By analyzing the empirical data from two experiments that test Spanish psych-verb properties (e.g. gustar ‘to like’), this article assesses the empirical adequacy of the Interface Hypothesis (IH), which claims that external interfaces (i.e. interfaces between a linguistic module and a cognitive module) are more problematic for learners than internal interfaces/narrow syntax (Sorace & Filiaci, 2006; Sorace, 2011; inter alia). Because my findings were inconsistent with the IH (i.e. target-like pragmatics knowledge can precede syntactic awareness of the same construction), I turned to the Integrative Model of Bilingual Acquisition (Pires & Rothman, 2011), which accounts for non-native divergence by resorting to the interplay of a series of factors (i.e. formal complexity, L1-L2 parameter mapping, processing resources, and PLD). This more articulated model is not only able to account for the patterns in these experiments but it also constitutes a more integrated explanation for the intricacies of the acquisition process.
Arnold, J., Wasow, T., Losongco, A., & Ginstrom, R. (2000). Heaviness vs. newness: The effects of structural complexity and discourse status on constituent ordering. Language, 76(1), 28–55.
Baker, M. (1988). Incorporation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Belletti, A., & Rizzi, L. (1988). Psych-Verbs and θ-Theory. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 6(3), 291–352.
Belletti, A., Bennati, E., & Sorace, A. (2007). Theoretical and developmental issues in the syntax of subjects: Evidence from near-native Italian. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 25(4), 657–689.
Bley-Vroman, R. (1990). The logical problem of foreign language learning. Linguistic Analysis, 20(1-2), 3–49.
Bley-Vroman, R. (2009). The evolving context of the fundamental difference hypothesis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 31(2), 175–198.
Bock, J. K., & Irwin, D. E. (1980). Syntactic effects of information availability in sentence production. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19(4), 467–484.
Bock, K., & Warren, R. (1985). Conceptual accessibility and syntactic structure in sentence formation. Cognition, 21(1), 47–67.
Bohnacker, U. (2010). The clause-initial position in L2 Swedish declaratives: Word order variation and discourse pragmatics. Nordic Journal of Linguistics, 33(2), 105–143.
Bohnacker, U., & Rosén, C. (2008). The clause-initial position in L2 German declaratives: Transfer of information structure. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30(4), 511–538.
Bolinger, D. (1954). English prosodic stress and Spanish sentence order. Hispania, 37(2), 152–156.
Bresnan, J. (2007). Is syntactic knowledge probabilistic? Experiments with the English dative alternation. In S. Featherston & W. Sternefeld (Eds.), Roots: Linguistics in search of its evidential base (pp. 77–96). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Choi, H.-W. (2009). Ordering a left-branching language: Heaviness vs. givenness. Korean Society for Language and Information, 131, 39–56.
Clahsen, H., & Hong, U. (1995). Agreement and null subjects in German L2 development: New evidence from reaction-time experiments. Second Language Research, 5(1), 1–29.
Cohen, J., MacWhinney, B., Flatt, M., & Provost, J. (1993). PsyScope: An interactive graphic system for designing and controlling experiments in the psychology laboratory using Macintosh computers. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 25(2), 257–271.
Contreras, H. (1976). A theory of word order with special reference to Spanish. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Cook, V., & Newson, M. (1996). Chomsky’s Universal Grammar: An introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
Donaldson, B. (2011a). Left-dislocation in near-native French. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 33(3), 399–432.
Donaldson, B. (2011b). Nativelike right-dislocation in near-native French. Second Language Research, 27(3), 361–390.
Donaldson, B. (2012). Syntax and discourse in near-native French: Clefts and focus. Language Learning, 62(3), 902–930.
Ferreira, V., & Yoshita, H. (2003). Given-new ordering effects on the production of scrambled sentences in Japanese. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 32(6), 669-692
.
Flynn, S. (1987). A parameter-setting model of L2 acquisition. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Franco, J., & Huidobro, S. (2003). Psych verbs in Spanish leísta dialects. In S. Montrul & F. Ordóñez (Eds.), Linguistic theory and language development in Hispanic languages (pp. 138–157). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Gómez Soler, I. (2012). Acquiring Spanish at the interfaces: An integrative approach to the L2 acquisition of psych-verbs. s
Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Gundel, J. K. (1985). Shared knowledge and topicality. Journal of Pragmatics, 9(1), 83–107.
Gundel, J. K. (1999). Topic, focus and the grammar pragmatics interface. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics, 6(1), 185–200.
Haznedar, B., & Schwartz, B. (1997). Are there optional infinitives in child L2 acquisition? In E. Hughes, M. Hughes, & A. Greenhill (Eds.), Proceedings of the 21st Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 257–268.). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Hertel, T. J. (2003). Lexical and discourse factors in the second language acquisition of Spanish word order. Second Language Research, 19(4), 273–304.
Hopp, H. (2010). Ultimate attainment in L2 inflection: Performance similarities between non-native and NSs. Lingua 120(4), 901–31
Hualde, J. I. (2005). The Sounds of Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ivanov, I. (2009). Topicality and clitic doubling in L2 Bulgarian: A test case for the interface hypothesis. In M. Bowles, T. Ionin, S. Montrul, & A. Tremblay (Eds.), Proceedings of the 10th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (GASLA 2009) (pp. 17–24). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Jackendoff, R. (1990). Semantic structures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Jackson, Kyuseek H. (2008). The effect of information structure on Korean scrambling. Doctoral dissertation, University of Hawai‘i, Honolulu, HI.
Juffs, A. (1996). Semantics-syntax correspondences in second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 12(2), 177–221.
Kaiser, E., & Trueswell, J. C. (2004). The role of discourse context in the processing of a flexible word-order language. Cognition, 94(2), 113–147.
Lipski, J. (1986). Reduction of Spanish word-final /s/ and /n/. The Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 31(1), 139–156.
Lozano, C., & Mendikoetxea, A. (2010). Interface conditions on postverbal subjects: A corpus study of L2 English. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13(14) 475–497.
Marefat, H. (2005). The impact of information structure as a discourse factor on the acquisition of dative alternation by L2 learners. Studia Linguistica, 59(1), 66–82.
Meisel, J. (1997). The acquisition of the syntax of negation in French and German: Contrasting first and second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 13(3), 227–263.
Meisel, J. (2011). First and second language acquisition: Parallels and differences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Montrul, S. (1998). The L2 Acquisition of dative experiencer subjects. Second Language Research, 14(1), 27–61.
Montrul, S., Foote, R., & Perpiñán, S. (2008). Gender agreement in adult second language learners and Spanish heritage speakers: The effects of age and context of acquisition. Language Learning, 58(3), 503–553.
Montrul, S., & Polinsky, M. (2011). Why not heritage speakers. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 1(1), 58–62.
Park, K.-S. (2011). Information structure and dative word order in adult L2 learners. In J. Herschensohn & D. Tanner (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (GASLA 2011) (pp. 101–109). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Park, K.-S., & Schwartz, B. (2012). L1 Korean L2ers’ sensitivity to givenness in the English dative alternation. In A. K. Biller, E. Y. Chung, & A. E. Kimball (Eds.), Proceedings of the 36th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 414–426). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Prada Pérez, A., & Pascual y Cabo, D. (2011). Invariable gusta in the Spanish of heritage speakers in the U.S. In J. Herschensohn & D. Tanner (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (GASLA 2011) (pp. 110-120). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Prévost, P., & White, L. (2000). Missing surface inflection or impairment in second language acquisition? Evidence from tense and agreement. Second Language Research, 16(2), 103–133.
Reinhart, T. (1981). Pragmatics and linguistics: An analysis of sentence topics. Philosophica, 27(1), 53–93.
Rothman, J. (2009). Pragmatic deficits with syntactic consequences? L2 pronominal subjects and the syntax-pragmatics interface. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(5), 951–973.
Rothman, J., & Iverson, M. (2008). Poverty of the stimulus and L2 epistemology: Considering L2 Knowledge of aspectual phrasal semantics. Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 15(4), 270–314.
Rothman, J., & Slabakova, R. (2011). The mind-context divide: Language acquisition at the linguistic interface. Lingua 121(4), 568–576.
Schwartz, B., & Sprouse, R. (1996). L2 cognitive states and the full transfer/full access model. Second Language Research, 12(1), 40–72.
Serratrice, L, Sorace, A., & Paoli, S. (2004). Crosslinguistic influence at the syntax-pragmatics interface: Subjects and objects in English-Italian bilingual and monolingual acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7(3), 183–205.
Slabakova, R., Kempchinsky, P., & Rothman, J. (2012) Clitic-doubled Left Dislocation and Focus Fronting in L2 Spanish: A case of successful acquisition at the syntax-discourse interface. Second Language Research, 28(3), 319–343.
Slabakova, R., Rothman, J., & Kempchinsky, P. (2011) Gradient competence at the syntax-discourse interface. In L. Roberts, G. Pallotti, & C. Bettoni (Eds.), EUROSLA Yearbook 111 (pp. 218–243). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Sorace, A., & Filiaci, F. (2006). Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian. Second Language Research, 22(3), 339–368.
Sorace, A., & Serratrice, L. (2009). Internal and external interfaces in bilingual language development: Beyond structural overlap. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13(2), 195–210.
Sorace, A., Serratrice, L., Filiaci, F., & Baldo, M. (2009). Discourse conditions on subject pro-noun realization: Testing the linguistic intuitions of older bilingual children. Lingua, 119(3), 460–477.
Tsimpli, I., & Dimitrakopoulou, M. (2007). The Interpretability hypothesis: Evidence from wh-interrogatives in second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 23(2), 215–242.
Tsimpli, I., & Sorace, A. (2006). Differentiating interfaces: L2 performance in syntax-semantics and syntax-discourse phenomena. In D. Bamman, T. Magnitskaia, & C. Zaller (Eds.), Proceedings of the 30th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 653–664). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Tsimpli, I., Sorace, A., Heycock, C., & Filiaci, F. (2004). First language attrition and syntactic subjects: A study of Greek and Italian near-native speakers of English. International Journal of Bilingualism, 8(3), 257–277.
Vainikka, A., & M. Young-Scholten. (1998). Morphosyntactic triggers in adult SLA. In M.-L. Beck (Ed.), Morphology and its interfaces in second language knowledge (pp. 89–113). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
White, L., Brown, C., Bruhn-Garavito, J., Chen, D., Hirakawa, M., & Montrul, S. (1999). Psych verbs in second language acquisition. In E. Klein & G. Martohardjono (Eds.), The development of second language grammar: A generative approach (pp. 173–199). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
White, L., Valenzuela, E., Kozlowska-MacGregor, M., & Leung, I. (2004). Gender agreement in non-native Spanish: Evidence against failed features. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25(1), 153–182.
Zeger, S. L., Liang, K. Y., & Albert, P. S. (1988). Models for longitudinal data: A generalized estimating equation approach. Biometrics 44(4), 1049–1060.
Zubizarreta, M. L. (1998). Prosody, focus and word order. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Cited by (4)
Cited by four other publications
Gonzalez, Becky
2023. A lexical semantic approach to the L2 acquisition of Spanish psych verbs. Second Language Research 39:3 ► pp. 731 ff.
Zhang, Shu
2021. La adquisición del español como L3 por estudiantes chinos: las construcciones con gustar. Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación 88 ► pp. 255 ff.
2017. Learner and native-speaker differences in the acceptability of gustar-type psychological verbs in Spanish. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 0:0
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.