In Study 2, speakers of Spanish understood attributes described with ser to play a more central role in the definition of a category than attributes mentioned with estar. In Study 3, speakers of Spanish consistently described. the spatial locations of individual objects with forms of estur but the locations of events with forms of ser. Study 4 showed that children, like adults, explicitly classify adjectives as either holding a “ser” or an “estar” status, However, unlike adults, they use forms of estur to describe the location of events as well as objects. The fact that children seem to learn separately the rules for choosing between the Spanish copulas in different contexts might be taken as evidence of distinct meanings of ser and estur. That is, at least during acquisition, Spanish speakers appear to represent the ser-estur contrast on a context-by-context basis.

The differences between children and adults also indicate that children’s uses have a less semantic basis than adults’ uses. Consider, for example, how the use of ser and estur by adults with locations hon- ors two kinds of criteria. First, the predicate must be classified as a location. Then, the sentential subject must be classified as either an object or an event. For predicates

to be classified as locatives, a semantic judgment may not be required. Many locatives are phrases that start with a spatial preposition (e.g., in, on, under, etc.). Thus, the classification of a predicate as a locative is more-or-less a syntactic judgment. How- ever, the classification of the sentential subject as either an object or an event must be semantic. The results from Study 4 indicated that children’s choices were gov- erned solely by the classification of the predicate. This observation, of early predicate-based choices, suggests an increasing developmental trend to the use of semantic criteria for choosing between ser and estur. This trend contrasts with usual interpretations of language acquisition that suggest a developmental shift from the use of semantic criteria (e.g., “semantic bootstrap- ping”) to syntactic criteria in the acquisition of language (e.g., Fillmore, 1968; Bow- erman, 1973; Pinker, 1985). However, the copula is not a semantic lexeme in the traditional sense; it is frequently classified as a closed-class form or a ‘ ‘functor,” and func- tors are sometimes viewed as meaning-free (see, e.g., Chomsky, 1957). Thus, perhaps it makes sense that the copula is initially modulated by syntactic criteria and not semantic ones. At any rate, the results suggest that semantic criteria may not be used first to choose between all classes of words in acquisition (see Valian, 1986; Katz, Baker, & Macnamara, 1974, for similar ar- guments).

Admittedly, the underlying reason why children overuse estur with locations is not clear. At least four possibilities exist. One is that children err by overusing estur (instead of ser) because the use of estur is more likely to be “correct.” The results from Study 2 indicated that estur carries little or no implication about the status of certain attributes with adjectives. Thus, the use of estur might be a useful strategy when one is not sure about the semantic status of a particular attribute. A second possibility is that young children do not represent

TO BE ORTOBE 425

events any differently from how they represent objects until late childhood. Such an interpretation would be consistent with Keil’s (1979) findings that children do not begin to honor the ontological distinction between objects and events until 7 years. The findings from Study 4, that children use ester to describe events as well as objects, specifically suggest that children might rep resent events as objects. A third possibility is that children know that ser denotes “permanence” and estar denotes “temporariness” from early on and that they know the difference between objects and events, but that they view the status of many attributes as being “temporary.” Considerable evidence from researchers investigating children’s concepts’ of gender constancy is consistent with this suggestion. It is not un- common for young children to think that boys can become mommies and girls can become daddies, or that a person who changes his or her appearance by, for example, changing hairstyles has become a member of the other sex (Marcus & Over- ton, 1978). Perhaps, children believe that most attributes are temporary, and thus use forms of esfar to describe their values. A final possibility is that some variable of the location task led to the overuse of estar- perhaps it was the attempt to depict events with objects, or the use of a question to elicit the copulas. In any case, regardless of the underlying cause, the nature of early uses is clear: children tend to use estar more than adults do. Moreover, the ulti- mate explanation of why children overuse esfar is likely to be complex as it is bound to involve children’s representations of the task, linguistic categories, and semantic attributes.

The pattern of emerging knowledge of ser and estar in development may also serve as a basis for predicting the historical fate of the ser-estar contrast. By some points of view, the course of language change is towards one of simplicity (e.g., Dorian, 1978). But what constitutes linguistic simplicity? One candidate predictor is the lan-

guage development of individuals (Brown & Hanlon, 1970). The distribution of ser and estar has changed historically and is changing today with forms of estar being used with an increasing number of predicates (Pountain, 1982; Silva-Corvalan, 1986). The tendency of Spanish-speaking children to overuse estar suggests that the division of labor between ser and estar with locations and adjectives may eventually be lost, with estar assuming these functions. The findings from the present study specifically suggest that the distinction with locations should disappear before the adjective distinction. Forms of estar may never take over with nominals. However, these pre- dictions are not consistent with what is already known about the history of the ser- esrar contrast in the Spanish language. The ser-estar contrast between objects and events has been constant for a very long period in the history of the language. Move- ment in the distribution of ser and estar has taken place primarily with adjectives and auxiliaries. These discrepancies between developmental and historical facts suggest that what is developmentally simple is not always what is simplest in the end state.

Spanish speakers’ choices between ser and estar, if they can be taken to reflect the differential value of attributes, might also provide new information about the organization of categories. One suggestion is that there are different kinds of conceptual attributes. In other words, objective probability is not the only factor that governs the organization of a category. The occurrence of estar in sentences such as, Cuba estd en el Caribe, meaning “Cuba is (temporarily) in the Caribbean” indicates that, even though the probability of an attribute’s occurrence with a category may be quite high-Cuba’s probability of being in the Caribbean is likely to be 1 .&that probability in and of itself does not control the status of an attribute. To speculate, the structure of the Spanish language may be telling us that Cuba’s location and, perhaps, the spatial location of any physical object, is

426 MARIA D. SERA

viewed as a temporary, circumstantial, in- cidental, or accidental property. The pattern of choices between ser and estar suggests that the organization of categories is sometimes independent of the occurrences of attributes with their corresponding in- stances. This suggestion from the Spanish language is consistent with “theory-based” views of categories because it implies a conceptual structure that goes beyond associated probabilities (see, e.g., Keil, 1989; Medin & Shoben, 1988).

Finally, the findings from the present study raise the possibility of differences between English and Spanish speakers in their representations of categories. Unlike English speakers, speakers of Spanish explicitly mark the values of attributes with ser and es&r. Given the unstable and dy- namic structure of categories and the cul- tural differences that have already been observed between English and Spanish speakers in this domain @era, Reittinger, & Castillo, 1991; Waxman, 1991; Schwanen- flugel & Rey, 1986), the differences in copular forms between English and Spanish seem a likely cause of the observed conceptual differences.

To conclude, the findings from this study provide new information about the structure and acquisition of the two forms of the verb to be in Spanish. It is easy to speculate from these results how the pattern of choices between ser and estar reflects the underlying organization of language, of categories and their attributes, and how knowledge of ser and estar may affect the structure of concepts in speakers of Span- ish. As a beginning step, I have started to map out the semantic and distributional bases of this unique linguistic contrast. Clearly, some of the issues await future research.

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BERLIN, B., & KAY, P. (1%9). Basic Color Terms:

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(Received June 12, 1989) (Revision received September 2, 1991)

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To be or to be: Use and acquisition of the Spanish copulas

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