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This paper reports the developmental stages of the acquisition of estar in stage-level predicate constructions in the L2 Spanish grammar of native speakers of French and Portuguese. Copular verbs exist in the L1s of both learner groups; however, only in Portuguese is there an aspectual contrast, with copula selection conditions that partially differ from those of ser and estar in Spanish. The study used data extracted from the Corpus de Aprendices de Español (CAES), made up of written texts produced by L2 Spanish learners from CEFR A1 to C1 levels. We attempt to analyse whether, and to what degree, these L2 learners are sensitive to estar copula restrictions in adjective constructions. Our analysis of the written production of 143 L1 French speakers and 361 L1 Portuguese speakers showed differing acquisitional patterns depending on the L1. We consider that the estar overextension, found in the learners' productions, is related to the process of developing the ability to identify the specific features that distinguish the use of copular verbs in the interlanguage of our learners. Our findings, thus, provide a more fine-grained description of the semantic representation and access of interpretable features in L2 Spanish with special relevance to current hypotheses on Second Language Acquisition such as the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere 2009). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

En este trabajo, investigamos los objetos directos nulos (argumentos y pronombres clíticos) en hablantes bilingües y monolingües en la frontera domínico-haitiana, mediante factores funcionales de la marcación diferencial de objetos (persona gramatical, ±animado, ±definido, ±específico). Las variables lingüísticas que más favorecen los objetos directos de tercera persona son la animacidad (que es inherente del referente mismo) y la especificidad, la cual viene determinada por el contexto lingüístico. Sin embargo, son aquellos referentes [+animados] [+específicos] [+definido] los que obligan la presencia del pronombre, mientras que los referentes [−animado] [−específicos] [−definidos] podrían realizarse con objetos directos nulos. En fin, durante la adquisición del acusativo de tercera persona, los adultos bilingües van desarrollando un sistema bipartito en cuanto a la ausencia o presencia de los pronombres de objeto directo: todos los objetos animados y con referencia anafórica específica son, por lo general, expresados de forma explícita a través de un pronombre clítico (generalmente lo) mientras que los demás podrían ser objetos directos, presentes o nulos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although ser and estar have been studied extensively (Luján 1981; Clements 1988; Leonetti 1994; Fernández Leborans 1999; Geeslin 2005), less is known about how the use of these copulas varies from one Spanish-speaking region to another. To date, sociolinguistic research has been conducted on Spanish in the United States (Kirschner and Stephens 1988; Silva-Corvalán 1994), in Mexico (Gutiérrez 1992), and in Venezuela (de Jonge 1993), showing that some features (i.e. adjective class, frame of reference and susceptibility to change) can affect copula choice in Spanish. The current study extends this body of research to the Spanish spoken in Galicia, where both Spanish and Galician co-exist. Our statistical analysis of a group of 56 intergenerational participants examines both social and linguistic variables as indicators of trends in language variation in relation to copula choice. Our findings support previous studies and contribute new knowledge of copula use in Galicia and of language change in a contact situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]