Tania Leal | University of Nevada, Reno (original) (raw)

Papers by Tania Leal

viii data. He has been selfless and kind in every respect-time and time again he has placed my re... more viii data. He has been selfless and kind in every respect-time and time again he has placed my research efforts above his own objectives and done so in admirable good humor. My son Sebastian has provided me with the most joyous reprieves from my work and has pouted minimally when I've had to leave him to do work.

Language Teaching Research, 2018

This article uses the Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD) construction in L2 Spanish to investigate wh... more This article uses the Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD) construction in L2 Spanish to investigate whether generative SLA has valuable insights to contribute to language teaching. Although CLLD is a structure that is commonly used by native speakers, as reported anecdotally and in at least one corpus, we found that native-Spanish and native-English teachers of Spanish have little metalinguistic knowledge of it. Crucially, we also found that CLLD does not appear consistently in Spanish textbooks. Additionally, it appears to be infrequent in the classroom input that learners receive, as we found in three lectures we recorded and tallied for CLLD usage rates. At the same time, results of Leal, Slabakova, and Farmer (2016) show that the construction is learnable. Study abroad, that is, exposure to naturalistic input, appears to be a significant factor. Based on these collective findings, we suggest that learners at intermediate proficiency levels should be exposed to CLLD and that generative SLA is valuable to teachers in identifying such gaps in instruction.

This study investigates the degree to which native-English speaking learners of Spanish can gener... more This study investigates the degree to which native-English speaking learners of Spanish can generate expectations for information likely to occur in upcoming portions of an unfolding
linguistic signal. We examine Spanish Clitic Left Dislocation, a long-distance dependency between a topicalized object and an agreeing clitic, whose felicity depends on the discourse. Using a self-paced reading task, we tested the predictions of the Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH; Clahsen & Felser, 2006a,b) and the Reduced Ability to Generate Expectations hypothesis (RAGE; Grüter, Rohde, & Schafer, 2014). Learners successfully demonstrated sensitivity to the violation of expectations set up by the syntactic and discourse context. In addition, the behavior
of the L2 learners was dependent on proficiency: the higher their proficiency, the more their behavior mirrored native speaker processing. These results support a view of SLA in which knowledge of L2 discourse-grammatical relationships is acquired slowly over the course of L2 learning.

Lingua, 2014

Please cite this article in press as: Leal Méndez, T., et al., Discourse-sensitive clitic-doubled... more Please cite this article in press as: Leal Méndez, T., et al., Discourse-sensitive clitic-doubled dislocations in heritage Spanish. Lingua (2014), http://dx.

Proceedings of the Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition, Bloomington, IN; 04/2015

The present study examines knowledge of the discourse-appropriateness of Clitic Right Dislocation... more The present study examines knowledge of the discourse-appropriateness of Clitic Right Dislocation (CLRD) in a population of Heritage (HS) and Spanish-dominant Native Speakers in order to test the predictions of the Interface Hypothesis (IH; Sorace 2011). The IH predicts that speakers in language contact situations will experience difficulties with integrating information involving the interface of syntax and discourse modules. CLRD relates a dislocated constituent to a discourse antecedent, requiring integration of syntax and pragmatics. Results from an acceptability judgment task did not support the predictions of the IH. No statistical differences between the HSs’ performance and that of L1-dominant native speakers were evidenced when participants were presented with an offline task. Thus, our study did not find any evidence of “incomplete acquisition” (Montrul 2008) as it pertains to this specific linguistic structure.

This is a response to Kees de Bot's reaction to our Forum article "We Have Moved On: Current Conc... more This is a response to Kees de Bot's reaction to our Forum article "We Have Moved On: Current Concepts and Positions in Generative SLA", Applied Linguistics 2014: 1–7, doi:10.1093/applin/amu027. It will appear in the same journal.

In this Forum piece, we address several common misunderstandings of the generative L2A framework ... more In this Forum piece, we address several common misunderstandings of the generative L2A framework that are current in the wider L2A literature. Many of these misunderstandings stem from proposals that, although tested and eventually discarded, are still cited as though they were still accepted and in active use. We hope that by addressing four of the most persistent myths, we can persuade the wider L2A field to let them go and move on. By highlighting what generative researchers have in common with the proponents of other frameworks, we want to pave the way for increased collaboration between frameworks.

At ultimate L2 attainment, Sorace's (2006) Interface Hypothesis predicts that narrow syntactic pr... more At ultimate L2 attainment, Sorace's (2006) Interface Hypothesis predicts that narrow syntactic properties can be fully acquired whereas properties at the external interfaces will inevitably result in non-native optionality. The present study tests the Interface Hypothesis as it pertains to the acquisition of Focus Fronting (FF) and P-movement (type 1 and 2) with their ensuing pragmatic consequences by English natives learning Spanish (n=90 advanced, intermediate and low intermediate plus n=47 native controls). The syntactic analysis used was Lopez (2009). Group results indicate that these properties can be successfully acquired, although not all to the same extent. While Rheme and P-movement type 1 posed no problems for the learners, Focus Fronting was more problematic. The native data on P-movement type 2 indicate the need for further testing, as it did not confirm the linguistic predictions.

rom.uga.edu

The current article examines two experimental investigations of the syntax-discourse interface, w... more The current article examines two experimental investigations of the syntax-discourse interface, which address theoretical questions in different ways: the first is an L1 investigation of Galician speakers in Gupton (2010) and the second is a dual investigation of L1 and L2 Spanish reported on in Leal Méndez & Slabakova (2011). These investigations gathered quantitative data via psycholinguistic tasks with accompanying audio utilizing the WebSurveyor platform. They involved counterbalanced designs and were followed by statistical analysis. While acknowledging that experimental data does not have primacy over intuitive data, the authors endorse the use of experimental methods of data elicitation (such as the ones already used in generative SLA research) in theoretical syntax in order to avoid experimenter bias and to get a more complete picture of native speaker intuition and competencies.

International Journal of Bilingualism, Jan 1, 2012

Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou (2007) propose the Interpretability Hypothesis (IH), according to whi... more Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou (2007) propose the Interpretability Hypothesis (IH), according to which uninterpretable features present an insurmountable difficulty in adult second language acquisition. The experimental study supporting the IH examines Greek native speakers’ knowledge of gaps versus resumptive pronouns in English wh-movement. A crucial assumption is that Greek allows resumptives optionally. Alexopoulou and Keller’s (2002, 2007) findings confirm that assumption. In our replication of Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou’s study, we divide Spanish native speakers into those who accept resumptives and those who do not; then we look at their acceptance of gaps and resumptives in English. The results indicate that both groups of advanced learners, those that do and those that don’t have resumptives in their individual grammars, have acquired the ungrammaticality of resumptives in English, although there may be lingering native language effects. The effects of d-linking, animacy, syntactic function of the resumptive/gap (subject vs. object), and presence of the complementizer that are also examined.

BUCLD 35 …, Jan 1, 2011

A recent version of the Interface Hypothesis (e.g., Sorace & Serratrice, 2009) proposes a princip... more A recent version of the Interface Hypothesis (e.g., Sorace & Serratrice, 2009) proposes a principled distinction between internal interfaces, those between narrow syntax and other linguistic modules (phonology, morphology, semantics), and external interfaces, those between syntax and other cognitive modules. A primary example of an external interface is the syntax/discourse interface: a major source of difficulty, causing delays as well as indeterminacy of judgments and residual optionality even at near-native levels of acquisition (Belleti, Bennati & Sorace, 2007). However, L2 acquisition findings to date are far from conclusive (Rothman, 2009; Valenzuela, 2005, 2006; Ivanov, 2009). This experimental study looks further into processes at this interface, teasing apart acquisition of syntactic, semantic and discourse knowledge.

Lopez (2009) offers a new theoretical model of syntax-information structure interaction, proposing a pragmatic computation module that assembles sentences into Discourse Representation Structures in parallel to the syntactic computation. Topic and Focus are not primitives of the grammar, but descriptive labels. The crucial information structure notion are discourse anaphor and contrast, encoded by the features [±a(naphor)] and [±c(ontrast)] which in combination account for the conditions and effects of dislocation and fronting. In Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD, ex. 1) or Clitic Right Dislocation (CRLD, ex. 2) the feature [+a] is operative: clitics double an overt argument with an obligatory link to an antecedent. A constituent which moves to the left periphery is marked [+c]: it presents a contrast (ex. 3 vs. 4). Table 1 presents the constructions and their features.

Furthermore, CLLD and CRLD are felicitous in slightly different contexts due to differing constraints on the anaphor-antecedent relationship (Villalba, 2000). CLRD requires a relationship of identity between it and the discourse antecedent (ex. 5), while the anaphor-antecedent relationship in CLLD is much freer: it can be subset, superset, part/whole (ex. 6). Keeping in mind all these constraints, the learning tasks for English natives acquiring L2 Spanish involve: 1) syntactic knowledge of clitics; 2) discourse appropriateness of the clitic-doubled dislocations; 3) semantic constraints on the antecedent-dislocate relationship.

We created 40 context-test sentences combinations: 10 CLLD as in (5) and 10 CLRD with and without identity between antecedent and dislocate, 5 Fronted Focus and 5 Rheme constructions as in (3) and (4), plus 10 fillers. Each context was followed by a sentence with a clitic and one without a clitic. Context stories and test sentences were presented both aurally and visually. Participants were asked to judge sentences as felicitous or infelicitous in the context of the story, by selecting on a scale of 1 to 4 or “I don’t know.” Syntactic knowledge of clitics was independently ascertained as a condition for inclusion in the overall study via a forced-choice task. Mean acceptance ratings of 20 near-natives and 20 advanced participants indicate that all three types of properties can be successfully acquired. However, there are differences in the acceptability of CLLD and CLRD, since the latter is much less frequent in the input, and not readily accepted by our 21 native speakers (SD>.9). However, the near-native and advanced learners confirmed the research hypothesis that even the semantic difference can be acquired. Implications of these results for the Interface Hypothesis are discussed.

viii data. He has been selfless and kind in every respect-time and time again he has placed my re... more viii data. He has been selfless and kind in every respect-time and time again he has placed my research efforts above his own objectives and done so in admirable good humor. My son Sebastian has provided me with the most joyous reprieves from my work and has pouted minimally when I've had to leave him to do work.

Language Teaching Research, 2018

This article uses the Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD) construction in L2 Spanish to investigate wh... more This article uses the Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD) construction in L2 Spanish to investigate whether generative SLA has valuable insights to contribute to language teaching. Although CLLD is a structure that is commonly used by native speakers, as reported anecdotally and in at least one corpus, we found that native-Spanish and native-English teachers of Spanish have little metalinguistic knowledge of it. Crucially, we also found that CLLD does not appear consistently in Spanish textbooks. Additionally, it appears to be infrequent in the classroom input that learners receive, as we found in three lectures we recorded and tallied for CLLD usage rates. At the same time, results of Leal, Slabakova, and Farmer (2016) show that the construction is learnable. Study abroad, that is, exposure to naturalistic input, appears to be a significant factor. Based on these collective findings, we suggest that learners at intermediate proficiency levels should be exposed to CLLD and that generative SLA is valuable to teachers in identifying such gaps in instruction.

This study investigates the degree to which native-English speaking learners of Spanish can gener... more This study investigates the degree to which native-English speaking learners of Spanish can generate expectations for information likely to occur in upcoming portions of an unfolding
linguistic signal. We examine Spanish Clitic Left Dislocation, a long-distance dependency between a topicalized object and an agreeing clitic, whose felicity depends on the discourse. Using a self-paced reading task, we tested the predictions of the Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH; Clahsen & Felser, 2006a,b) and the Reduced Ability to Generate Expectations hypothesis (RAGE; Grüter, Rohde, & Schafer, 2014). Learners successfully demonstrated sensitivity to the violation of expectations set up by the syntactic and discourse context. In addition, the behavior
of the L2 learners was dependent on proficiency: the higher their proficiency, the more their behavior mirrored native speaker processing. These results support a view of SLA in which knowledge of L2 discourse-grammatical relationships is acquired slowly over the course of L2 learning.

Lingua, 2014

Please cite this article in press as: Leal Méndez, T., et al., Discourse-sensitive clitic-doubled... more Please cite this article in press as: Leal Méndez, T., et al., Discourse-sensitive clitic-doubled dislocations in heritage Spanish. Lingua (2014), http://dx.

Proceedings of the Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition, Bloomington, IN; 04/2015

The present study examines knowledge of the discourse-appropriateness of Clitic Right Dislocation... more The present study examines knowledge of the discourse-appropriateness of Clitic Right Dislocation (CLRD) in a population of Heritage (HS) and Spanish-dominant Native Speakers in order to test the predictions of the Interface Hypothesis (IH; Sorace 2011). The IH predicts that speakers in language contact situations will experience difficulties with integrating information involving the interface of syntax and discourse modules. CLRD relates a dislocated constituent to a discourse antecedent, requiring integration of syntax and pragmatics. Results from an acceptability judgment task did not support the predictions of the IH. No statistical differences between the HSs’ performance and that of L1-dominant native speakers were evidenced when participants were presented with an offline task. Thus, our study did not find any evidence of “incomplete acquisition” (Montrul 2008) as it pertains to this specific linguistic structure.

This is a response to Kees de Bot's reaction to our Forum article "We Have Moved On: Current Conc... more This is a response to Kees de Bot's reaction to our Forum article "We Have Moved On: Current Concepts and Positions in Generative SLA", Applied Linguistics 2014: 1–7, doi:10.1093/applin/amu027. It will appear in the same journal.

In this Forum piece, we address several common misunderstandings of the generative L2A framework ... more In this Forum piece, we address several common misunderstandings of the generative L2A framework that are current in the wider L2A literature. Many of these misunderstandings stem from proposals that, although tested and eventually discarded, are still cited as though they were still accepted and in active use. We hope that by addressing four of the most persistent myths, we can persuade the wider L2A field to let them go and move on. By highlighting what generative researchers have in common with the proponents of other frameworks, we want to pave the way for increased collaboration between frameworks.

At ultimate L2 attainment, Sorace's (2006) Interface Hypothesis predicts that narrow syntactic pr... more At ultimate L2 attainment, Sorace's (2006) Interface Hypothesis predicts that narrow syntactic properties can be fully acquired whereas properties at the external interfaces will inevitably result in non-native optionality. The present study tests the Interface Hypothesis as it pertains to the acquisition of Focus Fronting (FF) and P-movement (type 1 and 2) with their ensuing pragmatic consequences by English natives learning Spanish (n=90 advanced, intermediate and low intermediate plus n=47 native controls). The syntactic analysis used was Lopez (2009). Group results indicate that these properties can be successfully acquired, although not all to the same extent. While Rheme and P-movement type 1 posed no problems for the learners, Focus Fronting was more problematic. The native data on P-movement type 2 indicate the need for further testing, as it did not confirm the linguistic predictions.

rom.uga.edu

The current article examines two experimental investigations of the syntax-discourse interface, w... more The current article examines two experimental investigations of the syntax-discourse interface, which address theoretical questions in different ways: the first is an L1 investigation of Galician speakers in Gupton (2010) and the second is a dual investigation of L1 and L2 Spanish reported on in Leal Méndez & Slabakova (2011). These investigations gathered quantitative data via psycholinguistic tasks with accompanying audio utilizing the WebSurveyor platform. They involved counterbalanced designs and were followed by statistical analysis. While acknowledging that experimental data does not have primacy over intuitive data, the authors endorse the use of experimental methods of data elicitation (such as the ones already used in generative SLA research) in theoretical syntax in order to avoid experimenter bias and to get a more complete picture of native speaker intuition and competencies.

International Journal of Bilingualism, Jan 1, 2012

Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou (2007) propose the Interpretability Hypothesis (IH), according to whi... more Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou (2007) propose the Interpretability Hypothesis (IH), according to which uninterpretable features present an insurmountable difficulty in adult second language acquisition. The experimental study supporting the IH examines Greek native speakers’ knowledge of gaps versus resumptive pronouns in English wh-movement. A crucial assumption is that Greek allows resumptives optionally. Alexopoulou and Keller’s (2002, 2007) findings confirm that assumption. In our replication of Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou’s study, we divide Spanish native speakers into those who accept resumptives and those who do not; then we look at their acceptance of gaps and resumptives in English. The results indicate that both groups of advanced learners, those that do and those that don’t have resumptives in their individual grammars, have acquired the ungrammaticality of resumptives in English, although there may be lingering native language effects. The effects of d-linking, animacy, syntactic function of the resumptive/gap (subject vs. object), and presence of the complementizer that are also examined.

BUCLD 35 …, Jan 1, 2011

A recent version of the Interface Hypothesis (e.g., Sorace & Serratrice, 2009) proposes a princip... more A recent version of the Interface Hypothesis (e.g., Sorace & Serratrice, 2009) proposes a principled distinction between internal interfaces, those between narrow syntax and other linguistic modules (phonology, morphology, semantics), and external interfaces, those between syntax and other cognitive modules. A primary example of an external interface is the syntax/discourse interface: a major source of difficulty, causing delays as well as indeterminacy of judgments and residual optionality even at near-native levels of acquisition (Belleti, Bennati & Sorace, 2007). However, L2 acquisition findings to date are far from conclusive (Rothman, 2009; Valenzuela, 2005, 2006; Ivanov, 2009). This experimental study looks further into processes at this interface, teasing apart acquisition of syntactic, semantic and discourse knowledge.

Lopez (2009) offers a new theoretical model of syntax-information structure interaction, proposing a pragmatic computation module that assembles sentences into Discourse Representation Structures in parallel to the syntactic computation. Topic and Focus are not primitives of the grammar, but descriptive labels. The crucial information structure notion are discourse anaphor and contrast, encoded by the features [±a(naphor)] and [±c(ontrast)] which in combination account for the conditions and effects of dislocation and fronting. In Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD, ex. 1) or Clitic Right Dislocation (CRLD, ex. 2) the feature [+a] is operative: clitics double an overt argument with an obligatory link to an antecedent. A constituent which moves to the left periphery is marked [+c]: it presents a contrast (ex. 3 vs. 4). Table 1 presents the constructions and their features.

Furthermore, CLLD and CRLD are felicitous in slightly different contexts due to differing constraints on the anaphor-antecedent relationship (Villalba, 2000). CLRD requires a relationship of identity between it and the discourse antecedent (ex. 5), while the anaphor-antecedent relationship in CLLD is much freer: it can be subset, superset, part/whole (ex. 6). Keeping in mind all these constraints, the learning tasks for English natives acquiring L2 Spanish involve: 1) syntactic knowledge of clitics; 2) discourse appropriateness of the clitic-doubled dislocations; 3) semantic constraints on the antecedent-dislocate relationship.

We created 40 context-test sentences combinations: 10 CLLD as in (5) and 10 CLRD with and without identity between antecedent and dislocate, 5 Fronted Focus and 5 Rheme constructions as in (3) and (4), plus 10 fillers. Each context was followed by a sentence with a clitic and one without a clitic. Context stories and test sentences were presented both aurally and visually. Participants were asked to judge sentences as felicitous or infelicitous in the context of the story, by selecting on a scale of 1 to 4 or “I don’t know.” Syntactic knowledge of clitics was independently ascertained as a condition for inclusion in the overall study via a forced-choice task. Mean acceptance ratings of 20 near-natives and 20 advanced participants indicate that all three types of properties can be successfully acquired. However, there are differences in the acceptability of CLLD and CLRD, since the latter is much less frequent in the input, and not readily accepted by our 21 native speakers (SD>.9). However, the near-native and advanced learners confirmed the research hypothesis that even the semantic difference can be acquired. Implications of these results for the Interface Hypothesis are discussed.