The development of the syntax-discourse interface: Greek learners of Spanish
Metadatos
Afficher la notice complèteAuteur
Lozano, CristóbalMateria
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
Date
2006Referencia bibliográfica
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]
Patrocinador
Economic and social research council (ESRC), UK / Reino Unido. Ministerio de Educación y CienciaRésumé
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).