Maria J. Arche | University of Greenwich (original) (raw)

Papers by Maria J. Arche

Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2012

This study examines the second language acquisition of Spanish past tense morphology by three gro... more This study examines the second language acquisition of Spanish past tense morphology by three groups of English speakers (beginners, intermediates and advanced). We adopt a novel methodological approach – combining oral corpus data with controlled experimental data – in order to provide new evidence on the validity of the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis (LAH) in L2 Spanish. Data elicited through one comprehension and three oral tasks with varying degrees of experimental control show that the emergence of temporal markings is determined mainly by the dynamic/non-dynamic contrast (whether a verb is a state or an event) as beginner and intermediate speakers use Preterit with event verbs but Imperfect mainly with state verbs. One crucial finding is that although advanced learners use typical Preterit–telic associations in the least controlled oral tasks, as predicted by the LAH, this pattern is often reversed in tasks designed to include non-prototypical (and infrequent) form–meaning contexts...

This monograph investigates the temporal properties of those predicates referring to individuals ... more This monograph investigates the temporal properties of those predicates referring to individuals the so-called individual-level (IL) predicates in contrast to those known as stage-level (SL) predicates. Many of the traditional tenets attributed to the IL/SL dichotomy are ...

The Linguistic Review, 2021

This paper offers a principled account for the nominalizations of dispositional evaluative adject... more This paper offers a principled account for the nominalizations of dispositional evaluative adjectives. On the descriptive side, the paper shows that (i) in addition to the largely studied deverbal nominalizations, (Chomsky 1970, Grimshaw 1990, Marantz 1997, Alexiadou 2001, Borer 2013), certain deadjectival nominalizations can also refer to events; (ii) the types of adjectives that enable eventive denotation are of a specific sort, namely, those deriving from Dispositional Evaluative Adjectives (e.g., imprudent). At the theoretical level, this paper argues that (i) dispositional deadjectival nominalizations introduce an event description not in a head but in a specifier position, as their subject of predication, along the lines of Stowell's (1991) proposal for these adjectives; (ii) in order for a word to have functional structure of the sort associated to verbs an event description is not enough: functional projections must form a head-sequence with the event-descriptive heads; without this configuration, the merge of a fully-fledged verbal functional structure is blocked, which explains the limitations regarding temporal modification. (iii) The event present in the dispositional deadjectival nominalizations is a partial event description consisting of a head referring to the Process subevent, as described in Ramchand 2018.

This paper sets the basis for a uniform account of the alternation between the two Spanish copula... more This paper sets the basis for a uniform account of the alternation between the two Spanish copulas (ser and estar) in adjectival and passive clauses. While the copular contrast has been attributed to the different properties of adjectives (e.g. individual vs. stage level) and to an eventive vs. resultative stative dichotomy in passives, this work shows that they all behave alike regarding their temporal interpretation. We derive such uniformity from the syntactic properties of the copulas themselves: estar, includes an additional component ser lack that makes everything it merges with stative, with particular temporoaspectual properties.

1 This study investigates the acquisition of the Spanish Imperfect by sixty English learners of S... more 1 This study investigates the acquisition of the Spanish Imperfect by sixty English learners of Spanish at three different proficiency levels (beginner, intermediate and advanced). Two oral production tasks and one interpretation task show that although the Imperfect is used from early on, the full array of interpretations associated with this form (habitual, continuous and progressive) is not completely acquired even at advanced levels. Learners accept the Imperfect in imperfective contexts but have problems rejecting the Preterit. This problem persists even at advanced levels in continuous contexts. The continuous is conveyed in English by Past Tense, which is used in both perfective and imperfective contexts, whereas in Spanish only the Imperfect is appropriate. We argue that the incorrect low rejection of the Preterit signals a mapping problem of aspect-related features present in both English and Spanish onto a new form (the Imperfect). These results support the problematic nature of feature reassembly in the acquisition of the Spanish Imperfect by English speakers.

This paper argues for a constructionist approach for Aspect by exploring the idea that viewpoint ... more This paper argues for a constructionist approach for Aspect by exploring the idea that viewpoint aspect does not exert any altering force on the situation aspect properties of predicates. The proposal is developed by analyzing the point of view where conflicts between situation and viewpoint aspect have been argued to appear in previous literature, namely, the imperfective. The paper focuses on the syntax and semantics of the imperfective, which has been attributed a coercer role as a de-telicizer and de-stativizer in the progressive reading, and as a de-eventizizer in the so-called ability (or attitudinal) and habitual readings. This paper proposes that this is not necessary and provides a unified semantics for the imperfective preserving the properties of eventualities throughout the derivation. The article defends that the semantics of viewpoint aspect is encoded in functional heads containing interval-ordering predicates and quantifiers. This richer structure allows us to analyze aspectual forms with in principle contradictory content such as perfective and progressive, which sheds light onto other issues such as the understanding of non-culminating accomplishments. The proposed syntax is argued to have a corresponding explicit morphology in languages such as Spanish and a non-differentiating one in languages such as English, while the syntax-semantics underlying both of these languages is argued to be the same.

We are extremely grateful to Rosamond Mitchell and Nicole Tracy-Ventura for their valuable contri... more We are extremely grateful to Rosamond Mitchell and Nicole Tracy-Ventura for their valuable contribution to this research and to the BUCLD 35 audience for helpful suggestions and discussion. CH L It is not completely clear whether access to the universal inventory of features is still readily available once a language has selected its specific subset [F L1 ] of F. This prompts the question of whether L2 speakers can ever be successful in acquiring a grammar which contains features which are not selected by their native language. Generative second language research has examined to what extent crosslinguistic differences regarding the features selected by each language [[F L1 ], [F L2 ] [F L3 ]…] constitute a source of interlanguage variability and permanent impairment for second language speakers (Hawkins and Chan 1997, Hawkins 2005, Tsimpli 2003, Franceschina 2004, Lardiere 2006, 2009 among others).

Eurosla Yearbook, 287-304, 2008

The contribution of Spanish to the field of SLA continues to grow Salaberry 2003, Montrul 2004), ... more The contribution of Spanish to the field of SLA continues to grow Salaberry 2003, Montrul 2004), and the need for good L2 Spanish datasets is becoming increasingly evident. In this paper we introduce a newly created Spanish Learner Language Oral Corpus (SPLLOC), describing the rationale underlying the corpus design and methodology used for its construction.

In, Galani, Alexandra, Hicks, Glyn and Tsoulas, George (eds.) Morphology and its Interfaces. Amsterdam, NL, John Benjamins, 291-319. (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 178)., 2011

This paper investigates the L2 acquisition of Spanish object clitics by L1 English learners. Span... more This paper investigates the L2 acquisition of Spanish object clitics by L1 English learners. Spanish clitics are analyzed as bundles of agreement and referential features morphologically marked for number and gender. We examine the relationship between morphology and syntax in L2 learners' grammars in order to assess two current acquisition hypotheses: the Impaired Representation Hypothesis (IRH) and the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH). Data from a production and a comprehension task suggest that learners have an unimpaired narrow syntax, despite apparent inflectional variability. We propose that absent or inaccurate morphology can be explained by a deficit in the mapping to PF. This supports a dissociation between syntactic representation and surface inflection. * This research is part of the SPLLOC project (www.splloc.soton.ac.uk) and it is supported by an Economic and Social Research Council research grant (RES 000231609). We would like to thank the other SPLLOC members, Rosamond Mitchell, Florence Myles and Emma Marsden, for their contribution to this study. We are very grateful to Florencia Franceschina and Teresa Cadierno for their input during the design of the tasks and to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on a previous version of this paper.

In, BUCLD 35: Proceedings of the 35th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. 35th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development Boston, US, Cascadilla Press., 2011

We are extremely grateful to Rosamond Mitchell and Nicole Tracy-Ventura for their valuable contri... more We are extremely grateful to Rosamond Mitchell and Nicole Tracy-Ventura for their valuable contribution to this research and to the BUCLD 35 audience for helpful suggestions and discussion. CH L It is not completely clear whether access to the universal inventory of features is still readily available once a language has selected its specific subset [F L1 ] of F. This prompts the question of whether L2 speakers can ever be successful in acquiring a grammar which contains features which are not selected by their native language. Generative second language research has examined to what extent crosslinguistic differences regarding the features selected by each language [[F L1 ], [F L2 ] [F L3 ]…] constitute a source of interlanguage variability and permanent impairment for second language speakers (Hawkins and Chan 1997, Hawkins 2005, Tsimpli 2003, Franceschina 2004, Lardiere 2006, 2009 among others).

Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 2014

This introduction presents the matter that this Topic/Comment issue addresses-namely, the encodin... more This introduction presents the matter that this Topic/Comment issue addresses-namely, the encoding of aspectual information in the syntax and morphology. The main aim of this issue is to shed light on the identification of the semantic primitives underlying the most prominent viewpoint aspectual forms referred to in the literature (e.g., Imperfect, Perfective, Perfect, and Neutral), and to give a principled explanation of the way in which these semantic primitives are represented in the syntax and mapped onto the morphology. The introduction surveys and compares the different proposals that the authors in the issue defend in this regard and discusses the need of finer grained analyses so that more accurate crosslinguistic correspondences, which are crucial for answering questions in realms such as that of second language acquisition, can be established.

Lingua, 2014

One of the oldest concerns in linguistic theory is the characterization of grammatical categories... more One of the oldest concerns in linguistic theory is the characterization of grammatical categories, and the problem of how to capture their similarities and differences. Perhaps one of the most problematic cases identified in previous studies has been to find a non-parochial characterization of the relation between adjectives and verbs; participles are at the centre of the problem, because they show mixed morphosyntactic and semantic properties that connect them both with adjectives and verbs. The aim of this contribution is to summarize the main results and pending questions that the literature has identified in the study of the relation between adjectives, participles and verbs. We concentrate on two problems: their argument structure and their aspectual properties.

EUROSLA Yearbook, 2008

The contribution of Spanish to the field of SLA continues to grow Salaberry 2003, Montrul 2004), ... more The contribution of Spanish to the field of SLA continues to grow Salaberry 2003, Montrul 2004), and the need for good L2 Spanish datasets is becoming increasingly evident. In this paper we introduce a newly created Spanish Learner Language Oral Corpus (SPLLOC), describing the rationale underlying the corpus design and methodology used for its construction.

Lingua, 2014

This study presents new empirical evidence on the L2 acquisition of Spanish SV--VS contrasts, a s... more This study presents new empirical evidence on the L2 acquisition of Spanish SV--VS contrasts, a syntax-pragmatics interface phenomenon. Results from a context-dependant preference task involving unergative and unaccusative verbs in different focus situations (broad and narrow focus) reveal that beginner and intermediate English speakers prefer SV in all contexts. In contrast, advanced learners, who clearly know that VS is possible in Spanish, show a pattern of optionality with unergative verbs (in both broad and narrow focus contexts), whereas VS is correctly preferred with unaccusative verbs in both broad and narrowly-focused contexts. We argue that these results can be explained by a representational deficit according to which the VS order is overgeneralised to unergative verbs regardless of the discursive situation. We argue that learners' overuse of VS structures is exacerbated by the lack of clear evidence for the use of SV and VS forms in the native input.

Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2013

This study examines the second language acquisition of Spanish past tense morphology by three gro... more This study examines the second language acquisition of Spanish past tense morphology by three groups of English speakers (beginners, intermediates and advanced). We adopt a novel methodological approach -combining oral corpus data with controlled experimental data -in order to provide new evidence on the validity of the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis (LAH) in L2 (achievements, accomplishments and activities) in Spanish as a single class that they associate with Preterit morphology. We argue that dynamicity contrasts, and not telicity, affect learners' use of past tense forms during early stages of acquisition.

Romance Linguistics 2012. Selected Papers from the 42rd LSRL. Ed. by J. Smith and T. Ihsane , 2015

In this paper we examine the elements, structure and formation process of derived categories, by ... more In this paper we examine the elements, structure and formation process of derived categories, by analyzing the properties of nouns derived from adjectives. We will discuss the event structure underlying them and argue that, although it is commonly assumed that deadjectival nouns denote qualities (wisdom, beauty) or states (sadness, perplexity), there is a group of deadjectival nominalizations (imprudence, cruelty) that refer to occurrences of events (Beauseroy, 2009). We show that such occurrential nominalizations are possible only when derived from evaluative adjectives. This is due, we argue, to the fact that such adjectives can be predicated of events in addition to the sentient individual (Stowell, 1991). Finally, we furthermore show that the existence of a structure of origin with the relevant properties does not guarantee the existence of the derived category, leaving what seem to be gaps in the universe of possible derivations.

International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2009

This book is an edited volume that puts together an extensive group of articles written by well-k... more This book is an edited volume that puts together an extensive group of articles written by well-known scholars around the same topic: the role of formal features in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Thus, one of the main values of the book is that of giving the reader a comprehensive idea about the main controversies, the hypotheses under debate about particular issues and about the questions which are still awaiting a better understanding.

Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2012

This study examines the second language acquisition of Spanish past tense morphology by three gro... more This study examines the second language acquisition of Spanish past tense morphology by three groups of English speakers (beginners, intermediates and advanced). We adopt a novel methodological approach – combining oral corpus data with controlled experimental data – in order to provide new evidence on the validity of the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis (LAH) in L2 Spanish. Data elicited through one comprehension and three oral tasks with varying degrees of experimental control show that the emergence of temporal markings is determined mainly by the dynamic/non-dynamic contrast (whether a verb is a state or an event) as beginner and intermediate speakers use Preterit with event verbs but Imperfect mainly with state verbs. One crucial finding is that although advanced learners use typical Preterit–telic associations in the least controlled oral tasks, as predicted by the LAH, this pattern is often reversed in tasks designed to include non-prototypical (and infrequent) form–meaning contexts...

This monograph investigates the temporal properties of those predicates referring to individuals ... more This monograph investigates the temporal properties of those predicates referring to individuals the so-called individual-level (IL) predicates in contrast to those known as stage-level (SL) predicates. Many of the traditional tenets attributed to the IL/SL dichotomy are ...

The Linguistic Review, 2021

This paper offers a principled account for the nominalizations of dispositional evaluative adject... more This paper offers a principled account for the nominalizations of dispositional evaluative adjectives. On the descriptive side, the paper shows that (i) in addition to the largely studied deverbal nominalizations, (Chomsky 1970, Grimshaw 1990, Marantz 1997, Alexiadou 2001, Borer 2013), certain deadjectival nominalizations can also refer to events; (ii) the types of adjectives that enable eventive denotation are of a specific sort, namely, those deriving from Dispositional Evaluative Adjectives (e.g., imprudent). At the theoretical level, this paper argues that (i) dispositional deadjectival nominalizations introduce an event description not in a head but in a specifier position, as their subject of predication, along the lines of Stowell's (1991) proposal for these adjectives; (ii) in order for a word to have functional structure of the sort associated to verbs an event description is not enough: functional projections must form a head-sequence with the event-descriptive heads; without this configuration, the merge of a fully-fledged verbal functional structure is blocked, which explains the limitations regarding temporal modification. (iii) The event present in the dispositional deadjectival nominalizations is a partial event description consisting of a head referring to the Process subevent, as described in Ramchand 2018.

This paper sets the basis for a uniform account of the alternation between the two Spanish copula... more This paper sets the basis for a uniform account of the alternation between the two Spanish copulas (ser and estar) in adjectival and passive clauses. While the copular contrast has been attributed to the different properties of adjectives (e.g. individual vs. stage level) and to an eventive vs. resultative stative dichotomy in passives, this work shows that they all behave alike regarding their temporal interpretation. We derive such uniformity from the syntactic properties of the copulas themselves: estar, includes an additional component ser lack that makes everything it merges with stative, with particular temporoaspectual properties.

1 This study investigates the acquisition of the Spanish Imperfect by sixty English learners of S... more 1 This study investigates the acquisition of the Spanish Imperfect by sixty English learners of Spanish at three different proficiency levels (beginner, intermediate and advanced). Two oral production tasks and one interpretation task show that although the Imperfect is used from early on, the full array of interpretations associated with this form (habitual, continuous and progressive) is not completely acquired even at advanced levels. Learners accept the Imperfect in imperfective contexts but have problems rejecting the Preterit. This problem persists even at advanced levels in continuous contexts. The continuous is conveyed in English by Past Tense, which is used in both perfective and imperfective contexts, whereas in Spanish only the Imperfect is appropriate. We argue that the incorrect low rejection of the Preterit signals a mapping problem of aspect-related features present in both English and Spanish onto a new form (the Imperfect). These results support the problematic nature of feature reassembly in the acquisition of the Spanish Imperfect by English speakers.

This paper argues for a constructionist approach for Aspect by exploring the idea that viewpoint ... more This paper argues for a constructionist approach for Aspect by exploring the idea that viewpoint aspect does not exert any altering force on the situation aspect properties of predicates. The proposal is developed by analyzing the point of view where conflicts between situation and viewpoint aspect have been argued to appear in previous literature, namely, the imperfective. The paper focuses on the syntax and semantics of the imperfective, which has been attributed a coercer role as a de-telicizer and de-stativizer in the progressive reading, and as a de-eventizizer in the so-called ability (or attitudinal) and habitual readings. This paper proposes that this is not necessary and provides a unified semantics for the imperfective preserving the properties of eventualities throughout the derivation. The article defends that the semantics of viewpoint aspect is encoded in functional heads containing interval-ordering predicates and quantifiers. This richer structure allows us to analyze aspectual forms with in principle contradictory content such as perfective and progressive, which sheds light onto other issues such as the understanding of non-culminating accomplishments. The proposed syntax is argued to have a corresponding explicit morphology in languages such as Spanish and a non-differentiating one in languages such as English, while the syntax-semantics underlying both of these languages is argued to be the same.

We are extremely grateful to Rosamond Mitchell and Nicole Tracy-Ventura for their valuable contri... more We are extremely grateful to Rosamond Mitchell and Nicole Tracy-Ventura for their valuable contribution to this research and to the BUCLD 35 audience for helpful suggestions and discussion. CH L It is not completely clear whether access to the universal inventory of features is still readily available once a language has selected its specific subset [F L1 ] of F. This prompts the question of whether L2 speakers can ever be successful in acquiring a grammar which contains features which are not selected by their native language. Generative second language research has examined to what extent crosslinguistic differences regarding the features selected by each language [[F L1 ], [F L2 ] [F L3 ]…] constitute a source of interlanguage variability and permanent impairment for second language speakers (Hawkins and Chan 1997, Hawkins 2005, Tsimpli 2003, Franceschina 2004, Lardiere 2006, 2009 among others).

Eurosla Yearbook, 287-304, 2008

The contribution of Spanish to the field of SLA continues to grow Salaberry 2003, Montrul 2004), ... more The contribution of Spanish to the field of SLA continues to grow Salaberry 2003, Montrul 2004), and the need for good L2 Spanish datasets is becoming increasingly evident. In this paper we introduce a newly created Spanish Learner Language Oral Corpus (SPLLOC), describing the rationale underlying the corpus design and methodology used for its construction.

In, Galani, Alexandra, Hicks, Glyn and Tsoulas, George (eds.) Morphology and its Interfaces. Amsterdam, NL, John Benjamins, 291-319. (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 178)., 2011

This paper investigates the L2 acquisition of Spanish object clitics by L1 English learners. Span... more This paper investigates the L2 acquisition of Spanish object clitics by L1 English learners. Spanish clitics are analyzed as bundles of agreement and referential features morphologically marked for number and gender. We examine the relationship between morphology and syntax in L2 learners' grammars in order to assess two current acquisition hypotheses: the Impaired Representation Hypothesis (IRH) and the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH). Data from a production and a comprehension task suggest that learners have an unimpaired narrow syntax, despite apparent inflectional variability. We propose that absent or inaccurate morphology can be explained by a deficit in the mapping to PF. This supports a dissociation between syntactic representation and surface inflection. * This research is part of the SPLLOC project (www.splloc.soton.ac.uk) and it is supported by an Economic and Social Research Council research grant (RES 000231609). We would like to thank the other SPLLOC members, Rosamond Mitchell, Florence Myles and Emma Marsden, for their contribution to this study. We are very grateful to Florencia Franceschina and Teresa Cadierno for their input during the design of the tasks and to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on a previous version of this paper.

In, BUCLD 35: Proceedings of the 35th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. 35th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development Boston, US, Cascadilla Press., 2011

We are extremely grateful to Rosamond Mitchell and Nicole Tracy-Ventura for their valuable contri... more We are extremely grateful to Rosamond Mitchell and Nicole Tracy-Ventura for their valuable contribution to this research and to the BUCLD 35 audience for helpful suggestions and discussion. CH L It is not completely clear whether access to the universal inventory of features is still readily available once a language has selected its specific subset [F L1 ] of F. This prompts the question of whether L2 speakers can ever be successful in acquiring a grammar which contains features which are not selected by their native language. Generative second language research has examined to what extent crosslinguistic differences regarding the features selected by each language [[F L1 ], [F L2 ] [F L3 ]…] constitute a source of interlanguage variability and permanent impairment for second language speakers (Hawkins and Chan 1997, Hawkins 2005, Tsimpli 2003, Franceschina 2004, Lardiere 2006, 2009 among others).

Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 2014

This introduction presents the matter that this Topic/Comment issue addresses-namely, the encodin... more This introduction presents the matter that this Topic/Comment issue addresses-namely, the encoding of aspectual information in the syntax and morphology. The main aim of this issue is to shed light on the identification of the semantic primitives underlying the most prominent viewpoint aspectual forms referred to in the literature (e.g., Imperfect, Perfective, Perfect, and Neutral), and to give a principled explanation of the way in which these semantic primitives are represented in the syntax and mapped onto the morphology. The introduction surveys and compares the different proposals that the authors in the issue defend in this regard and discusses the need of finer grained analyses so that more accurate crosslinguistic correspondences, which are crucial for answering questions in realms such as that of second language acquisition, can be established.

Lingua, 2014

One of the oldest concerns in linguistic theory is the characterization of grammatical categories... more One of the oldest concerns in linguistic theory is the characterization of grammatical categories, and the problem of how to capture their similarities and differences. Perhaps one of the most problematic cases identified in previous studies has been to find a non-parochial characterization of the relation between adjectives and verbs; participles are at the centre of the problem, because they show mixed morphosyntactic and semantic properties that connect them both with adjectives and verbs. The aim of this contribution is to summarize the main results and pending questions that the literature has identified in the study of the relation between adjectives, participles and verbs. We concentrate on two problems: their argument structure and their aspectual properties.

EUROSLA Yearbook, 2008

The contribution of Spanish to the field of SLA continues to grow Salaberry 2003, Montrul 2004), ... more The contribution of Spanish to the field of SLA continues to grow Salaberry 2003, Montrul 2004), and the need for good L2 Spanish datasets is becoming increasingly evident. In this paper we introduce a newly created Spanish Learner Language Oral Corpus (SPLLOC), describing the rationale underlying the corpus design and methodology used for its construction.

Lingua, 2014

This study presents new empirical evidence on the L2 acquisition of Spanish SV--VS contrasts, a s... more This study presents new empirical evidence on the L2 acquisition of Spanish SV--VS contrasts, a syntax-pragmatics interface phenomenon. Results from a context-dependant preference task involving unergative and unaccusative verbs in different focus situations (broad and narrow focus) reveal that beginner and intermediate English speakers prefer SV in all contexts. In contrast, advanced learners, who clearly know that VS is possible in Spanish, show a pattern of optionality with unergative verbs (in both broad and narrow focus contexts), whereas VS is correctly preferred with unaccusative verbs in both broad and narrowly-focused contexts. We argue that these results can be explained by a representational deficit according to which the VS order is overgeneralised to unergative verbs regardless of the discursive situation. We argue that learners' overuse of VS structures is exacerbated by the lack of clear evidence for the use of SV and VS forms in the native input.

Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2013

This study examines the second language acquisition of Spanish past tense morphology by three gro... more This study examines the second language acquisition of Spanish past tense morphology by three groups of English speakers (beginners, intermediates and advanced). We adopt a novel methodological approach -combining oral corpus data with controlled experimental data -in order to provide new evidence on the validity of the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis (LAH) in L2 (achievements, accomplishments and activities) in Spanish as a single class that they associate with Preterit morphology. We argue that dynamicity contrasts, and not telicity, affect learners' use of past tense forms during early stages of acquisition.

Romance Linguistics 2012. Selected Papers from the 42rd LSRL. Ed. by J. Smith and T. Ihsane , 2015

In this paper we examine the elements, structure and formation process of derived categories, by ... more In this paper we examine the elements, structure and formation process of derived categories, by analyzing the properties of nouns derived from adjectives. We will discuss the event structure underlying them and argue that, although it is commonly assumed that deadjectival nouns denote qualities (wisdom, beauty) or states (sadness, perplexity), there is a group of deadjectival nominalizations (imprudence, cruelty) that refer to occurrences of events (Beauseroy, 2009). We show that such occurrential nominalizations are possible only when derived from evaluative adjectives. This is due, we argue, to the fact that such adjectives can be predicated of events in addition to the sentient individual (Stowell, 1991). Finally, we furthermore show that the existence of a structure of origin with the relevant properties does not guarantee the existence of the derived category, leaving what seem to be gaps in the universe of possible derivations.

International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2009

This book is an edited volume that puts together an extensive group of articles written by well-k... more This book is an edited volume that puts together an extensive group of articles written by well-known scholars around the same topic: the role of formal features in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Thus, one of the main values of the book is that of giving the reader a comprehensive idea about the main controversies, the hypotheses under debate about particular issues and about the questions which are still awaiting a better understanding.