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This article deals with the form and use of reformulation markers in research papers written in English, Spanish and Catalan. Considering the form and frequency of the markers, English papers tend to prefer simple fixed markers and include fewer reformulators than Spanish and Catalan. On the contrary, formal Catalan and Spanish papers include more markers, some of which are complex and allow for some structural variability. As for use, reformulation markers establish dynamic relationships between portions of discourse which can be identified in our corpus with expansion, reduction and permutation. The analysis of the corpus shows that English authors usually reformulate to add more information to the concept (expansion), whereas Catalan and Spanish authors reduce the contents or the implicatures of the previous formulation more frequently than English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deconstruction of the 'War of Independence' (1808–1814) as a Spanish nationalist myth was a necessary step in advancing our knowledge of the history of the Age of Revolutions in Spain and of Spanish nation-building itself. However, it set aside those who had in fact experienced those events through a genuine Spanish nationalized lens. Using a corpus of autobiographical sources written between the 1780s and the 1830s, this paper argues that political concepts of Spanish nationhood were already available before the liberal revolution unleashed by the French invasion, that anti-liberals used the language of nationhood in their ego-documents too, and that ideas of independence and constitution pervaded social cleavages and ideological divides. Arguably, then, the War of Independence had both mythical and real dimensions in terms of the history of national identities. Therefore, the great issue in nineteenth-century Spanish nation-building would have not been a congenital 'lack' or 'weakness' of nationhood but an intense cultural war for its definition along political lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the domain of Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) institutions, creative and innovative tools and methodologies for content delivery and user engagement have recently gained international attention. New methods have been proposed to publish digital collections as datasets amenable to computational use. Standardised benchmarks can be useful to broaden the scope of machine-actionable collections and to promote cultural and linguistic diversity. In this article, we propose a methodology to select datasets for computationally driven research applied to Spanish text corpora. This work seeks to encourage Spanish and Latin American institutions to publish machine-actionable collections based on best practices and avoiding common mistakes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we focus on unsupervised sentiment analysis in Spanish. The lack of resources for languages other than English, as for example Spanish, adds more complexity to the task. However, we take advantage of some good already existing lexical resources. We have carried out several experiments using different unsupervised approaches in order to compare the different methodologies for solving the problem of the Spanish polarity classification in a corpus of movie reviews. Among all these approaches, perhaps the newest one integrates SentiWordNet with the Multilingual Central Repository to tackle polarity detection directly over the Spanish corpus. However, the results obtained were not as promising as we expected, and so we carried out another group of experiments combining all the methods using meta-classifiers. The results obtained with stacking outperformed the individual experiments and encourage us to continue in this way. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper describes the development and validation of the Cognate Awareness Test (CAT), which measures cognate awareness in Spanish speaking English Language Learners (ELLs) in fourth and fifth grade. An investigation of differential performance on the two subtests of the CAT (cognates and noncognates) provides evidence that the instrument is sensitive to English-Spanish cognate awareness among elementary school-age Spanish-speaking ELLs. Cognates were highly correlated with the children's Spanish WLPB-R Picture Vocabulary scores, whereas oncognates were highly correlated to children's English WLPB-R Picture Vocabulary scores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies in Spanish heritage language writing have recently uncovered two opposing tendencies: 'backwards biliteracy' where writing conforms to rhetorical traditions in the dominant language and 'forward biliteracy' where writing breaks away from canonical rhetorical traditions and where writers carve out their own, transcultural paths of expression. In the present paper, this opposition is revisited by focusing on one grammatical element in Spanish heritage language writing -- the variation between overt and null subject pronouns -- and it is argued that backwards and forward writing are discursively situated in the context of situation of literacy practices. On the basis of these data, a multidimensional model of transfer is proposed as a theoretical and methodological framework for the teaching of heritage language writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can secessionism be a basis for affective or social polarization? Despite much research on independence movements, their relationship to polarization, a key mechanism theorized as increasing the risk of violent conflict, remains less understood. We argue that the issue of secession can affectively polarize along both policy and ethnic group lines even in the case of nonviolent disputes, and posit a number of expectations regarding such secessionist-based polarization. We test our argument with the case of Catalonia, a substate territory that has experienced a deep secessionist crisis since 2017, using new data from a panel survey and embedded experiments fielded across two key time periods. We find that individuals' secessionist preferences condition high levels of affective polarization, in that pro- and anti-independence advocates have strong negative views of one another. In addition, there is spillover in terms of stereotypes of associated language groups (i.e. Catalan, Spanish). Importantly, we find a group of moderates in between the two policy poles that exhibit far less polarization. Finally, we document the persistence of these overall patterns. Our results contribute to understanding the underexplored polarization dynamics of secessionist movements, particularly in contexts where high intensity violence (e.g. terrorism, civil war) has not occurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a subset of data from a larger survey study of immigrant and migrant Spanish-speaking readers in the United States and Canada, this article explores their pre-immigration reading histories; the role of reading in their lives and personal identities; specific day-to-day characteristics of their reading behaviors, including the frequency and places of reading; and the sources of information that readers use to select their new reads. This study places reading practices in the context of readers' migration experiences and pressures of adjustment and resettlement. Supported by the review of reading practices in selected countries of origin and by the analysis of the Spanish-speaking communities in the diaspora, this article contributes to the body of knowledge about immigrant and migrant readers. By so doing, it begins to address the gap in knowledge about Spanish-speaking readerships. This gap exists despite the extensive previously published research on Hispanic and Latinx library users, which has focused on their information-seeking behaviors, use of public libraries, language learning programming, and collection development in the Spanish language, without touching on reading practices. It is hoped that this study will contribute to more culturally sensitive reader services in libraries and a better understanding of Spanish-speaking community members by librarians in all types of libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using authentic audio-visual material in early language classes has become commonplace, but little prior empirical research has been published regarding why this pedagogical technique is effective for some students, and not others. This study examines the process of engagement and transportation of beginning foreign language learners into an authentic, Spanish language narrative-based music video. A structural equation model is developed that ties various elements such as belief consistency, cognitive difficulty, and affective disposition to the process of narrative engagement. The study then examines how a student's engagement and transportation into the music video's narrative impacts that student's language learning, thematic comprehension, and entertainment – three commonly cited objectives of using authentic audio-visual material. Evidence is provided to indicate that the degree of engagement and transportation into the narrative-based video influences students' language learning, thematic comprehension and entertainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research with Latina/o/x adolescent samples has found that language brokering can be a positive experience, but at times, stressful. Although many factors can contribute to these different brokering experiences, the ways in which Spanish-speaking family members and non-Spanish speakers support (or do not support) Latina/o/x adolescent children during their brokering exchanges can be a contributing factor. To better understand how Spanish-speaking family members and non-Spanish speakers can support young brokers, we interviewed 31 Latina/o/x early adolescent brokers. Our thematic analysis revealed that when brokers reported on family, the most prevalent type of supportive communication received was informational supportive communication. Brokers also reported that their family engaged in unsupportive emotional communication, but when family provided supportive communication, brokers felt efficacious and proud for helping their family. In addition, most brokers reported receiving informational supportive communication from non-Spanish speakers. Nevertheless, some brokers also reported that non-Spanish speakers provided limited informational supportive communication (i.e., absence of supportive communication). Our findings reveal what supportive and unsupportive communication might look like for brokers and how supportive communication can contribute to positive experiences for brokers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to analyze the psychometric properties of the Musical Self-Concept Questionnaire (CAMU), an abbreviated and culturally adapted Spanish language version of the Music Self-Perception Inventory (MUSPI) developed by Vispoel. Participants comprised 1,126 students from professional and advanced conservatories located in different autonomous regions of Spain. The internal consistency of the instrument was found to be high (Cronbach’s alpha = .907; AVE = .685). The exploratory factor analysis revealed an internal structure consisting of seven factors: singing, playing, reading, composing, listening, moving and general musical self-concept. Sex differences and correlations between musical self-concept and both verbal self-concept and causal attributions confirm the criterion validity of the questionnaire. In addition to being a useful tool for measuring musical self-concept in Spanish, the CAMU also enables cross-cultural research into this construct to be conducted, in line with that carried out in English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a discourse genre, statements of purpose are characterized by their occluded status in the academy and by their hybrid nature. Statements of purpose are required in applications for a place in a postgraduate course (Master’s degree or doctorate), and they are requested to obtain information about the academic and professional background and skills of each applicant. A study of the genre’s linguistic and textual features is needed in Spanish to discover and understand writers’ and readers’ perception of this genre. A corpus of 50 motivation letters in Spanish is analyzed here. We study the distinguishing macro- and microtextual features of this particular genre and co-occurrences between both kinds of features. At the macrotextual level, statements of purpose display prototypical rhetorical moves, which can be classified as writers’ moves and readers’ moves. On the microtextual level, modalization resources and discourse markers are discussed. This multiple perspectives analysis of the corpus shows evidence of significant co-occurrences among modalization, discourse markers, and rhetorical moves. Writers’ ideal representations of this discourse genre, which spans the academic and professional fields, can also be deduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research investigating the effectiveness of textual enhancement as a tool to draw adult second language (L2) learners’ attention to the targeted linguistic form has consistently produced mixed results. This article examines how L2 form recognition and reading comprehension are affected by different types of textual enhancement. Participants (n = 109) in the experimental group read a passage that contained one type of textual enhancement (underline, bold, italics, change in font size, use of capital letters or change of font) on the target structure (Spanish present and preterit tense) morphemes. A control group (n = 16) read the same passage without any type of enhancement. To measure L2 form recognition, all groups completed pre- and post-tests consisting of an L2 to first language (L1) translation task. To assess the effects of enhancement type on L2 reading comprehension, the participants completed a 40 item multiple choice test with questions focusing on form or meaning from the reading. Results for the present study revealed that one type of textual enhancement was better than others with regard to facilitating L2 form recognition, and that comprehension was not hindered by enhancement, regardless of enhancement type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In native speakers of gender-marking languages, mechanisms of gender production appear to be affected by the morphophonological cues to gender present in the noun phrase. This influence is manifested in higher levels of production accuracy when more transparent cues to gender are present in comparison to when they are not. The goal of the present study was to examine the role of morphophonological cues to gender in the production of gender agreement in native speakers and second language learners of Spanish in light of the Marking and Morphing account of agreement (Eberhard et al., 2005). Participants repeated and completed complex subject noun phrases with head nouns that varied in gender and gender-marking transparency. Analyses of accuracy rates along with Marking and Morphing model simulations of the results indicated that, contrary to previous findings, native speakers were not affected by gender-marking transparency. However, based on model simulations, second language (L2) learners were affected by the morphophonological form of the head noun. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reports a study that sought to determine whether non-native sentence comprehension can show sensitivity to two different types of Spanish case marking. Sensitivity to case violations was generally more robust with indirect objects in ditransitive constructions than with differential object marking of animate direct objects, even among native speakers of Spanish, which probably reflects linguistic differences in the two types of case. In addition, the overall outcome of two experiments shows that second language (L2) processing can integrate case information, but that, unlike with native processing, attention to a case marker may depend on the presence of a preverbal clitic as an additional cue to the types of postverbal arguments that might occur in a stimulus. Specifically, L2 readers showed no sensitivity to differential object marking with a in the absence of clitics in the first experiment, with stimuli such as Verónica visita al/el presidente todos los meses ‘Veronica visits the[ACC/NOM] president every month’, but the L2 readers in the second experiment showed native-like sensitivity to the same marker when the object it marked was doubled by the clitic lo, as in Verónica lo visita al/el presidente todos los meses. With indirect objects, on the other hand, sensitivity to case markers was native-like in both experiments, although indirect objects were also always doubled by the preverbal clitic le. The apparent first language / second language contrast suggests differences in processing strategy, whereby non-native processing of morphosyntax may rely more on the predictability of forms than does native processing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This work addresses the relation among the semantic-pragmatic categories of evidentiality, epistemicity and intensification based on a study of the discursive use of certain Spanish idiomatic phraseological units. The first part offers an introduction to some theoretical aspects, while the second part analyses the usage of the idiom a fe que. Two important theses that are defended in this article are as follows: (a) evidentiality has played an important role in the process of lexicalisation and grammaticalisation of a number of idiomatic phraseological units and (b) some evidential expressions display the existence of close relationships among evidentiality, epistemicity and intensification. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the use of epistemic stance strategies in journalistic discourse in English and Spanish. The linguistic resources of epistemic stance include evidential and modal expressions, as well as verbs of cognitive attitude and expressions of factivity. This article examines the pattern of distribution of epistemic stance expressions in three types of journalistic genres in English and Spanish and the presence of multifunctionality of some evidential expressions in the two languages. The article aims to reveal possible similarities or differences in the use of the stance resources in the various genres and across languages. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Spanish has a series of evidential discourse markers that combine the lexical semantics of visual perception with reference to inference or hearsay, for example, evidentemente ‘evidently’, por lo visto ‘visibly, seemingly’, al parecer ‘seemingly’ and se ve (que) ‘one sees that, apparently’. The main aim of this article is to examine the grammatical, semantic and interactional properties of these four evidential discourse markers in informal and formal spoken Spanish. From a semantic point of view, we study the evidential values expressed by these markers (i.e. direct evidence, reportative, inference) and discuss the correlations between them. From a functional point of view, we analyse the evidential markers on the basis of discourse-interactional criteria such as illocutionary force, position in the turn and kind of turn. From a grammatical point of view, we address the preferences in terms of person and Tense/Aspect/Modality (TAM) experienced by these evidential markers in discourse. The main result of our analysis is that, as far as the semantic and discourse properties are concerned, evidentemente differs from por lo visto, al parecer and se ve que. The former seems to refer primarily to shared thoughts, developing a reading that goes beyond any of the traditionally distinguished evidential values. The three other markers, by contrast, refer to indirect evidence, often combining the evidential values of reported knowledge and inference. In talk-in-interaction, the two types of markers behave differently: evidentemente does not enhance turn-taking, whereas the other markers leave room for the co-participant to give his or her view of the state of affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study investigates a teacher’s L1 use during focus-on-form episodes (FFEs). FFEs assist L2 learning by bringing learners’ attention to language. We studied the language used in FFEs in a Spanish as a foreign language (SFL) classroom to better understand the pedagogical purposes of L1 use in the classroom. We video-recorded 12 hours of an intermediate-high SFL classroom with an L1 English teacher at a US university. The audio data was segmented into FFEs and then coded (English L1, Spanish L2, mix) to reflect the language used in each of the teacher’s utterances. We also identified the linguistic areas (e.g., grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation) targeted in the FFEs. Chi-square and descriptive statistics were used to understand the relationship between the teacher’s language and the linguistic areas. Lastly, using the same data set, we conducted a qualitative analysis in order to depict the situations in which the teacher employed the L1 and L2. There was a significant relationship between the teacher’s language and the FFEs’ linguistic areas. Specifically, the L1 and L2 were used equally when FFEs concerned vocabulary and grammar. However, when FFEs concerned semantics, frequent code-switching occurred. The qualitative data illustrate that the language choice may depend on the interactional patterns and the complexity of the linguistic structure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reports an experiment on the implicit learning of second language stress regularities, and presents a methodological innovation on awareness measurement. After practising two-syllable Spanish words, native Cantonese speakers with English as a second language (L2) completed a judgement task. Critical items differed only in placement of stress. We assessed participants’ awareness of the hidden stress regularities by verbal reports and a novel methodology: inclusion–exclusion production tasks adapted from Jacoby (1991) and from Destrebecqz and Cleeremans (2001). Participants who remained unaware of the underlying regularities nevertheless performed significantly above chance in identifying correctly pronounced novel words. We conclude that L2 word stress regularities may be learnt implicitly. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Quotatives have been studied extensively in the language of teenagers in recent years as they present distinctive features of their own that make them different in part from those used by adults in mainstream English and Spanish. However, zero quoting has not received all the attention it certainly deserves as it has not been fully probed in terms of its discourse and pragmatic functions. This corpus-based study is focused on the strategies used by British and Spanish teenagers to introduce constructed dialogue without the use of a particular marked and an explicit quotative form. The results indicate that the absence of quotatives is not casual; there are some linguistic contexts that favor the existence of this type of quotatives, namely non-lexicalized and sound words, and the dramatic recreation of situations where the speaker(s) perform new voices. The lack of quotatives also serves to involve the interlocutor more directly and in a higher degree in what is being told, and gives more self-assurance to the narrator. These tendencies apply equally to English and Spanish. The study of null/zero quotatives should go then beyond the simple reporting of an absence of a verbal mark, and should address pragmatic and interpersonal factors closely associated with the context where they occur and with the speaker’s attitude and communicative intention and purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Quechua is the largest indigenous language family to constitute the first language (L1) of second language (L2) Spanish speakers. Despite sheer number of speakers and typologically interesting contrasts, Quechua–Spanish second language acquisition is a nearly untapped research area, due to the marginalization of Quechua-speaking people. This review considers contributions to the field of second language acquisition gleaned from studying the grammars of Quechua speakers who learn Spanish as well as monolingual Quechua and Spanish speakers in the contact area. Contribution to the documentation and revitalization of the Quechua languages is discussed as an ethical and scientific imperative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This investigation intends to assess the effectiveness of a lexical recognition test (Meara & Buxton, 1987) as a placement tool that distinguishes among levels of two groups of students: Spanish heritage language learners (HLL) and second language learners (SLL). Three hundred and thirty university students from four different levels completed a 10-minute/200-word task based on Davies’ (2006) Spanish frequency corpora. The results were compared to those from a control group of bilingual graduate students. As comparison measures, about half of the students completed a Cloze Test while the rest were asked to carry out a Multiple-task Test. The results of the study suggest that for SLL, and HLL at the lower levels of language ability, a lexical test based on the 5000 most frequent words in Spanish is a valid and practical testing tool that correlates with other measures of language proficiency. For more advanced levels of HLL, a wider range of words is necessary to avoid the ceiling effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the third language (L3) developing morphology of 78 Basque—Spanish bilinguals following a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) program and a mainstream English as a foreign language (non-CLIL) program. The analysis of cross-sectional and longitudinal oral data shows that (1) the omission of inflection in the L3 English interlanguage of these groups of learners is due to problems with the realization of surface morphology, (2) there is a dissociation in frequency of suppliance between suppletive inflection (copula and auxiliary be) and affixal inflection (the third person morpheme -s and the past tense morpheme -ed) already attested in L2 data, and (3) no significant differences were found between the two groups tested as far as the development of suppletive and affixal tense and agreement morphemes. The overall findings seem to support full-UG explanations for the variable use of morphology in the acquisition of non-native systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant, but rarely posed, question in EFL writing is what new language the writers assimilate from the process. In this study, a group of intermediate EFL students in a state secondary school in Spain completed an L1(Spanish)-to- FL(English) written translation task on their own, with bilingual dictionary/glossary support. Three days later, this group received feedback on the vocabulary errors in their initial translations, consisting of giving the initial letters and dashes for the remaining letters of the correct word. They had to rewrite the initial translation with corrections, using the glossary support. A week after that, they were unexpectedly asked to translate the same text again without dictionary support or the previous translations, in a delayed post-test. The group looked up 158 items initially of which 148 or 94% were correct. Of these 148 items 106 or 72% were correctly recalled in the delayed post-test. Of the 136 items that were initially incorrect, 71 or 52% were also recalled. In total the students made mean gains of 13.6 vocabulary items. Not only is this result encouraging, but the analysis shows that a focus purely on errors is misleading as it does not reveal language gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is concerned with Extreme Case Formulations (ECF5) (Edwards, 2000; Pomerantz, 1986) in multiple-party TV programmes in two different languages: Spanish and English. I examine the role of ECFs in Spanish pre-electoral debates and in English panel interviews. English data is 77 minutes and 58 seconds long and comprises nine different panel interviews of political, socio-political and social issues and Spanish data is 78 minutes long and includes four political pre-electoral debates. The results will disclose that the number of ECFs found in the Spanish and in the English corpora differs considerably (48 versus 81). And in relation to the type of recording, the data will reveal that (a) interviewers and interviewees deployed many more ECFs in political recordings (2.8 percent) than in socio-political (1.2 percent) or social recordings (1.3 percent); and (b) politicians used more ECFs (4.8 percent) than any other type of interviewees (1.5 percent). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined effects of word writing on second language vocabulary learning. In two experiments, English-speaking learners of Spanish attempted to learn 24 Spanish nouns while viewing word–picture pairs. The participants copied 12 target words and wrote nothing for the other 12 target words being studied. Productive vocabulary learning on immediate and delayed (2 days later) measures was higher in the no-writing condition. These findings suggest that this type of forced output without access to meaning can detract from word learning by exhausting processing resources needed to encode novel lexical forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent unrelated studies reveal what appears to be a common acquisitional pattern in second language acquisition (SLA). While some findings show that advanced learners can indeed achieve convergent, native-like competence with formal syntactic properties (even when these are underdetermined by the input), other findings suggest that they can display divergent and even optional competence at the syntax–discourse interface with discursive properties like focus and topic. These apparently contradictory observations are not coincidental, as they can also be traced in other acquisitional studies on L1 acquisition, L1 attrition in bilinguals, child SLA and SLI (specific language impairment). If this pattern is correct, it should be observed in the L2 acquisition of any given property that is simultaneously governed by both a formal grammatical constraint and a discursive constraint. I tested whether this is the case in advanced non-native Spanish acquisition of the syntactic distribution of subject–verb (SV) and verb–subject (VS) word order, which is constrained by both a formal syntactic property (the Unaccusative Hypothesis or Split-intransitivity Hypothesis) and a property at the syntax–discourse interface (presentational focus). Results show that the interlanguage grammars (ILGs) of both English (n = 17) and Greek (n = 18) learners of Spanish converge with the grammars of native Spanish speakers (n = 14) when formal properties are involved, yet they diverge (in particular by showing optionality) with discursive focus. These results confirm the emerging view that acquisition of formal syntactic properties is more readily acquired than discourse properties, which are persistently problematic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study, a partial replication of Bruhn de Garavito (1999a; 1999b), investigates the second language (L2) acquisition of Spanish reflexive passives and reflexive impersonals by French- and English-speaking adults at an advanced level of proficiency. The L2 acquisition of Spanish reflexive passives and reflexive impersonals by native French and English speakers instantiates a potential learnability problem, because (1) the constructions are superficially very similar (se V DP) but display distinct idiosyncratic morphological and syntactic behaviour; (2) neither exists in English, and the reflexive impersonal does not exist in French; and (3) differences between the two are typically not subject to explicit instruction. Participants – 13 English, 16 French and 27 Spanish speakers (controls) – completed a 64-item grammaticality-judgement task. Results show that L2 learners could in general differentiate grammatical from ungrammatical items, but they performed significantly differently from the control group on most sentence types. A look at the participants' accuracy rates indicates that few L2 learners performed accurately on most sentence types. Grammatical and ungrammatical test items involving [+animate] DPs preceded or not by the object-marking preposition a were particularly problematic, as L2 learners judged them both as grammatical. These results confirm that the L2 acquisition of Spanish reflexive passives and reflexive impersonals by French- and English-speaking adults instantiates a learnability problem, not yet overcome at an advanced level of proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compared the effects of writing new words in sentences with word picture repetition learning alone. Second language (L2) Spanish learners attempted to learn 24 new Spanish words in one of two conditions while viewing word picture pairs. In Experiment 1, in the no sentence writing condition, the participants viewed 4 repetitions of each word for 6 seconds each. In the sentence writing condition, they viewed 1 repetition of each word for 48 seconds and were asked to write the word in a Spanish sentence. In Experiment 2, the participants were shown one repetition of each word for 24 seconds in both the sentence writing and no sentence writing conditions. Immediate and delayed posttests on productive vocabulary knowledge were administered in both experiments. Scores were submitted to analyses of variance. Condition and time were independent variables. Target word production was scored based on syllables and whole words produced. Results of both experiments indicated strong negative effects for the sentence writing conditions, suggesting that sentence writing can inhibit word form learning during the initial stages of L2 lexical acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the challenges in content-based instruction in second language classrooms is how to focus on form in a way that is both effective and appropriate. The use of collaborative tasks that push learners to consciously reflect on their own language use (i.e., produce 'language-related episodes') while conveying meaning has been proposed as one way to accomplish this goal. Studies investigating the use of collaborative tasks that encourage learners to produce language-related episodes (LREs) have been shown to affect positively L2 development. However, little is known about how the proficiency of each dyad member affects how and how much dyads produce LREs during collaborative tasks. Therefore, the study reported in this article investigated how grouping learners by their relative proficiency (high-high, high-low, or low-low) affected the amount, type (lexical or grammatical) and outcome (correct, unresolved, or incorrect) of LREs produced during a passage reconstruction task, completed by twenty-one pairs of adult L2 Spanish learners from a content-based course.The findings revealed that the proficiency of the dyad members affected how much the dyads focused on form, the types of forms they focused on as well as how successful they were at resolving the language problems they encountered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the second language acquisition of pronominal arguments have observed that: (1) L1 speakers of null subject languages of the Spanish type drop more subjects in their second language (L2) English than first language (L1) speakers of null subject languages of the Korean type and (2) speakers of Korean-type languages drop more objects than subjects in their L2 English. An analysis of these two asymmetries is conducted within the Minimalist Program framework (MP), which hypothesizes that language acquisition involves the learning of formal features of a target language. I propose, based on Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou (1998), that the licensing of null subjects is conditioned by the interpretability of agreement features. When a language has [+interpretable] agreement features, raising of the verb to T (X-movement) satisfies the EPP requirement: hence, a null subject is allowed. On the other hand, in a language with [-interpretable] agreement features, the subject is obligatory since merger of the subject in the specifier of TP (XP-merge) is required to check the EPP feature. Learning of the obligatory status of English subjects is easier for Korean learners than for Spanish speakers since syntactically both English and Korean have the same feature value [-interpretable] (although null subjects are allowed in Korean for pragmatic reasons). Spanish has the opposite syntactic feature value [+interpretable] and resetting of this is more difficult. Licensing of null objects is hypothesized to be related to the strength of theta-features. Languages with strong theta- features, such as English and Spanish, do not allow null objects, whereas languages with weak theta-features like Korean allow null objects. It takes time for Korean speakers to learn the different value of English theta-features, resulting in the extended null object period in L2 English of Korean L1 speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the acquisition of Spanish word order by native speakers of English. Specifically, it considers the development of sensitivity to the distinct interpretations of subject–verb (SV) vs. verb–subject (VS) order, as determined by lexical verb class (unaccusative and unergative verbs) and discourse structure.Participants included a native speaker control group and learners at four proficiency levels. Results from a contextualized production task indicate that beginning learners transferred the SV order of English for all structures. Intermediate learners showed a gradual increase in the production of lexically and discourse-determined inversion, although their data was also characterized by indeterminacy and variability. The advanced learners demonstrated a sensitivity to the word order effects of unaccusativity and discourse factors, but also tended to overgeneralize inversion to unergative verbs in a neutral discourse context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is a replication and extension of Swain and Lapkin's (in press) study of the developmental effects of learners noticing differences between their own and native speaker output. In their study, task repetition, noticing and participation in stimulated recalls were all factors that might have contributed to more targetlike usage in subsequent output. The current study separated the effects of each of these factors. Fifty-six L2 Spanish learners were randomly assigned to three groups: (1) Task repetition (participants repeated the tasks without additional treatment); (2) Noticing (participants repeated the task and compared their original output to NS reformulation); and (3) Noticing + SR (same as Noticing group with the addition of a stimulated recall session). Reformulations were traced throughout the learners' output. Analysis of the data indicates that learners noticed differences between their own essays and the reformulated writing, and that there were quantitative differences in the output of participants from different treatment groups, with learners who participated in both noticing and stimulated recall incorporating significantly more targetlike forms in the post-treatment output than learners from the other groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the acquisition of a non-null-subject language (English) by speakers of two different null-subject languages (Spanish and Chinese) in light of recent research in theoretical syntax which shows that different syntactic mechanisms are at work in the expression of null subjects in these two languages. While null subjects in Spanish are manifestations of pro, in Chinese they may be pro or a null topic, the latter licensed by a topic chain (Huang, 1984; 1989). Topic chains have been shown to license null topics in other languages (Roeper and Weissenborn, 1990; Weissenborn, 1992) but cannot do so across a lexically filled CP. We propose that this difference in licensing mechanism ought to affect the acquisition of English by Chinese and Spanish speakers. Data from an elicited imitation task show that Chinese speakers significantly outperform Spanish speakers in disallowing null subjects in English. This can be attributed to the Chinese speakers‘ reaction to the presence of lexically filled CPs in English, which prevents them from licensing null subjects via topic chains. Spanish speakers, on the other hand, because they license null subjects via Agr (Agreement), are unaffected by lexically filled CPs in English and continue to allow null subjects. Interestingly, however, Spanish speakers at higher levels of proficiency reject null subjects in certain contexts, suggesting that reanalysis of this feature of English can and may occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents COES, an ongoing project developed at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, whose goal is the creation of some specialized computer tools for the Spanish language. Main objectives established for COES; Brief description of the Spanish grammatical features; Method used to build the COES tools; Evaluation results of COES' performance.