Volume 5, Issue 2

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the acquisition of spirantization of /b, d, ɡ/ in the Spanish of adult learners who have spent two years abroad in a Spanish-speaking country. In addition to whether or not participants acquired spirantization, this study seeks to discover the influence of certain factors (e.g. style, prior Spanish instruction, Spanish language use, attitude, motivational intensity, etc.) on their target-like pronunciation of /b, d, ɡ/. Two different tasks were administered, one formal (a reading list) and another less formal (a read story). Tokens of /b, d, ɡ/ were analyzed spectrographically for manner of articulation. The results show that the majority of the learners pronounced target-like /b, d, ɡ/ over 80% of the time. A logistic regression analysis shows that the following factors are significant in their contribution to the acquisition of spirantization: Cultural Integration, Spanish language use, Empathy, Music Instruction, High School Spanish Instruction, and Motivational Intensity.

This article investigates the reduction and contraction of the preposition para ‘to, for’ in Brazilian Portuguese (para ~ pra). Although this is a widespread reduction, it does not affect each instance of para. Corpora analysis shows that the reduction is more frequent in certain expressions, such as para ela ‘to/for her’ (81%), para minha ‘to my’ (77%), para frente ‘forward’ (75%), para casa ‘to home’ (74%). This paper offers evidence that this reduction can be explained due to the frequency of co-occurrence. The concepts of string frequency (cf. Krug 1998) and relative frequency (Torres Cacoullos 2006) are tested. The analysis suggests that speakers have multiple clouds of exemplars for the same word (or string of words) and that detailed information is stored along with individual words. It is also argued that whole words or frequently used expressions can be the units of lexical storage, and this is why frequency effects can build up and affect word production and language change.

English irrealis modality is usually captured by syntactic structures that often exclude overt complementizers that and for and include indicative or infinitival morphology. The Spanish equivalents to English structures of irrealis modality, however, typically require the overt subordinate marker que (‘that’) followed by a [+finite] subordinate verb. These syntactic differences between English and Spanish produce asymmetrical surface structures caused by functional categories (FCs). The primary goal of this study is to examine the role of FCs, and more specifically, complementizers (CPs), in the syntactic development of L1 English speakers with L2 Spanish. The results of our data suggest that L1 CP properties (i.e. CP = Ø) persisted in learners’ interlanguage (IL) systems, following the work of Schwartz & Sprouse (1996). As a result, learners at all levels of instruction intuitively perceived English-like [-overt] CP structures as more grammatical than their [+overt] CP counterparts, even at advanced levels of acquisition.

This paper reports the findings of an experiment designed to test the syllabification of on-glides in Spanish by means of a behavioral task. Traditional approaches to Spanish syllabification assume that on-glides are syllabified with the vowel in the nucleus. However, findings from the developmental literature suggest that at least during early stages of acquisition an alternative onset syllabification is possible. The results of the present study reveal general support for the traditional nuclear approach to Spanish on-glides but also suggest the possibility of gradient syllabification patterns.

This study investigated how L1 English adults interpret subject-verb-object (SVO), VSO, and VOS sentences in an L2. First- (n = 37), third- (n = 42), and fifthsemester (n = 28) Spanish learners heard 8 sentences of each type and indicated which noun was the subject. A repeated-measures ANOVA revealed significant effects (p < .01) for word order and learner level. Fifth-semester participants consistently responded most correctly, but all levels were more accurate (p < .01) with SVO than both VSO and VOS sentences. First-semester learners also scored higher (p < .01) with VSO than VOS structures. Results suggest early influence of the First Noun Principle, dependence on a verb-centric word-order strategy, and growing awareness of the Spanish object marker.

This study examines the role of the voseo, tuteo, and ustedeo in written advertising in Montevideo, Uruguay. Analysis of 133 samples shows a preference for voseo in publicity, although tú and usted are also present. While written voseo - with or without a tonic pronoun - has traditionally been stigmatized in public education (Bertolotti & Coll 2003 and Gabbiani 2000), its predominant role in advertising suggests an increased acceptance of that written form in public venues. The study examines the language of publicity within the framework of politeness strategies, which explains that written publicity uses linguistic forms that lessen social distance and power [-D, -P] for the purpose of persuading consumers to buy. As such, voseo is the preferred form of address in commercial advertising in Montevideo, appearing in 83% of the samples. Voseo also has a strong presence in non-commercial advertising, where it appears in 44% of the examples in this study, irrespective of any stigma attached to its use.

This article examines the impact of instruction on L2 learners’ ability to recognize and produce differential object marking in Spanish as measured by three written tasks: a grammatical preference task, a cued sentence production task, and a discourse-length narrative task. These assessment measures are hypothesized to tap both implicit and explicit knowledge based on criteria proposed by Ellis (2005) and Ellis, Loewen, Elder, Erlam, Philp & Reinders (2009). English-speaking learners (n = 123) were randomly assigned to one of three instructional treatments: input flood, enhanced input flood, and explicit grammar. The results indicate a significant advantage for the explicit grammar group on the preference task and the cued sentence production task. The remaining two groups showed modest improvement after the treatment, but with no significant differences between them. These results confirm the advantage of explicit instruction vis-à-vis more implicit treatments, although this advantage seems to be limited to controlled assessment measures.