Table Of ContentThe Acquisition of Spanish in Understudied Language Pairings
Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics (IHLL)
issn 2213-3887
IHLL aims to provide a single home for the highest quality monographs and edited volumes
pertaining to Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics. In an effort to be as inclusive as possible, the
series includes volumes that represent the many sub-fields and paradigms of linguistics that
do high quality research targeting Iberian Romance languages. IHLL considers proposals that
focus on formal syntax, semantics, morphology, phonetics/phonology, pragmatics from any
established research paradigm, as well as psycholinguistics, language acquisition, historical
linguistics, applied linguistics and sociolinguistics. The editorial board is comprised of experts
in all of the aforementioned fields.
For an overview of all books published in this series, please see
http://benjamins.com/catalog/ihll
Editors
Jason Rothman Jennifer Cabrelli Amaro
University of Reading University of Illinois at Chicago
Editorial Board
Sonia Colina Michael Iverson Liliana Sánchez
University of Arizona Macquarie University Rutgers University
João Costa Paula Kempchinsky Ana Lúcia Santos
Universidade Nova de Lisboa University of Iowa Universidade de Lisboa
Inês Duarte Juana M. Liceras Carmen Silva-Corvalán
Universidade de Lisboa University of Ottawa University of Southern
Sónia Frota John M. Lipski California
Universidade de Lisboa Pennsylvania State University Juan Uriagereka
Ángel J. Gallego Gillian Lord University of Maryland
University of Barcelona University of Florida Elena Valenzuela
María del Pilar García Mayo Jairo Nunes University of Ottawa
Universidad del País Vasco Universidade de São Paulo Bill VanPatten
Anna Gavarró Acrisio Pires Michigan State University
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Kimberly L. Geeslin Pilar Prieto
Indiana University Universitat Pampeu Fabra
Volume 3
The Acquisition of Spanish in Understudied Language Pairings
Edited by Tiffany Judy and Silvia Perpiñán
The Acquisition of Spanish
in Understudied Language Pairings
Edited by
Tiffany Judy
Wake Forest University
Silvia Perpiñán
The University of Western Ontario
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
doi 10.1075/ihll.3
Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress:
lccn 2014038339 (print) / 2014047123 (e-book)
isbn 978 90 272 5802 1 (Hb)
isbn 978 90 272 6908 9 (e-book)
© 2015 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Table of contents
Introduction
The importance of crosslinguistic comparison in the study
of the acquisition of Spanish 1
Tiffany Judy & Silvia Perpiñán
part i. Spanish as the L2 in a bilingual society
Crosslinguistic influences in the mapping of functional features
in Quechua-Spanish Bilingualism 21
Liliana Sánchez
Verbal agreement in the L2 Spanish of speakers of Nahuatl 49
Alma P. Ramírez-Trujillo & Joyce Bruhn de Garavito
Early coda production in bilingual Spanish and Basque 75
Maria-José Ezeizabarrena & Alaitz Alegria
The locative paradigm in the L2 Spanish of Catalan native speakers 105
Silvia Perpiñán
part ii. Spanish as an L2 in a non-bilingual society
The acquisition of Spanish in a bilingual and a trilingual L1 setting:
Combining Spanish with German, French and Catalan 135
Laia Arnaus Gil & Natascha Müller
Knowledge and processing of subject-related discourse properties
in L2 near-native speakers of Spanish, L1 Farsi 169
Tiffany Judy
Subject pronouns in the L2 Spanish of Moroccan Arabic speakers:
Evidence from bilingual and second language learners 201
Aurora Bel & Estela García-Alcaraz
The construal of goal-oriented motion events by Swedish speakers
of L2 Spanish: Encoding of motion endpoints and Manner of motion 233
Alejandra Donoso & Emanuel Bylund
i The Acquisition of Spanish in Understudied Language Pairings
part iii. Spanish as an L2 in an instructional context
Object drop in L2 Spanish, (complex) feature reassembly, and
L1 pre-emption: Comparing English, Chinese, European and
Brazilian Portuguese learners 257
Michael Iverson & Jason Rothman
The acquisition of differential object marking in Spanish
by Turkish speakers 281
Silvina Montrul & Ayʂe Gürel
Copula choice in adjectival constructions in Dutch L1 Spanish L2 309
Manuela Pinto & Alexia Guerra Rivera
Typological proximity in L2 acquisition: The Spanish non-native grammar
of French speakers 329
Juana M. Liceras & Anahí Alba de la Fuente
Index 359
The importance of crosslinguistic comparison
in the study of the acquisition of Spanish
Tiffany Judy & Silvia Perpiñán
Wake Forest University / The University of Western Ontario
The aim of this volume is to present to both the reader and the field a collection
of empirical studies examining the acquisition of Spanish, currently one of the
world’s most spoken and studied languages, in combination with languages other
than English. Despite the multitude of speakers of varied L1s that acquire Spanish,
no collection of understudied language combinations, such as those that comprise
this volume, has thus far been compiled. The research that appears herein includes
a variety of acquisition scenarios (child and adult), learning contexts (classroom,
naturalistic immersion), societal contexts (bilingual and non-bilingual societies),
language pairings (typologically similar and typologically dissimilar) and linguistic
properties (discourse constraints, adjectival constructions and coda production to
name a few), yet holds constant the acquisition of Spanish. This variety and breadth
of coverage is the base of what we consider a well-rounded survey of Spanish in
the context of bi/multilingualism and second language acquisition (SLA), but also
makes possible several important theoretical contributions.
For example, a major theoretical question examined in acquisition studies,
whether early bilingualism or adult SLA, regards the nature and representation
of the speaker’s developing linguistic system. While it is assumed in this volume
and the chapters that comprise it that language acquisition is guided by Universal
Grammar (UG), previous linguistic knowledge has observable effects on bilingual
development and SLA. It is only through a systematic comparison of different lan-
guage combinations that we can tease apart what comes from first language trans-
fer (whether facilitative or non-facilitative) and what comes from other sources
such as Universal Grammar, frequency of input, or general cognition. One per-
tinent example of this type of research is Iverson and Rothman’ chapter, where
object drop in Spanish is examined in two Romance languages (Brazilian and
European Portuguese) in conjunction with two non-Romance languages ( English
and Mandarin Chinese). The purpose of this chapter is to account for some
observed differences in the developmental sequences and ultimate attainment in
the L2 acquisition of the same target property from various L1 backgrounds. The
chapter contributes significantly to SLA theory and data analysis conventions in
doi 10.1075/ihll.3.01jud
© 2015 John Benjamins Publishing Company
2 Tiffany Judy & Silvia Perpiñán
that it demonstrates, through comparison of the four aforementioned language
pairings, that a simple view of L1 transfer alone does not adequately explain the
different behavior from the L1 groups. Instead, Iverson and Rothman propose that
the theoretical constructs of L1 pre-emption (Trahey & White 1993) and feature
reassembly (Lardiere 2008, 2009) are essential in L2 theorizing. This and other
crosslinguistic descriptions, many of which are original, add to the field’s general
knowledge of linguistic systems and, more importantly, to the description of uni-
versal principles and parameterized properties.
Furthermore, systematic comparisons of this sort allow researchers to inves-
tigate how Spanish may develop at different rates or through different transitional
stages depending on the first or other language(s). An example from the literature
is VanPatten (1987), where it was proposed that native (L1) English speakers prog-
ress through a five-stage development in their acquisition of ser/estar in Spanish.
Taking into account the syntactic structure and the semantic features involved
in the different ser/estar constructions, VanPatten (2010) simplified this proposal
and concluded that the actual learning problem is estar, given its marked aspec-
tual nature in comparison to the unmarked aspectual feature of ser (Schmitt 1997,
2005). However, this proposal can only be generalized if corroborating evidence
from other language combinations obtains. In this volume, three chapters inves-
tigate the acquisition of Spanish ser/estar in combination with Catalan, Dutch,
German and French, and in different linguistic contexts. For example, Pinto and
Guerra Rivera examine the acquisition of the copular verbs with adjectives by
adult classroom L2 learners whose native language is Dutch, another language
with a binary copular system. Pinto and Guerra Rivera argue that acquisition of
ser/estar + adjective, is not problematic across the board, and that only a sub-
set of semantic properties denoted by estar + adjective are problematic for their
Dutch speakers. Perpiñán’s chapter explores the expression of location with ser/
estar (and also haber) in Spanish, and demonstrates that some semantic proper-
ties encoded with the expression of location can still somehow be problematic
for very advanced bilingual speakers whose L1 is Catalan. These two chapters
highlight the difficulties posed by the acquisition of estar and the importance of
understanding the underlying syntax and semantics of the ser/estar structures,
as proposed by VanPatten (2010). Arnaus Gil and Müller, on the other hand, in
their study of bilingual and trilingual children, observe that ser is more problem-
atic than estar for children, unlike what has been previously reported for adult L2
acquirers. These new data on the acquisition of ser/estar complement, redefine
and corroborate some proposals put forward by VanPatten (1985, 1987, 2010) for
English-speaking learners of Spanish, showing that it is only through examination
of multiple language combinations that we can gain a more accurate and complete
picture of the acquisition stages.
The importance of crosslinguistic comparison in the study of the acquisition of Spanish 3
Still other pairings from the same language family, namely Romance lan-
guages, make it possible to investigate microparametric differences and their
potential effects on SLA. Liceras and Alba de la Fuente’s overview chapter on the
interlanguage of French speakers learning Spanish, as well as Perpiñán’s study on
the Spanish grammar of Catalan-dominant Spanish-Catalan bilinguals demon-
strate that only by exploring subtle differences (i.e. microparametric differences)
between typologically closely-related languages can we properly describe the
implicit grammars of these speakers. Specifically, Liceras and Alba de la Fuente’s
chapter explores microparametric differences between French and Spanish on
noun compounds, plural realization, clitic clusters, plural and case marking in
quantifiers, passives and subject realization and conclude that, even when the lan-
guages are typologically proximate to one another, they might not be typologically
similar. This may be a cause of difficulties comparable to those that L2 speakers
encounter when faced with strong parametric differences or surface structure fil-
ters. These authors, among others, provide data on plural and case marking in
quantifiers, and demonstrate that the advanced French-Spanish speakers show
evidence of neither the L1 nor the L2 setting, but rather that of another typological
proximate Romance language, in this case Catalan. This type of research not only
contributes to the current debate regarding microparametric variation in mor-
phosyntax and SLA theory, but also makes contributions to the field of linguistics
as it provides a more fine-grained analysis of the linguistic variation evidenced in
the world’s languages as well as potentially providing insight into the L2 develop-
mental process.
Lastly, some language combinations provide a piece of the puzzle regarding
examination of certain hypotheses that are not fully testable in the absence of the
specific language pairing. For example, the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace 2011,
2012) claims that language combination is not a deterministic factor in native-like
processing of external interface-conditioned properties. That is, the facilitative or
non-facilitative nature of the L1 and L2 is not predicted to determine native-like
processing. To test this prediction, though, both facilitative and non-facilitative
language pairings must be examined. Judy’s chapter provides one necessary piece
of the puzzle for falsifying this claim in that it examines a language pairing and
property for which L1 transfer is facilitative. Thus, holding methodology and pro-
ficiency of the participants constant, if speakers of facilitative language pairings
such as Farsi-Spanish outperform speakers of non-facilitative pairings such as
English-Spanish, counterevidence is found for this specific claim.
An ongoing debate exists in the field regarding the role of input in language
development and language acquisition. In generative linguistics, however, the
role of other linguistic factors, usually those external to the speaker’s mind such
as quantity and quality of input or societal context, have been downplayed to a
4 Tiffany Judy & Silvia Perpiñán
degree since the emphasis has largely been placed on describing implicit gram-
mars and linguistic competence. While describing language acquirers’ implicit
grammars remains a goal of this volume, we aim to do so while not obviating
the possible influence of external factors in the acquisition process. For this rea-
son, the volume is organized in three sections based on the type of contact the
speakers had with the Spanish language. Section 1 of the volume presents four
chapters that examine acquisition of Spanish in four distinct bilingual society con-
texts: Quechua-Spanish in Peru; Nahuatl-Spanish in Mexico; Basque-Spanish in
the Basque Country; and Catalan-Spanish in Catalonia. Section 2 contains four
chapters that present research conducted on naturalistic aquirers of Spanish, be
they children or adults, in non-bilingual societies: German-Spanish, French-
Spanish and German-Catalan-Spanish child speakers in Europe; Farsi-Spanish
adult speakers in Argentina; Moroccan Arabic-Spanish child sequential speakers
tested as teenagers in Spain as well as typical classroom L2 learners of Spanish; and
Swedish-Spanish speakers in Chile. Lastly, Section 3 is largely comprised of typical
adult classroom learners of Spanish: an overview chapter that includes B razilian
Portuguese, European Portuguese and English classroom learners of Spanish as
well as Mandarin Chinese-Spanish child, teenage and adult naturalistically acquir-
ing bilinguals in Peru; Turkish-Spanish learners in Turkey; Dutch-Spanish learners
tested in the Netherlands; and an overview chapter that examines French-Spanish
learners. The following sections provide a brief introduction to the acquisitional
setting, merits and description of each chapter.
1. Spanish as the L2 in a bilingual society
The collection of studies included in this section describes the grammar of bilin-
guals living in a bilingual society and whose non-dominant or second language is
Spanish. In a bilingual society, both languages generally have considerable presence
in the life of the community and are both frequently activated in the bilingual’s
mind. Still, in most bilingual situations, speakers tend to identify themselves, be
dominant or be raised in one language, which naturally creates an asymmetry in
the speakers’ bilingual competence. Nonetheless, the linguistic dominance in one
language over the other can be dynamic and might change over the life span of the
speaker depending on the context or the speaker’s needs, as seen in Ramírez Trujillo
and Bruhn de Garavito’s chapter. In the studies included in this section, Spanish is
the language learnt later in life, as the majority language, usually in a naturalistic
environment, although sometimes also in instructional contexts since Spanish is
taught in the classroom. Our aim in distinguishing between Spanish acquisition in
a bilingual context versus a non-bilingual context (Section 2), is to properly define
