Abstract
This study investigates the acquisition of there-constructions (with verbs other than be) in L2 English by native speakers of European Portuguese (EP) and French. Its main purpose is to test two opposing hypotheses on the end-state of L2 acquisition at the interfaces: the Interface Hypothesis (IH) and the L1+input Hypothesis (LIH). The former proposes that internal interfaces are, generally, unproblematic at the end-state of L2 acquisition, whereas external interfaces, like the syntax-discourse interface, are areas of permanent optionality due to processing inefficiencies associated with bilingualism. The latter, in contrast, advocates that structures at external interfaces generate problems at a near-native level iff their properties are different in the L1 and the L2 and they are infrequent in the input. By administering 2 untimed drag and drop tasks, 3 speeded acceptability judgement tasks and 1 syntactic priming task to a total of 80 participants, we tested the types of overt expletives, the types of intransitive verbs and the types of discourse contexts compatible with there-constructions in advanced and near-native English. The results confirm the IH, but suggest that the LIH is not completely wrong.
Original language | Portuguese |
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Article number | 16 |
Pages (from-to) | 254-275 |
Number of pages | 21 |
Journal | Revista da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 22 Sep 2018 |
Event | XXXIII Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística - Colégio do Espírito Santo, Évora, Portugal Duration: 27 Sep 2017 → 29 Sep 2017 https://enapl2017.apl.pt |
Keywords
- aquisição de L2
- estado final
- interfaces
- construção com there
- frequência