Matthew Kanwit

University of Pittsburgh | Pitt · Department of Linguistics

Communicative competence is an essential language skill, the ability to adjust language use according to specific contexts and to employ knowledge and strategies for successful communication. This unique text offers a multidisciplinary, critical, state-of-the-art research overview for this skill in second language learners. Expert contributors fro...

This concluding chapter provides a brief review of the history of the construct of communicative competence as well as of the volume’s component chapters. This chapter then synthesizes the contents of the volume, focusing on four overarching takeaway messages: the utility of communicative competence for (re)framing longstanding questions, the preva...

The present chapter provides a historical overview of the notion of communicative competence, including a detailed account of early publications in the field of second language acquisition that argued for the importance of the construct and debated what it should include. The chapter explains important constructs in the study of communicative compe...

Beyond language use, an important component of communicative competence is the ability to attend to sociolinguistic variation in the input, which requires knowledge regarding when to expect a particular form over another variant according to linguistic or extralinguistic factors. This study explores the acquisition of sociophonetic competence, empl...

The chapter begins with the early considerations of sociolinguistic competence for second language acquisition (SLA). We then turn to critical issues associated with this construct. Next, recent research contributions are outlined, including the principal methods employed by investigators interested in tapping sociolinguistic competence. The chapte...

Learners must develop the ability to perceive linguistic and social meaning in their second language (L2) to interact effectively, but relatively little is known about how learners link social meaning to a single phonetic variable. Using a matched-guise test targeting coda /s/ (realized as [s] or debuccalized [h]), we explore whether L2 Spanish lea...

This study contributes a new analysis of dequeísmo, innovative use of postverbal de, in the Spanish of Caracas. We coded 160 sociolinguistic interviews for discourse topic, number of intervening words, verb tense‑mood‑aspect, and main‑clause subject, along with speaker age, gender, and social class. The analysis diverges from prior work by coding t...

Learners may show sensitivity to linguistic factors in more controlled tasks before doing so in production, although advanced learners often demonstrate greater inter-task consistency. Future-time expression in Spanish serves as a good test case for such variability due to the multiple forms speakers use. Although recent research has considered pro...

Despite substantial scholarship relating to word structure (Anderson, 2018), for English affixes the relationship between productivity, genre, and second language (L2) learning remains unclear. Analysis of the existing literature reveals that deadjectival noun suffixes (i.e., nouns derived from adjectives such as appropriacy or goodness) have been...

Although linguistic research has often focused on one domain (e.g., as influenced by generative prioritization of the Autonomy of Syntax), critical findings have been uncovered by exploring the interaction of multiple domains (e.g., the link between morphological status and lateralization of /ɾ/; the syntactic–pragmatic interface’s constraints on s...

Learners must develop the ability to vary language according to linguistic and situational factors to produce context-appropriate utterances. Likewise, interpreting the additional meaning conveyed through language variation is essential for successful communication. Nevertheless, research on the interpretation of the variable copulas in Spanish is...

Age is an under-analyzed variable in linguistic research concerning gender and sexuality. We consider these three constructs by examining diminutives as an index of gay sexuality in Madrid Spanish across two tasks. Although phonetic cues have received great attention, morphological features (e.g. diminutives) may also index gayness (Mendes 2014). M...

Tripartite systems demonstrate how a dominant form coexists with other variants without any falling into disuse, as each occupies a particular space (Kapatsinski, 2009). Intensifiers reveal language change through rapid variability and recycling in popularity (Tagliamonte, 2008), as seen in variationist analyses of Spanish intensification via bien...

Although two languages in contact may contain similar structures, superficial structural similarities may abscond important differences. The comparative method critically determines whether the languages differ in relative rates of variant use, the significance of independent variables, constraint rankings, and ordering within factor groups (Poplac...

Since many linguistic structures are variable (i. e. conveyed by multiple forms), building a second-language grammar critically involves developing sociolinguistic competence (Canale and Swain. 1980. Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics 1(1). 1–47), including knowledge of context...

We examine variability in the position of attributive adjectives in Spanish through a corpus-based variationist study. Results indicate that syllabic length differences, lexical frequency (both absolute and relative), and semantic class play a role on variable adjective ordering in Venezuelan Spanish.

Tripartite systems demonstrate how a dominant form coexists with other variants without any falling into disuse, as each occupies a particular space (Kapatsinski, 2009). Intensifiers reveal language change through rapid variability and recycling in popularity (Tagliamonte, 2008), as seen in variationist analyses of Spanish intensification via bien...

The present study investigates to what extent first‐language (L1) and second‐language (L2) speakers use lexical futures, whether such forms provide evidence of development, and whether these forms are constrained differently from the present indicative (PI) according to linguistic predictors. It uses a combined approach through its concept‐oriented...

We examine variable past-time expression in urban Tucumán, Argentina, an understudied region representative of the set of Andean varieties included in Northwestern Argentinean Spanish. We analyze the present perfect (PP) and preterit across two contexts of data collection: a sociolinguistic interview and a contextualized preference task across a ra...

Although the Spanish verb andar ‘to walk’ has a prescriptively irregular preterit conjugation (e.g., anduve ‘I walked’), adult native speakers may produce an innovative, regularized form (e.g., andé). Nevertheless, researchers have had difficulty documenting this form of variation. The current study presents the first systematic, variationist analy...

We examine variable past-time expression in urban Tucumán, Argentina, an understudied region representative of the set of Andean varieties included in Northwestern Argentinean Spanish. We analyze the present perfect (PP) and preterit across two contexts of data collection: a sociolinguistic interview and a contextualized preference task across a ra...

The Spanish mood contrast is a good test case for research on acquiring form-meaning connections in contexts where input is variable and multiple areas of the grammar are implicated (e.g., syntax, semantics, pragmatics). Nevertheless, research on interpretation of this contrast lags and little is known about how individual lexical items and pattern...

Spanish gustar-type psychological verbs have a reverse, intransitive structure that is notably different from their direct, transitive counterpart in English. Research has pointed to the dative marker a to be the most problematic element for learners to acquire (Quesada, M. 2008. *Yo gusto pasteles de chocolate: De la transitividad hacia la intrans...

In the past few decades, interest in second language (L2) acquisition has often moved away from error analyses and toward reporting what learners produce and select regardless of prescriptive accuracy. One type of research in this vein is that of L2 variationism, following the lead of first language (L1) work on variationist sociolinguistics, which...

Research on nativelike variation in second language (L2) systems indicates that learners studying abroad may adapt to regional norms as they build sociolinguistic competence (e.g., Kanwit & Solon, 2013; Salgado‐Robles, 2014). Spanish exhibits variation between the intensifiers muy [very] and bien [very] across numerous dialects. Recent research has...

The present study investigated vowel harmony (VH) in two varieties of Peninsular Spanish - Eastern Andalusian and Montañes. Despite both varieties exhibiting VH, the triggers and targets for each variety result in metaphonic alternations that are quite distinct. Although previous research has extensively documented the VH of Andalusia and Montañes,...

We examine variable past-time expression in urban Tucumán, Argentina, an understudied region representative of the set of Andean varieties included in Northwestern Argentinean Spanish. We analyze the present perfect (PP) and preterit across two contexts of data collection: a sociolinguistic interview and a contextualized preference task across a ra...

Empirical study of variation between the Spanish intensifiers bien ‘very’ and muy ‘very’ has received little attention. A recent exception is (Brown, Esther L. & Mayra Cortés-Torres. 2013. Puerto Rican intensifiers: Bien/muy variables. In Ana Maria Carvalho & Sara Beaudrie (eds.), Selected proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics...

This study aimed to advance research on first and second language future-time expression in Spanish and to demonstrate the strengths of combining functionalist, concept-oriented approaches (e.g., Andersen, 1984; Bardovi-Harlig, 2000; Shirai, 1995; von Stutterheim & Klein, 1987) with variationist approaches. The study targeted 140 participants (120...

The current study analyzes evidentiality marking through a variationist account of (de)queísmo, the post-verbal use of the preposition de prior to the complementizer que and the verb’s declarative component. Data are taken from the Estudio Sociolingüístico de Caracas corpus and special attention is paid to an independent linguistic variable which h...

The present study connects research on the L2 acquisition of variable structures to the ever-growing body of research on the role of study abroad in the language learning process. The data come from a group of 46 English-speaking learners of Spanish who participated in immersion programs in two distinct locations, Valencia, Spain and San Luis Potos...

The current study analyzes via conversation analytic methods (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson 1974) the turn structure of native speaker (NS) and nonnative speaker (NNS) participants within an electronic chat in Spanish, with a focus on turn organization and its effect on sequential organization (i.e. openings, closings, and repairs). Additionally, g...

The present study fills a need for investigations of learner and native speaker (NS) interpretation of the Spanish subjunctive in contexts that allow variation. The analysis compares responses by NSs and three levels of learners on a written interpretation task in which each item contained a temporal indicator (cuando “when”, después de que “after”...

The present study adopts a concept-oriented approach to explore the early stages of acquisition of future-time reference in second language (L2) Spanish. Specifically, it investigates the lexical and grammatical forms employed to express future time and the sequence of emergence of future verbal morphology by beginning and intermediate adult Spanis...

While the few studies of child future expression have noted that the periphrastic variant is more common in children's speech than adults', to the best of our knowledge little if any work has been done on child L1 expression of futurity from a variationist perspective. Given this gap in the literature, the current study applies variationist methods...

The current investigation connects the study of the L2 acquisition of variable structures to the ever-growing body of research on the role of study abroad in the process of language learning, adding evidence of the specific changes that take place in learner grammars during a stay in the target environment. The analysis is based on results from a g...

Spanish gustar-type psychological verbs continue to be one of the most difficult constructions for English-speaking language learners to acquire, as this indirect structure is quite different from its direct, transitive counterpart in English. Further, many elements of the structure need to be mastered, including the use of the dative a, indirect o...