No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Anaphora resolution in topic continuity: Evidence from L1 English–L2 Spanish data in the CEDEL2 corpus
Abstract
Variability in subject expression has been a widely studied phenomenon over the last few decades and is still the focus of a considerable body of research in both native (L1) and second language (L2) grammars. Crucially, the production of L2 Spanish learners, both written and oral, has been investigated in depth with a view to understand how they use referential expressions (REs) like null and overt pronominals (i.e. what has been traditionally called anaphora resolution) and other REs such as lexical noun phrases (NPs), as well as which factors constrain their use in real discourse (e.g. Blackwell & Quesada, 2012; Lozano, 2009b, 2016). Even though L2 learners acquire the morphosyntactic features that license null subjects in L2 Spanish from very early stages (Liceras, 1989; Phinney, 1987), results from both experimental and corpus-based developmental studies (e.g. Lozano, 2009b, 2018; Montrul & Rodríguez-Louro, 2006) have shown that certain features are particularly difficult for non-native speakers even at end-states of acquisition. L2 learners show persistent deficits in selecting felicitous null/overt pronouns when constrained at the interfaces (e.g. syntax–discourse interface), following Sorace’s Interface Hypothesis (2011, 2012), which holds that such features are more difficult to acquire than merely syntactic ones. However, Lozano (2009b, 2016) used a near-native corpus of L2 Spanish learners to show that these deficits are rather selective and do not necessarily affect the whole pronominal paradigm: most of these deficits were (i) attributed to third person human singular subject REs (whereas the rest of the pronominal paradigm was unproblematic), and (ii) were mainly observable in topic continuity scenarios (whereas topic shift and other scenarios were not problematic). These scenarios will be further explored in this chapter using a corpus approach, which will also allow for the investigation of other less-explored factors that constrain the form of subject REs in native and non-native grammars.
... On the contrary, non-null subject languages like English require an explicit sentential subject, typically overt pronouns or NPs (see examples (2) to (4)). The selection of the most felicitous RE is also constrained by pragmatic/discursive factors like information status, antecedent accessibility, number, gender, distance of potential antecedents, character status, and so on (Ariel, 2001;Lozano, 2016;Martín-Villena & Lozano, 2020;Quesada & Lozano, 2020). ...
... An instance of TC is introduced in (7) where the same subject, Chaplin, is maintained over several clauses via the overt pronominal he. In English, TC is typically encoded by overt pronouns, while null pronouns are limited to a specific syntactic configuration: when the same subject is maintained (TC) through coordination (Martín-Villena & Lozano, 2020;Quesada & Lozano, 2020). In example (1), the speaker produces a felicitous null pronoun (Ø) because its referent, Charlie Chaplin, is maintained and the subject of a coordinated sentence. ...
... Thus, phenomena at the interface between two linguistic levels, for example, AR at the syntaxdiscourse interface, may not be fully acquired due to the difficulty of simultaneously processing L2 syntactic and discursive constraints. An example of this difficulty to achieve native-like RE management is learners' tendency to produce more explicit REs than pragmatically required regardless of L1-L2 combinations (Cunnings et al., 2017;Leclercq & Lenart, 2013;Lozano, 2016;Martín-Villena & Lozano, 2020;Prentza, 2014;Quesada & Lozano, 2020). Allowing learners to plan their performance is expected to mitigate task demands, reduce their cognitive load, and help them focus on form, mitigating the tendency to redundancy and facilitating the production of the most pragmatically felicitous RE. ...
Previous research has investigated the effect of planning time (PT) on L2 learners’ production regarding fluency, complexity, and accuracy, but its influence at the discourse level has been overlooked. Thus, this study explores the influence of PT on learners’ written performance regarding anaphora resolution (AR) and their pragmatically (in)felicitous choices of referring expressions (REs) in discourse since PT may reduce learners’ cognitive load and facilitate the production of pragmatically felicitous REs.
Two film-retelling tasks were completed by intermediate L1 Spanish–L2 English learners and English natives, further divided into a planning and a non-planning subgroup. Their compositions were analysed focusing on the REs produced, taking into consideration the pragmatic context. Results showed a PT effect on learners’ RE choices, although not all pragmatic contexts were equally affected. Planning time exerted a positive influence on topic continuity contexts, where learners produced more economical forms, but no effect was observed in topic shift scenarios.
... Theoretically-motivated CEDEL2 tasks (7 Retell a recent film you have seen recently; 13 Retell the frog story and 14 Retell the Chaplin video) trigger different information-status contexts (topic continuity vs. topic shift with varying number of potential antecedents) that constrain anaphora resolution in native and L2 Spanish. Such tasks have shed light on SLA theoretical issues like: (1) the Pronominal Feature Geometry hypothesis (Lozano, 2009b) since learners' well-known deficits with anaphora resolution selectively affect only 3rd person human anaphoric pronouns; (2) the Pragmatic Principles Violation Hypothesis (Lozano, 2016;Martín-Villena and Lozano, 2020) since learners are more redundant (in topic-continuity contexts) than ambiguous (in topic-shift contexts); and (3) the Position of Antecedent Hypothesis and the Accessibility Hierarchy (Georgopoulos, 2017). ...
... This can be achieved via SLAmotivated corpus design and fine-grained, theoretically-informed tagsets to test particular hypotheses, as done with CEDEL2 (e.g. Georgopoulos, 2017;Lozano, 2009bLozano, , 2016Martín-Villena and Lozano, 2020) and SPLLOC (Domínguez et al., 2013;Tracy-Ventura and Myles, 2015). ...
This article presents and reviews a new methodological resource for research in second language acquisition (SLA), CEDEL2 ( Corpus Escrito del Español L2 ‘L2 Spanish Written Corpus’), and its free online search-engine interface ( cedel2.learnercorpora.com ). CEDEL2 is a multi-first-language corpus (Spanish, English, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, French, Greek, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic) of L2 Spanish learners at all proficiency levels. It additionally contains several native control subcorpora (English, Portuguese, Greek, Japanese, and Arabic). Its latest release (version 2) holds material from around 4,400 speakers, which amounts to over 1,100,000 words. CEDEL2 follows strict corpus-design criteria (Sinclair, 2005) and L2 corpus-design recommendations (Tracy-Ventura and Paquot, 2021), and all subcorpora are equally designed to be fully contrastable, as recommended by Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (Granger, 2015). Thanks to its design and web interface, CEDEL2 allows for complex searches which can be further narrowed down according to its SLA-motivated variables, e.g. first language (L1), proficiency level, self-reported proficiency level, age of onset to the L2, length of exposure to the L2, length of residence in a Spanish-speaking country, knowledge of other foreign languages, type of task, etc. These CEDEL2 features allow L2 researchers to address SLA questions and hypotheses.
... In subject position, null-subject languages like Spanish, Greek, or Italian license null pronouns, whereas nonnull subject languages like English, German, or French require overt pronouns. The choice of REs is constrained by factors such as the information status of the RE (i.e., topic-continuity or topic-shift), the number of activated antecedents, and the nature of the characters intervening in the narrative (Hendriks, 2003;Kang, 2004;Lozano, 2009Lozano, , 2016Martín-Villena & Lozano, 2020;Ryan, 2015). ...
... L2ers are thus not fully able to choose the most felicitous REs at the syntax-discourse interface in a native-like manner even at advanced (C1) levels, though future corpus research will have to determine whether native-like patterns are eventually attainable. Additionally, not all contexts at the syntax-discourse interface are equally problematic, as discussed by Slabakova (2016) and White (2011), because L2ers' performance in topic-shift contexts does not significantly differ from natives', but it does in topic-continuity as reported in previous L2 Spanish corpus (Lozano, 2016;Martín-Villena and Lozano, 2020) and experimental (Lozano, 2018) studies. The overexplicitness phenomenon that L2ers exhibit in topic-continuity contexts (i.e., higher production of overt pronouns but lower production of null pronouns than natives) is in line with previous corpus research (Crosthwaite, 2011;Hendriks, 2003;Leclercq & Lenart, 2013;Ryan, 2015), though note that these studies do not consider proficiency levels. ...
Referential expressions (REs) have been investigated in L2 English but to date there is no single study that systematically and simultaneously analyzes the development and acquisition of the multiple factors that constrain the choice of REs in natural discourse production. We investigate L1 Spanish–L2 English learners across three proficiency levels versus an English control group from the COREFL corpus. An analysis of both the RE and its antecedent(s) reveals that different intra- and extralinguistic factors constrain the choice of REs (information status, activated antecedents, syntactic configurations, characterhood, within-task effect, and proficiency level). L2 learners (L2ers) are sensitive to some factors but are unable to fully attain native-like levels even at advanced stages. They do not transfer null subjects from their L1 contrary to previous L2 research, and do not find all contexts at the syntax-discourse interface equally problematic, thus confirming previous theoretical proposals and empirical findings.
... Both native speakers and L2 learners prefer the overt DP/NP for same gender antecedents (e.g., Pedro [+MASC]/Antonio [+MASC]). In addition, in the case of two different gender antecedents (e.g., Pedro [+MASC]/Andrea [-MASC]), native speakers and L2 learners show a tendency to prefer the overt pronoun (Lozano, 2016;Villena & Lozano, 2020). ...
We investigate whether dominance, language experience, and increased interaction have an effect on the development of heritage bilingual children’s knowledge of the discourse-pragmatic constraints guiding null and overt subjects. A group of child heritage bilinguals ( n = 18, mean age = 5;5) and comparison groups of adults: Mexican Spanish monolinguals ( n = 15), heritage bilinguals in the United States ( n = 16), and English monolinguals in the United States ( n = 16) completed a language background questionnaire, a portion of the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment ( BESA ) in English and Spanish, a forced-choice task ( FCT ) in Spanish, and two acceptability judgment tasks ( AJT s): one in English and one in Spanish. Results showed that heritage children and adults pattern similarly and differently from adult monolinguals. Increased interaction at home has a positive effect on accuracy in the pragmatic conditions that license null subjects in Spanish without affecting overt subject patterns in English, the dominant language.
... We decided to include only animate characters since some corpus studies on reference production in bilingualism/second language acquisition have shown that animacy plays a significant role in determining the type of referring expression which is used in discourse (Lozano, 2016;Martín-Villena & Lozano, 2020). ...
Several studies have observed that bilinguals tend to use and accept overspecified, redundant referring expressions in one of their two languages. This tendency has been mainly analysed as an effect of cross-linguistic influence (for instance, from a non-null-subject language to a null-subject one) or quantity and quality of language exposure. We aim to show that, beyond cross-linguistic and language-exposure effects, the use and acceptability of overspecified forms is the outcome of individual patterns of reference management, which are shared across the two languages. We tested 31 Greek-Italian bilingual children by using a narrative task (assessing the use of referring expressions in discourse) and a timed judgement task (related to the interpretation of referring expressions). The results show that reference strategies can be shared between the two languages and, in the bilingual group at stake in this study, this sharing is not modulated by language dominance or proficiency. The study introduces individual variation as one of the factors to consider when dealing with bilingual reference acquisition.
... This has been also reported for other L2 Romance languages such as Italian (Sorace, 2016 and references therein). More recent corpus work has shown that learners are indeed redundant by producing not only overt pronouns but also NPs when they are not pragmatically required, and that the overt/ null pronoun alternation in discourse is constrained by additional factors not reported in the experimental literature, like the number of antecedents, the syntactic environment, etc. (Blackwell & Quesada, 2012;Lozano, 2009bLozano, , 2016Martin-Villena & Lozano, 2020). ...
The aim of this chapter is to introduce the reader into the research process and to show them the use of a software to analyse corpus data and to design a follow-up experiment. To do so, we take a particular linguistic phenomenon as a case in point: the acquisition of pronouns in Spanish as a second language (L2).
We present a brief overview of research methods in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research, with a focus on corpus and experimental methods. After describing the linguistic phenomenon we are to be working with (pronouns), we discuss basic concepts in research (research questions, hypotheses, variables, constants, research methods, etc.). We finally take a hands-on approach to practising how to annotate a corpus and how to do statistics in the UAM Corpus Tool software. Finally, based on the corpus findings, we show how to design an experiment to confirm/refute the corpus findings. We argue that it is by triangulating corpus and experimental methods that we can get a fuller understanding of L2 learners’ language, which can ultimately provide a solid base for language teaching.
This study investigates the acquisition of anaphora resolution (AR) in Spanish as a second language (L2). According to the Position of Antecedent Strategy (PAS), in native Spanish null pronominal subjects are biased toward subject antecedents, whereas overt pronominal subjects show a “flexible” bias (typically toward non-subject but also toward subject antecedents). The PAS has been extensively investigated in experimental studies, though little is known about real production. We show how naturalistic production (corpus methods) can uncover crucial factors in the PAS that have not been explored in the experimental literature. We analyzed written samples from the CEDEL2 corpus: L1 English-L2 Spanish adult late-bilingual learners (intermediate, lower-advanced and upper-advanced proficiency levels) and a control group of adult Spanish monolinguals (N = 75 texts). Anaphors were manually annotated via a fine-grained, linguistically-motivated tagset in UAM Corpus Tool. Against traditional assumptions, our results reveal that (i) the PAS is not a privileged mechanism for resolving anaphora; (ii) it is more complex than assumed (in terms of the division of labor of anaphoric forms, their antecedents and the syntactic configuration in which they appear); (iii) the much-debated “flexible” bias of overt pronouns is apparent since they are hardly produced and are replaced by repeated NPs, which show a clear non-subject antecedent bias; (iv) at the syntax-discourse interface, the PAS is constrained by information structure in more complex ways than assumed: null pronouns mark topic continuity, whereas overtly realized referential expressions (overt REs: overt pronouns and NPs) mark topic shift. Learners show more difficulties with topic continuity (where they redundantly use overt pronouns) than with topic shift (where they normally disambiguate by using overtly realized REs), thus being more redundant than ambiguous, in line with the Pragmatic Principles Violation Hypothesis (PPVH) (Lozano, 2016). We finally argue that the insights from corpora should be implemented into experiments. The triangulation of corpus and experimental methods in bilingualism ultimately provides a clearer understanding of the phenomenon under investigation.
This study investigates the written production of direct object (DO) anaphora in L2 Spanish by adult English native speakers. It focuses on the use of clitics and full DPs in topic continuity, where highly salient topics are typically recovered by clitics in native Spanish. A combination of pragmatic factors in subject anaphora resolution (referential ambiguity and distance) and morphosyntactic factors in the acquisition of clitics (gender and animacy) was analyzed in 5 subcorpora from the CEDEL2 ( Corpus Escrito del Español L2) . Following Learner Corpus Research methodology, 773 anaphoric DOs and their antecedents were tagged across 150 texts (from low-intermediate to upper-advanced proficiency). Results showed that as learner proficiency increases, the predominant anaphoric strategy shifts from redundant DP overuse to felicitous pronominalization. Clitic avoidance is the general strategy intimately related to clitics’ morphosyntactic deficits at advanced levels, but also to pragmatic principles supporting the Pragmatic Principles Violation Hypothesis ( Lozano, 2016 ).
In research on intra-sentential pronominal anaphora resolution in null subject languages, it has been argued that null pronouns tend to be biased towards subject antecedents, whereas overt pronouns tend to prefer object antecedents, as predicted by Carminati’s ‘Position of the Antecedent Hypothesis’. However, these studies have mainly focused on only one of the two possible clause orders (main-subordinate or subordinate-main), which have not been overtly contrasted. This paper investigates the effects of clause order on the interpretation of third-person subject pronouns in globally ambiguous intra-sentential contexts by 49 native speakers of Spanish. The results of an acceptability judgment task explicitly comparing both clause orders indicate that relative clause order is a key factor affecting the interpretation of pronouns: while a preference of overt pronouns for object antecedents holds across clause orders, null pronouns show a bias towards subject antecedents only in subordinate-main sequences. These findings refine the Position of the Antecedent Hypothesis predictions by restricting them to subordinate-main complex sentences.
An area of second language acquisition (SLA) that has received much attention over the past decades is how adult second language (L2) learners acquire and process anaphors like overt and null pronouns. Anaphors are a pervasive phenomenon in language. SLA researchers have focused on Anaphora Resolution (AR), i.e., the mechanisms that allow speakers to determine how anaphors refer to their antecedents. Consider the English sentence David greeted Hugo while he was opening the door. The anaphor (the obligatory overt pronominal subject he) could potentially refer to either antecedent (the subject David or the object Hugo). In null-subject languages (e.g., Spanish, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Japanese, etc.), the situation is more complex, since both an overt (él ‘he’ in Spanish) and a null (Ø) pronominal subject can syntactically alternate and either can potentially refer to either antecedent: David saludó a Hugo mientras él/Ø abría la puerta. Adult L2 learners have an additional difficulty when resolving the anaphor since the way AR works in their mother tongue (L1) could influence their L2 acquisition. AR is a very frequent phenomenon whose investigation can shed light on fundamental questions in the discipline of SLA and Bilingualism: Acquisition and processing issues (How do adult learners acquire and process AR in their L2?); cross-linguistic influence (How does the anaphoric setup from their L1 influence their L2 acquisition? Does the learners’ L1 have a facilitative effect on their L2 in cases where the L1=L2 in terms of AR?); L2 development (How does AR develop in an L2 across proficiency levels?); ultimate attainment (Can near-native learners eventually master the subtleties of AR in their L2 in a native-like fashion?); the multiple factors that constrain AR (Which are the multiple (psycho)linguistic and discursive factors that determine learners’ anaphoric choice?); research methods (Which research methods (naturalistic versus experimental) can best reflect learners’ competence and performance of AR?); linguistic theory (Which are the SLA models that can best account for the observed AR facts in an L2?). In this article we will refer to key studies that address these topics. Given the topics covered in this bibliographical article (AR in adult SLA), the reader is referred to other related Oxford Bibliographies articles: anaphora and pronouns (see Anaphora, and Pronouns) as well as chapters covering aspects of SLA and bilingualism (Psycholinguistic Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition and Bilingualism, and Bilingualism and Multilingualism).
This study explores the development of anaphora resolution (AR) in late sequentialbilinguals, namely, adult Greek learners of Spanish at three proficiency levels (intermediate,lower advanced, upper advanced). The use of an overt/null pronominal subject anaphor isinvestigated in three discourse contexts: topic-continuity (a single antecedent requiring anull pronoun), contrastive-focus (two same-gender potential antecedents requiring an overtpronoun to avoid ambiguity) and emphatic (three same-gender potential antecedents show-ing unclear preference for either overt or null pronoun). Crucially, AR behaves similarlyin Greek and Spanish. Results from an offline contextualised acceptability judgement taskshow that similarity between the learner’s first (L1) and second (L2) languages does notnecessarily facilitate the learning task. Even very advanced learners show deficits, whichare selective since not all discursive contexts are equally affected. The results are betteraccounted for by general pragmatic economy principles: Learners prefer being redundant(overuse of overt pronouns in topic-continuity contexts) to ambiguous (acceptance of nullpronouns in contrastive-focus contexts). Such tolerance for redundancy may reflect a moregeneral pragmatic tendency, as also reported in child L1 development, adult L2 developmentand also in native grammars.
Previous experimental research has shown that the syntax-discourse interface can be a locus of deficits for learners, even at very advanced levels. In this paper an L2 Spanish corpus is used to investigate Anaphora Resolution (AR) at the syntax-discourse interface (i.e., how null/overt pronouns and NP subjects refer to their antecedents in discourse). A fine-grained tagset was designed to annotate formal, pragmatic and information-status AR factors in a sample of very advanced L1 English–L2 Spanish learners vs. a Spanish native control subcorpus from the CEDEL2 corpus. The corpus analysis results reveal that, though very advanced learners can show similar patterns to Spanish natives with AR, they show certain deficits: they are pragmatically more redundant than ambiguous, which is explained in terms of a new proposal: the Pragmatic Principles Violation Hypothesis. Results also show that the syntax of topic shift is more complex than previously assumed, with higher rates of NPs than overt pronouns. This can be accounted for by the nature of the antecedent (number of potential antecedents and their gender differences).
Recent work suggests that bilingual speakers do not seem to behave native-like
when syntax and pragmatics converge (Sorace, 2011). This study investigates
subject pronouns because they allow observing how speakers integrate morphosyntactic
forms with pragmatic information. Our goal is to determine whether
Moroccan Arabic (MA)/Spanish bilinguals display different antecedent biases
for null and overt pronoun both in comprehension and production when the
two languages of the bilinguals are both null-subject languages. We tested two
groups: MA/Spanish bilinguals and native speakers of Spanish. Participants
completed an acceptability judgment test and a written narrative task. Results
suggest an L1-like strategy in the comprehension and production of null pronouns
whereas overt pronouns seem to diverge suggesting an overproduction/
overacceptance, in line with previous work.
One central question in research on spoken language communication concerns how speakers decide how explicit to make a referential expression. In the present paper, we address the debate between a discourse-based approach and a listener-based approach to the choice of referring expressions by testing second language (L2) learners of English on the production of English referential expressions, and comparing their performance to a group of monolingual speakers of English. In two experiments, we found that when native speakers of English use full noun phrases, the L2 speakers tend to choose a pronoun, even when the use of a pronoun leads to ambiguity. Our results show that the pattern observed is not the result of cross-linguistic interference from the L1. Furthermore, a clear dissociation is found between calculating the discourse information and taking the listener's perspective into account, supporting a listener's based approach to the choice of referring expressions.
Second language acquisition (SLA) research has traditionally relied on elicited experimental data, and it has disfavoured natural language use data. Learner corpus research has the potential to change this but, to date, the research has contributed little to the interpretation of L2 acquisition, and some of the corpora are flawed in design. We analyse the reasons why many SLA researchers are still reticent about using corpora, and how good corpus design and adequate tools to annotate and search corpora can help overcome some of the problems observed. We do so by describing how the ten standard principles used in corpus design (Sinclair 2005) were applied to the design of CEDEL2, a large learner corpus of L1 English – L2 Spanish (Lozano 2009a).
This research looks at differences between how native speakers of English and Korean L2 English learners manage cohesive reference maintenance, as well as the effect of scaffolded interlocutor collaboration on the coherence and cohesion of extended L2 narrative discourse. Scaffolded and unscaffolded narratives were elicited from 10 Korean learners of English as an L2 and were compared against the narratives of 5 native speakers of English, to compare the grammatical means used to maintain coherent reference to discourse referents within and across clauses, as well as to see the effect that any scaffold during performance. A link was found between the coherence of NS narrative discourse and accurate use of co-referential & distant anaphoric grammatical referential devices, and the presence of scaffolding was found to increase the accuracy of non- scaffolding helps L2 learners to create and hold more accurate reference to discourse referents, and instances of unscaffolded narrative discourse present increased difficulty for the L2 speaker. Finally, as L2 learners have more difficulty managing accurate reference maintenance, the overall coherence of their discourse is reduced.
The tendency of intermediate and advanced second language speakers to underuse pronouns and zero anaphora has been characterized as a developmental stage of overexplicitness, yet little consideration has been given to whether learners create sufficient contexts for their use. This study analyzed references across eight degrees of accessibility, revealing that this did not account for infrequent pronoun use by Chinese learners of English. Further analysis revealed that participants were seldom overexplicit when referring to highly accessible individuals, particularly those that represented continued topics, but were significantly more likely than native speakers to use lexical noun phrases elsewhere, particularly for main characters. This is discussed in relation to a possible role of overexplicitness as a clarity-based communication strategy. http://goo.gl/yHvhT6
The goal of this study is to shed light on the conditions that regulate the interpretation of
null and overt third person subject pronouns in ambiguous intra-sentential contexts in
bilingual and L2 Spanish. An acceptability judgment task was administrated to 26
Moroccan Arabic (MA)/Spanish bilinguals, 26 MA learners of L2 Spanish and 34
native controls. Three conditions were tested: type of pronoun (null vs. overt),
antecedent choice (subject vs. object) and clause order (main-subordinate vs.
subordinate-main). The results reveal an effect of pronoun and clause order. Overall,
both experimental groups show native-like pronominal preferences but the L2 learners
differ from natives specifically in subordinate-main order as they do not seem to benefit
from microvariation between languages in the domain of pronoun interpretation.
Taking the Position of Antecedent Hypothesis, Carminati (2002), and the works of Alonso-Ovalle et al. (2002) regarding the Spanish language as a starting point, this paper investigates third person personal pronouns, null and overt, in non-native discourse. Specifically, we examine whether pronouns show preferences in their selection of antecedents, if they perform a particular discursive function and to what extent language transfer can explain the similarities and differences between native and non-native discourse. We work with narrative oral and written texts produced semi-spontaneously by two experimental groups: adolescent bilingual Spanish-Dariya (Moroccan Arabic) and L2 Spanish learners with L1 Dariya. The results show a certain specialization of the pronouns to establish coreference and to carry out a particular discursive function. Furthermore, L2 Spanish learners may not benefit from the positive transfer of their L1 and the knowledge and usage of the Spanish language by the bilingual subjects may not be totally comparable to the control group.
At advanced levels of proficiency L2 learners can achieve native- like competence (e.g., Kanno, 1997; Pérez- Leroux & Glass, 1997, 1999). However, other stud ies report that learners only achieve near-native competence and show representational deficits despite long immersion in the L2 (Hawkins, 2000; Sorace, 1993). Interestingly, these claims derive from different types of property within Universal Grammar (UG). The former studies focus on universal principles, whereas the latter investigate properties which UG allows to vary (within limits) and attribute lack of native-like competence to L1 influence on the L2. An interesting question is whether this is the expected pattern in SLA: that advanced L2 speakers will always show native- like competence where principles are involved, but persistently fossilise on language-specific differences. In this study a principle and a language -specific property in the acquisition of non - native Spanish are considered. In particular, I investigate two pronominal constraints: the Overt Pronoun Constraint (OPC) (Montalbetti, 1984, 1986) and the Contrastive Focus Constraint (CFC). An experiment was designed to compare sensitivity to both constructions in advanced learners of Spanish (Greek natives and English natives). Results suggest that both non-native groups' behaviour towards OPC constructions is not different from Spanish native speakers, whereas only English natives differ from Spanish natives in CFC constructions. If the OPC is a principle of UG, as has been claimed, this supports the prediction that advanced learners can achieve native- like competence on properties which differ from the L1 but derive from universal principle s of grammar design. By contrast, the problems which English, but not Greek, speakers have with the CFC support the claim that language-specific properties are potential targets for fossilisation.
Carminati (2002) shows that the existence of both phonetically full and phonetically null pronouns (pro) in Italian reflects a division of labor with respect to anaphora resolution. pro prefers to link to prominent antecedents more than its phonetically overt counterpart does (where prominence is determined by syntactic position in intrasentential anaphora cases). We first report the results of three written questionnaire studies showing that the Position of Antecedent Hypothesis (PAH) of Carminati (2002) correctly predicts the anaphoric behavior of Spanish pronouns both in intraand intersentential anaphora cases. In two-sentence discourses where two potential antecedents (one in preverbal subject position and another in object position) exist, pro is linked 73.2% of the time to the subject (which is syntactically more prominent than the object) whereas the phonetically overt pronoun links to the subject only 50.2% of the time. When there is only a subject antecedent available, sentences containing pro are rated as more natural than sentences containing an overt pronoun, thus suggesting that the anaphoric preference is not simply due to ambiguity of antecedent resolution. Essentially the same contrast obtains in cases of variable binding, where pro links to the subject 86.9% of the time and the pronoun only 63.3% of the time. Two written questionnaire studies corroborate that the Topic-Focus articulation of the sentence containing a pronoun affects the general anaphoric preferences predicted by the PAH. We report evidence confirming that, in Spanish, preverbal subjects are interpreted as sentential Topics. Then we show that when phonetically overt pronouns are preverbal subjects they tend to pick up prominent (subject) antecedents, thus overriding the general preferences encoded in the PAH. This fact suggests that the preferences encoded in the PAH come about as a result of the interpretation associated with the syntactic position that pronouns occupy.
In two self-paced, sentence-by-sentence reading experiments, we examined the difference in the processing of Spanish discourses containing overt and null pronouns. In both experiments, antecedents appeared in a single phrase (John met Mary) or in a conjoined phrase (John and Mary met). In Experiment 1, we compared reading times of sentences containing singular overt and null pronouns referring to the first or to the second mentioned antecedent. Overt pronouns caused a processing delay relative to null pronouns when they referred to the first antecedent in single but not in conjoined phrases. In Experiment 2, we compared reading times of sentences containing overt and null pronouns referring to singular or plural entities. Plural null pronouns were read faster than their singular counterparts in conjoined conditions. Plural overt pronouns were read more slowly than their null counterparts both in single and conjoined conditions. We explain our findings in a framework based on the notion of balance between processing cost and discourse function in line with the Informational Load Hypothesis.
The `Interface Hypothesis' (IH) was put forward by Sorace and colleagues as an attempt to account for patterns of non-convergence and residual optionality found at very advanced stages of adult second (L2)acquisition. The IH originally proposed that language structures involving an interface between syntax and other cognitive domains are less likely to be acquired completely than structures that do not involve this interface. At the same time, the IH was extended to bilingual first language (L1) acquisition and to the very early stages of L1 attrition, which exhibit optionality in precisely the same structures: this provides a unifying framework for the study of bilingual language development. This paper selectively reviews the research on the IH, addressing some common misinterpretations and outlining the most recent interdisciplinary developments.
The position of antecedent strategy (Carminati, 2002) claims that speakers of null-subject languages prefer to resolve intrasentential anaphora by linking pro to an antecedent in the specifier of the inflection phrase and the overt pronoun to an antecedent lower in the clause. The present study has two aims: (a) to determine whether adult early Spanish-English bilinguals (Spanish heritage speakers) and late English-Spanish bilinguals (adult second language [L2] learners of Spanish) utilize the same antecedent assignment strategies as monolingually raised Spanish speakers, and (b) to determine whether early exposure to and use of Spanish confers advantages to Spanish heritage speakers relative to L2 learners. Spanish speakers raised without English contact (n = 19), Spanish heritage speakers (n = 25), and L2 learners of Spanish (n = 19) completed an offline questionnaire that comprised complex sentences such as Juan vio a Carlos mientras pro/él caminaba en la playa “John saw Charles while he was walking on the beach.” Comprehension questions probed participants’ preferences regarding the antecedent of null and overt pronouns. The results indicate that the monolingually raised Spanish speakers showed an antecedent bias, but the heritage speakers and the L2 learners did not. Furthermore, the two groups of bilinguals differed from the controls in different ways: The heritage speakers displayed a stronger subject bias for the overt pronoun, whereas the L2 learners did not exhibit any clear antecedent biases.
This article deals with the interface between syntax and discoursepragmatics/semantics in bilingual speakers. Linguistic phenomena at the interface have been shown to be especially vulnerable in both child and adult bilinguals; here we explore four variables that contribute to this vulnerability to different extents depending on the nature of the interface: underspecification, cross-linguistic influence, quantity and quality of the input, and processing limitations.
We investigate the role played by the aforementioned variables in two recently completed studies. One compares the performance of English— Italian and Spanish—Italian bilingual children, monolingual English- and Italian-speaking children and adults on forced-choice grammaticality tasks on the distribution of overt and null subject pronouns in Italian and in English. The second explores bilingual and monolingual speakers’ sensitivity to the presence of definite articles in specific and generic plural noun phrases in Italian and in English. We show that over and above structural overlap, other factors must be
We show that over and above structural overlap, other factors must be included to account for differences in the behavioural data in the two tasks and in different populations of bilinguals and monolinguals. We argue that processing factors play a non-trivial role in the difficulty encountered by bilinguals in coordinating syntax with contextual discourse-pragmatic information, regardless of the absence or presence of partial structural overlap. In the case of the internal coordination between syntax and semantics, processing factors may be less likely to affect bilinguals’ performance, while the extent of structural overlap and the associated internal formal features seem to play a more important role.
In two self-paced, sentence-by-sentence reading experiments we examined the difference in the processing of Spanish discourses with repeated names, overt pronouns, and null pronouns in emphatic and non-emphatic contexts. In Experiment 1, repeated names and overt pronouns caused a processing delay when they referred to salient antecedents in non-emphatic contexts. In Experiment 2, both processing delays were eliminated when an emphatic cleft-structure was used. The processing delay caused by overt pronouns referring to salient antecedents in non-emphatic contexts in Spanish contrasts with previous findings in Chinese, where null and overt pronouns elicited similar reading times. We explain both our Spanish findings and the Chinese findings in a unified framework based on the notion of balance between processing cost and discourse function in line with the Informational Load Hypothesis.
Referential expressions (REs) have been investigated in L2 English but to date there is no single study that systematically and simultaneously analyzes the development and acquisition of the multiple factors that constrain the choice of REs in natural discourse production. We investigate L1 Spanish–L2 English learners across three proficiency levels versus an English control group from the COREFL corpus. An analysis of both the RE and its antecedent(s) reveals that different intra- and extralinguistic factors constrain the choice of REs (information status, activated antecedents, syntactic configurations, characterhood, within-task effect, and proficiency level). L2 learners (L2ers) are sensitive to some factors but are unable to fully attain native-like levels even at advanced stages. They do not transfer null subjects from their L1 contrary to previous L2 research, and do not find all contexts at the syntax-discourse interface equally problematic, thus confirming previous theoretical proposals and empirical findings.
Late second language learners have difficulty acquiring discourse constraints on the distribution of overt and null subject pronouns in null-subject languages (Tsimpli and Sorace, 2006; Sorace, 2011). In addition to developing the representation of these syntax-discourse properties, they also have to acquire an online parsing bias-- Carminati's (2002) Position of the Antecedent Hypothesis (PAH).The present study addresses the online operativeness of the PAH by examining the role of L1 (Moroccan Arabic vs. English), and L2 proficiency (intermediate, upper-intermediate, and high), in the processing of intrasentential backward subject anaphors in Spanish. Findings reveal that participants were remarkably sensitive to the PAH but only advanced learners showed native-like sensitivity to the PAH, regardless of their L1. In addition, whereas positive L1 transfer seems to operate at lower levels of proficiency, once learners achieve an advanced level L1 transfer seems to be less relevant.
There is a long overdue need to address the sharp philosophical and methodological divide between formal/generative and functional/discourse perspectives in contemporary theoretical linguistics and L2 acquisition. Language structure in general, and the use of subjects in particular, is dependent upon multiple syntactic, lexico-semantic, and discourse-pragmatic factors. Therefore, the study of L2 acquisition must be equally multi-faceted. This volume examines data from over twenty years of research in the L2 acquisition of Spanish subjects from several theoretical perspectives, including generative approaches, processing theory, discourse-pragmatics and sociolinguistic-variationist models. By so doing, the author seeks to fulfill two principal objectives: the first is to determine the many linguistic and extra-linguistic properties of Spanish subjects that constrain their acquisition and use; and the second is to establish common ground among researchers from varied theoretical persuasions in acquisition studies. The author argues throughout the volume that central to native speaker use and L2 acquisition are universal properties ranging from highly specific syntactic principles to more general characteristics of human cognition and a range of these properties is responsible for language acquisition. An examination of the diverse body of research that considers a wider scope of universal properties of language can thus bring us closer to a unified account of the L2 acquisition of Spanish subject expression.
The parameterized model of Core Grammar that has been recently proposed by Chomsky (1981) has a two-fold function. As a part of the framework of linguistic theory, the model accounts for some systematic differences between languages, and accounts for a wide variety of constructions within an individual language. As part of the framework of Acquisition Theory, it can account for developmental stages in the acquisition process of a first language, including both stages of a single language and cross-linguistic comparisons (Otsu, 1981; Phinney, 1983). However, only a few researchers (White, 1983, 1985; Flynn, 1983, among them) have applied this model to the problem of second language acquisition.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
This volume explores how a second language is acquired and what learners must do in order to achieve proficiency. The paperback edition is a collection of original essays that approaches second language acquisition from a linguistic rather than a sociological, psychological, or purely pedagogical perspective. A wide range of viewpoints and approaches is represented. The essays in this book provide an incisive analysis of how a second language is acquired and what the second language learner must do mentally to achieve proficiency in another language. The chapters are arranged topically from those covering the broad area of theories of acquisition to those focusing specifically on syntax, semantics, pragmatics, lexicon, and phonology in another language.
The present study explores the cross-linguistic differences between Spanish and Italian in the anaphoric interpretation of null subjects and overt pronominal subjects. The availability of null subjects in a language is determined by the parametric settings of its syntax, but their felicitous use as an alternative to overt pronouns depends on contextual conditions affecting how different expressions retrieve their antecedents in the discourse. According to Accessibility Theory, at least some of these principles must have universal validity; however, up to now no experimental research has been carried out with the aim of comparing directly the interpretation of anaphoric dependencies in two typologically similar null subject languages. In this paper, we report the results of two self-paced reading experiments carried out in Spanish and in Italian. The results show a similar pattern for the resolution of null subjects, as predicted by Accessibility Theory, whereas the resolution of overt pronouns seems to diverge. This suggests that subtle differences restricted to the scope of the overt pronoun yield systematic variation between the two languages.
Structural priming refers to the process whereby the use of a
syntactic structure in an utterance functions as a prime on a subsequent
utterance, such that that same structure is repeated. This article
investigates this phenomenon from the perspective of first-person singular
subject expression in Spanish. Two dialects and two genres of spoken
Spanish are studied: New Mexican narratives and Colombian Spanish
conversation. An analysis of 2,000 verbs occurring with first-person
singular subjects reveals that subject expression undergoes a priming
effect in both data sets, but that the effect is more short-lived in the
Colombian data. This is found to be attributable to the interactional
nature of these data, showing that the need to deal with interactional
concerns weakens the priming effect. As the first study to compare priming
of subject expression across distinct genres, this article makes an
important contribution to our understanding of this effect, and in
particular, of factors that play a role in its maintenance or dissipation
in discourse. a
The present study aims to examine Korean EFL learners’ ability to achieve discourse cohesion in English through appropriate selection of referential forms and utilization of referential strategies; in particular, it looks into the language-specific aspects of the referential system in their L1, and how these may be evident in their L2 performance. Using “frog story” picturebook prompts, The analyses examine oral narratives produced by Korean adult EFL learners (N=12) in L1 (Korean) and L2 (English) and adult American native English speakers (N=12). Quantitative analysis of the narratives shows that the specifically Korean linguistic strategies of heavily relying on nominals are evident in the Korean EFL learners’ English narrative discourse; thus, the resulting stories are relatively less coherent and cohesive than the native English speakers’. However, it is also observed that the Koreans’ English stories tend to diverge from their Korean counterparts in the direction of the target language norms. In addition, both the Korean EFL learners’ English narratives and the English native speakers’ stories showed referent effects which were not present in the Korean stories; this is supposed to be due to the Korean referential system, which prefers explicit reference even when characters have already been introduced and remain in the central plot.
Contemporary acquisition theorizing has placed a considerable amount of attention on interfaces, points at which different linguistic modules interact. The claim is that vulnerable interfaces cause particular difficulties in L1, bilingual and adult L2 acquisition (e.g. Platzack, 2001; Montrul, 2004; Müller and Hulk, 2001; Sorace, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2005). Accordingly, it is possible that deficits at the syntax–pragmatics interface cause what appears to be particular non-target-like syntactic behavior in L2 performance. This syntax-before-discourse hypothesis is examined in the present study by analyzing null vs. overt subject pronoun distribution in L2 Spanish of English L1 learners. As ultimately determined by L2 knowledge of the Overt Pronoun Constraint (OPC) (Montalbetti, 1984), the data indicate that L2 learners at the intermediate and advanced levels reset the Null Subject Parameter (NSP), but only advanced learners have acquired a more or less target null/overt subject distribution. Against the predictions of Sorace (2004) and in line with Montrul and Rodríguez-Louro (2006), the data indicate an overuse of both overt and null subject pronouns. As a result, this behavior cannot be from L1 interference alone, suggesting that interface-conditioned properties are simply more complex and therefore, harder to acquire. Furthermore, the data from the advanced learners demonstrate that the syntax–pragmatics interface is not a predetermined locus for fossilization (in contra e.g. Valenzuela, 2006).
Two story-telling experiments examine the process of choosing between pronouns and proper names in speaking. Such choices are traditionally attributed to speakers striving to make referring expressions maximally interpretable to addressees. The experiments revealed a novel effect: even when a pronoun would not be ambiguous, the presence of another character in the discourse decreased pronoun use and increased latencies to refer to the most prominent character in the discourse. In other words, speakers were more likely to call Minnie Minnie than shewhen Donald was also present. Even when the referent character appeared alone in the stimulus picture, the presence of another character in the preceding discourse reduced pronouns. Furthermore, pronoun use varied with features associated with the speaker's degree of focus on the preceding discourse (e.g., narrative style and disfluency). We attribute this effect to competition for attentional resources in the speaker's representation of the discourse.
Spanish subject personal pronoun use by monolinguals, bilinguals and second language learners
- L Abreu
Abreu, L. (2009). Spanish subject personal pronoun use by monolinguals, bilinguals and
second language learners (PhD thesis). University of Florida, Gainesville, FL.
The processing of Italian subject pronouns (Unpublished PhD thesis)
- M N Carminati
Carminati, M. N. (2002). The processing of Italian subject pronouns (Unpublished
PhD thesis). University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA.
Los mecanismos referenciales en el discurso oral del español como lengua extranjera (ELE): un estudio de corpus basado en neerlandófonos aprendices de ELE (PhD dissertation)
- K Collewaert
Collewaert, K. (2019). Los mecanismos referenciales en el discurso oral del español como
lengua extranjera (ELE): un estudio de corpus basado en neerlandófonos aprendices
de ELE (PhD dissertation). Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium &
Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain.
Subject personal pronouns in Spanish narratives of Puerto Ricans in New York City: A sociolinguistic perspective
- N Flores-Ferrán
Flores-Ferrán, N. (2002). Subject personal pronouns in Spanish narratives of Puerto
Ricans in New York City: A sociolinguistic perspective. Munich, Germany: Lincom
Europa. Retrieved from http: //lin com-s hop.e u/epa ges/5 7709f eb-b8 89-47
07-b2 cec66 6fc88 085d. sf/de _DE/? Objec tPath =/Sho ps/57 709fe b-b88 9-470
7-b2c e-c66 6fc88 085d/ Produ cts/% 22ISBN%209783895863028%22
Variable subject expression in second-language Spanish: A comparison of native and non-native speakers
- K Geeslin
- A Gudmestad
Geeslin, K., & Gudmestad, A. (2008). Variable subject expression in second-language
Spanish: A comparison of native and non-native speakers. In M. Bowles, R. Foote,
S. Perpiñán, & R. Bhatt (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 2007 second language
research forum (pp. 69-85). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Using sociolinguistic analyses of discourse-level features to expand research on L2 variation in forms of Spanish subject expression
- K Geeslin
- A Gudmestad
Geeslin, K., & Gudmestad, A. (2011). Using sociolinguistic analyses of discourse-level
features to expand research on L2 variation in forms of Spanish subject expression.
In L. Plonksy & M. Schierloh (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 2009 second
language research forum (pp. 16-30). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings
Project.
Applied linguistics now: Understanding language and mind/La lingüística aplicada actual: Comprendiendo el lenguaje y la mente
- C Lozano
Lozano, C. (2009b). Pronominal deficits at the interface: New data from the CEDEL2
corpus. In C. M. Bretones & et al (Eds.), Applied linguistics now: Understanding
language and mind/La lingüística aplicada actual: Comprendiendo el lenguaje y
la mente (pp. 213-227). Almería, Spain: Universidad de Almería. Retrieved from
https ://di alnet.unir ioja. es/se rvlet /libr o?cod igo=5 20015
CEDEL2 (version 1.0): The design and creation of an online corpus for L2 Spanish acquisition research
- C Lozano
Lozano, C. (in prep.). CEDEL2 (version 1.0): The design and creation of an online
corpus for L2 Spanish acquisition research.
Beyond the syntax of the Null Subject Parameter: A look at the discourse-pragmatic distribution of null and overt subjects by L2 learners of Spanish
- S Montrul
- C Rodríguez-Louro
Montrul, S., & Rodríguez-Louro, C. (2006). Beyond the syntax of the Null Subject
Parameter: A look at the discourse-pragmatic distribution of null and overt subjects
by L2 learners of Spanish. In V. Torrens & L. Escobar (Eds.), The acquisition of
syntax in romance languages (pp. 401-418). Amsterdam, the Netherlands: John
Benjamins. doi:10.1075/lald.41.19mon
Applied linguistics now: Understanding language and mind/La lingüística aplicada actual: Comprendiendo el lenguaje y la mente
- M O'donnell
O'Donnell, M. (2009). The UAM Corpus Tool: Software for corpus annotation and
exploration. In C. M. Bretones & et al (eds), Applied linguistics now: Understanding
language and mind/La lingüística aplicada actual: Comprendiendo el lenguaje y la
mente (pp. 1433-1447). Almería, Spain: Universidad de Almería.
The handbook of Spanish second language acquisition
- M L Quesada
Quesada, M. L. (2014). Subject pronouns in second language Spanish. In K. L.
Geeslin (Ed.), The handbook of Spanish second language acquisition (pp. 253-269).
Acts of reference and the miscommunication of referents by first and second language speakers of English
- J Ryan
Ryan, J. (2012). Acts of reference and the miscommunication of referents by first and
second language speakers of English (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of
Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.
Implications of parametric variation for adult second language acquisition: An investigation of the pro-drop parameter
- L White
White, L. (1986). Implications of parametric variation for adult second language
acquisition: An investigation of the pro-drop parameter. In V. J. Cook (Ed.),
Experimental approaches to second language acquisition (pp. 55-72). Oxford, UK:
Pergamon Press.