The development of the syntax-discourse interface: Greek learners of Spanish Lozano, Cristóbal Second language acquisition Adquisición de segundas lenguas Syntax-discourse interface Information structure Estructura informativa Word order Orden de palabras Unaccusatives Unergatives L2 Spanish Español como segunda lengua Recent acquisitional studies reveal that formal properties at the lexicon-syntax interface are in place before discursive properties at the syntax-information structure interface. It has been argued that this phenomenon results from learners’ deficits with interpretable discursive features like [focus]. This study claims that the phenomenon derives from learners’ deficits with the un-interpretable formal features responsible for regulating the occurrence of discursive focus, whereas learners’ representation of interpretable focus features are intact. This claim was tested by conducting a study with Greek learners of non-native Spanish at three proficiency levels. Learners judged Subject-Verb and Verb-Subject order with intransitives (unergatives and unaccusatives), which is constrained both formally (Unaccusative Hypothesis at the lexicon-syntax interface) and discursively (presentational focus at the syntax-information structure interface). 2012-10-26T08:38:17Z 2012-10-26T08:38:17Z 2006 info:eu-repo/semantics/bookPart Lozano, C. (2006). The development of the syntax-discourse interface: Greek learners of Spanish. En: Torrens, V. ; Escobar, L. (ed.) The acquisition of syntax in romance languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 371-399. [http://hdl.handle.net/10481/22166] 978 90 272 5301 9 http://hdl.handle.net/10481/22166 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License