Is There any Difference Between ‘She Gave a Book to Her Daughter’ and ‘She Gave Her Daughter a Book’? English-Spanish Bilingual Children's Acquisition of Ditransitive Constructions

The present study seeks to provide an answer for the syntactic dichotomy in the derivation of the so-called ditransitive constructions in line with their acquisition. The focus is placed on the ditransitive verb “give” as it appears in the spontaneous production of three Spanish/English bilingual children. The analysis of the data tries to establish whether the acquisition of ditransitive structures complies with the Uniformity of Theta Assignment Hypothesis, Case Theory and the input to which children are exposed. Our findings have confirmed that the latter is the most reliable index which determines the order of acquisition.