The reassembly of verbal and nominal morphosyntactic features by novice L1 English-L2 Spanish learners

Adult first language (L1) English speakers who are advanced second language (L2) learners of Spanish demonstrate near-ceiling levels of accuracy for some features of Spanish, such as [Person] and [Number] for verbs (McCarthy, 2012; Rodgers, 2011). While for other features, such as [Aspect] for copulas (i.e. ser and estar), and [Person] and [Gender] in nouns, advanced L2 Spanish learners reach high but not near-ceiling levels of accuracy (Alarcón, 2010; Foote, 2014; Pérez-Leroux, Álvarez, & Battersby, 2010; Perpiñán, 2014). However, little research has been done to longitudinally investigate novice learners’ progression during their beginning stages of language learning to measure the initial accuracy levels of their oral production with such features and monitor any changes in their accuracy across time. Seventeen students in an intensive, beginner-level Spanish course participated in three 1.5-hour sessions across a 15-week semester. They completed five tasks eliciting oral production in their L2 Spanish including story recall, storytelling, picture description, the 20 Questions Game, and an informal interview. The tasks targeted verbal and nominal features to track acquisition of those features and longitudinal accuracy development. Consistent with the proposal of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (FRH) (Lardiere, 2000; 2008; 2009), participants correctly used finite and nonfinite verbs above 90% across all sessions, began to reassemble [Aspect] from the copula ser to the correct copula estar, correctly used [Number] on noun modifiers above 89% in all sessions, and struggled with [Gender] assignment and agreement on noun modifiers. Error rates for the most part did not change over the course of the semester. This research provides insight into the longitudinal development of novice L2 language learners’ oral morphosyntax.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Spanish

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Yarrington, Kara Marie

Contributors dc:contributor

• Montrul, Silvina
• Bowles, Melissa A
• MacDonald, Jonathan E
• Yan, Xun

• Spanish
• Second Language Acquisition
• Syntax
• Oral Development

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Kara Yarrington

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115383

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F115383