Volume 57, Issue 1 - Special Issue: Applied Cognitive Linguistics to L2 acquisition and learning: research and convergence Guest Editors: Reyes Llopis-García and Alberto Hijazo-GascÓn

This introduction provides an overview of the intersection between Applied Cognitive Linguistics and Second/Foreign Language Learning. First, the relevance of Cognitive Linguistics (CL) for Applied Linguistics in general is discussed. The second section explains the main principles of CL and how each relates to the acquisition of second languages: (i) language and human cognition, (ii) language as symbolic, (iii) language as motivated; and (iv) language as usage-based. Section three offers a review of previous literature on CL and L2s that are different from English, as it is one the main aims of this Special Issue to provide state-of-the-art research and scholarship to enhance the bigger picture of the field of Second Language Acquisition beyond English as the target language. Spanish as L2/FL in Applied Cognitive Linguistics is the focus of the next section, which leads to a brief overview of the papers included in the Issue, featuring Spanish as the L2 with L1s such as English, French, German and Italian. Polysemy, Motion Events Typology, Cognitive Grammar and Construction Grammar are the Cognitive Linguistics areas addressed in the contributions here presented.

This paper analyzes the usage of frequent polysemous verbs by native speakers and by L2 learners and it makes several pedagogical suggestions on how to teach polysemous verbs in a L2 classroom. To achieve these objectives, we have examined the case of the Spanish verb quedar , which means “to remain”, “to stay”, “to be left”, “to make an appointment”, etc. A methodology based on narratives and sentence elicitation has been created. The experiences were accomplished by Spanish speakers (adults and children), and French university students of Spanish, who performed productions in Spanish (L2) and in French (L1). The results of this study seem to confirm that adult native speakers used the semantic network of polysemous verbs in a very conventional manner. Meanings appear to have been acquired thanks to usage, by storing linguistic experiences as patterns, and operating mostly by analogy process. Children seem to have primarily elicited quedar in conventional situations (for instance, to fix an appointment) and depending on a cost-effectiveness criteria (only if this verb adds a pragmatic gain compared to simpler options). The acquisition path of quedar by children (L1) seems to be driven by different factors than for L2 learners. French learners of Spanish used quedar meanings differently from native speakers and they were highly influenced by their L1, both semantically and syntactically.

This paper examines bidirectional transfer between L1 English and L2 Spanish in the motion domain, both in boundary crossing [BC] and non-boundary crossing [NBC] situations. It focuses on the semantic component of Path. Furthermore, it examines whether learners’ proficiency has an impact on the degree of cross-linguistic influence [CLI] between their L1 and L2. An experimental study was conducted with five groups of informants: an English monolingual group, a Spanish monolingual group and three groups of L1 English learners of L2 Spanish. The findings support the existence of bidirectional transfer. The three groups of learners exhibited L1 typological patterns when retelling motion events in L2: (a) they used fewer path verbs than the monolingual Spanish group in BC and NBC; (b) they produced examples of satellites encoding the Path in BC and NBC; and (c) they expressed event conflation with one main verb in BC. In addition, the L2 influenced the L1, although this influence was restricted to learners with higher levels of L2 proficiency who used more path verbs than the monolingual English group. These results provide evidence for the role of bidirectional transfer in second language acquisition.

In this study we compare two instruction approaches (cognitive and traditional) to the teaching of Spanish deictic motion verbs – ir, venir, llevar and traer – to German and Italian learners. We also analyse whether the students’ first language (Italian or German) influences the results of the cognitive methodology we applied. The Cognitive Instruction combined the basic principles of Cognitive Grammar with those of Processing Instruction for activities in which students practice both comprehension and production. We carried out a survey of 274 university students who were learning Spanish (Level B1) at universities in Italy and Germany. Students carried out a test prior to receiving the instruction and three tests subsequently, one immediately afterwards, the second a week later and the third, a month later. The cognitive methodology proved to be beneficial and positive. The students who received cognitive instruction made better form-meaning connections and showed higher performances in the use of deictic motion verbs than those who received traditional instruction. The learners’ L1 did not appear to influence the results of the groups that received the cognitive method of instruction.

Pseudo-copulative change-of-state (PCOS) verbs are predicates that involve a change in the composition of an entity undergoing a particular event. Due to their complex linguistic nature, these verbs are not easy to be accounted for and consequently, they represent a real challenge to language teachers and learners. First, this paper critically examines the specialized L1 and L2 literature on PCOS verbs in Spanish. Then, it is shown that previous studies are unable to provide a unanimous theory, but rather offer heterogeneous explanations that are full of exceptions and overlook semantic nuances. The second part of this work presents a corpus-based constructional study of the PCOS verbal structure [V cl +NP] in two PCOS verbs, hacerse ‘make. cl’ and volverse ‘turn. cl ’. It is argued that a multi-level family of PCOS constructions captures both the specificity of fully-saturated constructions ( María se hizo mujer ‘María became a woman’), as well as the more general abstract patterns ([Subject PCOS-verb Object]). This constructional approach offers a unified and motivated explanation for these PCOS verbs that can be very useful for Spanish as a Foreign Language (SFL).

This paper explores the pedagogical implications and implementations of a Cognitive Construction Grammar (Goldberg, Adele E. 2006. Constructions at work: The nature of generalization in language . New York: Oxford University Press) approach for the teaching of construal in the L2 class of Spanish at an advanced level. To this end, this paper focuses on instances of secondary predication (involving a direct object and an object-related XPCOMP) with decir “say” and other verbs of saying and calling in present-day Spanish, under the rubric of the denominative subjective-transitive construction. This construction comprises a number of lower-level configurations involving a reflexive direct object (the reflexive subjective-transitive construction), and an imperative verb (the imperative subjective-transitive construction). The verb decir is also frequently attested in the reflex passive construction (the impersonal subjective-transitive construction), under which two different, though closely connected, lexically-filled lo que se dice XPCOMP configurations can be posited, which may function as a focusing/emphasizer subjunct or as a summative conjunct in present-day Spanish. A default inheritance system of the type invoked in Cognitive Construction Grammar is shown to capture broad and specific generalizations at a horizontal level (among the verbs attested in the (sub-)construction(s)) and a vertical level (among constructions of varying degrees of specificity) and can thus be informally used to optimize the pedagogical efficiency of the input for the explicit instruction of grammar in the advanced Spanish L2 class.