Optionality in L2 Grammars: the Acquisition of SV/VS Contrast in Spanish (original) (raw)
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Proceedings of the Corpus Linguistics Conference. University of Birmingham, 2007
Though there is a long tradition of research into word order phenomena in Second Language (L2) acquisition, this area of enquiry has recently been given a new impetus both from theoretical developments on the form-function interplay and, crucially, from the emergence of learner corpora This paper focuses on a particular phenomenon which has received considerable attention in the literature: the production of postverbal subjects in L2 English by L1 speakers of languages characterised as allowing ‘free inversion’ of the subject in V(erb) S(ubject) structures, such as Spanish and Italian. In previous research emphasis has been placed on the learners’ production of ungrammatical VS order (see for instance Rutherford, 1989 Zobl, 1989 and, more recently, Oshita, 2004). Our approach, however, seeks to identify the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic conditions, as well as conditions deriving from processing mechanisms, under which learners produce inverted subjects, regardless of errors resulting from the syntactic encoding of those notions. We analyse VS vs. SV structures in the Italian and Spanish subcorpus of ICLE (Grange et al., 2002) and we compare our results with preliminary results obtained from a similar native English corpus (LOCNESS). Thus, we incorporate some of the fundamental tenets of what is known as Contrastive Interlanguage Approach (see, e.g. Granger ,1996 and Gilquin, 2001), which establishes comparisons between: (a) native and non-native data, and (b) different non-native data. Our main purpose is to see if the properties that govern the occurrence of postverbal Ss in native English, as currently analysed in the theoretical and descriptive literature, are the same as those operating in the non-native grammars of Spanish and Italian speakers. We first examine the properties of VS order in English vs. Spanish/Italian (Section 2). In Section 3, we review previous L2 studies on postverbal Ss. Our hypotheses are presented in Section 4. Section 5 describes the method used to extract and code data from the corpus and their statistical treatment. Results are presented and discussed in Section 6. In Section 7, we compare learner data with data obtained from LOCNESS and Section 8 presents the conclusion.
Interface strategies in monolingual and end-state L2 Spanish grammars are not that different
Frontiers in psychology, 2014
This study explores syntactic, pragmatic, and lexical influences on adherence to SV and VS orders in native and fluent L2 speakers of Spanish. A judgment task examined 20 native monolingual and 20 longstanding L2 bilingual Spanish speakers' acceptance of SV and VS structures. Seventy-six distinct verbs were tested under a combination of syntactic and pragmatic constraints. Our findings challenge the hypothesis that internal interfaces are acquired more easily than external interfaces (Sorace, 2005, 2011; Sorace and Filiaci, 2006; White, 2006). Additional findings are that (a) bilinguals' judgments are less firm overall than monolinguals' (i.e., monolinguals are more likely to give extreme "yes" or "no" judgments) and (b) individual verbs do not necessarily behave as predicted under standard definitions of unaccusatives and unergatives. Correlations of the patterns found in the data with verb frequencies suggest that usage-based accounts of grammatical...
2007
Though there is a long tradition of research into word order phenomena in Second Language (L2) acquisition, this area of enquiry has recently been given a new impetus both from theoretical developments on the form-function interplay and, crucially, from the emergence of learner corpora This paper focuses on a particular phenomenon which has received considerable attention in the literature: the production of postverbal subjects in L2 English by L1 speakers of languages characterised as allowing ‘free inversion’ of the subject in V(erb) S(ubject) structures, such as Spanish and Italian. In previous research emphasis has been placed on the learners’ production of ungrammatical VS order (see for instance Rutherford, 1989 Zobl, 1989 and, more recently, Oshita, 2004). Our approach, however, seeks to identify the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic conditions, as well as conditions deriving from processing mechanisms, under which learners produce inverted subjects, regardless of errors resu...
Subject Position and Information Structure in L2 Spanish
Information structure imposes changes in word order in Spanish. As a result, constituents introducing new information in discourse tend to appear in final position, where they receive prosodic prominence. English speakers, on the other hand, modify the prosodic contour to mark the status of information. The constraints regulating the realization of focus constituents can be either syntactic (e.g. in the expression of broad focus with unaccusative verbs) or pragmatic (e.g. in the realization of subject focus). Given the cross-linguistic differences between English and Spanish, several studies have examined how production is affected by the L1. Using contextualized production and acceptability judgment tasks including question-answer pairs, these studies have shown that only advanced speakers accept and produce post-verbal subjects in contexts of s ubject focus, or in broad focus contexts with unaccusative verbs. In the present study, the acceptability of pre-verbal and post-verbal subjects is compared considering different discursive contexts (i.e. broad focus, VP focus, and subject focus) but presenting only one possibility (SV(O) or V(O)S). Three groups, of 14 participants each, took part of the study: native speakers, intermediate learners, and advanced learners. Using two-way repeated measures ANOVA's and paired t-tests, we were able to conclude that advanced speakers behave in a more native-like manner than intermediate learners, disfavoring post-verbal subjects in contexts of VP focus, as well as in contexts of broad focus with unergative and transitive verbs. Non-native speakers, nonetheless, are not capable of blocking the acceptability of pre-verbal subjects in those contexts where native speakers disfavor them (e.g. broad focus with unaccusative verbs and in contexts of subject focus). Furthermore, the results show that learners do not only favor the L1 rule; they also overgeneralize the L2 rule in infelicitous contexts. The findings are interpreted within the Multiple Grammars Model.
The L 2 Acquisition of Inchoative Structures by L 1 Spanish Speakers
2016
The present study provides evidence in favor of transfer as a developmentally constrained process in the L2 acquisition of inchoative forms of the causative alternation by L1 Spanish/L2 English learners at different levels of proficiency. Different types of L1 grammatical properties (akin to Full Transfer) seem to be transferred in later rather than in early L2 acquisition. 60 college students in Lima, Peru, were tested using a picture-based acceptability judgment task to elicit learners' responses, and corrections of the sentences that they found unacceptable. The sentence correction analysis revealed that morphological and lexico-syntactic transfer interacted at higher proficiency. It is concluded that L1 transfer is conditioned by development of L2
Language Teaching Research, 2018
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.
The Acquisition of Word Order in Different Learner Types
2000
The aim of this work is twofold. First, I will examine whether the acquisition of word order is subject to transfer in child second language learners (cL2), as has been claimed for adult second language learners (Schwartz & Sprouse 1996). Second I will provide a classification of the cL2 children on the basis of the frequency of transfer, using predictions that can be derived from the Full Transfer Full Access Hypothesis (FTFA Schwartz & Sprouse 1996). I will investigate two groups of young children acquiring German (L1 French) and French (L1 German) as a second language at the age of 3-4. In particular, I will analyze the acquisition of word order by looking at the subject and verb position in main clauses and the OV/VO parameter (Neeleman and Weerman 1999) taking into account all clauses with complex verbs. According to the FTFA: a) transfer must be systematic at the onset of acquisition and b) all of the syntactic differences in the L1 must be transferred into the L2 grammar. I will demonstrate that, contrary to the prediction of the FTFA, the attested transfer seems to depend on the structural properties of the languages involved, rather than reflecting full transfer from L1 to L2. More precisely, what seems to look like transfer is asymmetrically distributed in the observed syntactic domain: German children acquiring French do not transfer the German V2 into French, while French children acquiring German use the ungrammatical V3 structure, even in later stages of acquisition. In main clauses with a complex verb, transfer appears in both groups of children. This paper is organized as follows: in section 2, I will outline the differences between French and German in the syntactic domain under investigation. In section 3, I will present the data. In section 4 and 5, I will move to the results. In section 6 conclusions will be drawn.