Second Language Competence: The Acquisition of Complex Syntax in Spanish

150 Pages·2011·0.96 MB·English

by  Rocio Perez Tattam

Second Language Competence

Second Language Competence:
The Acquisition of Complex Syntax in Spanish
By
Rocío Pérez Tattam
Second Language Competence:
The Acquisition of Complex Syntax in Spanish,
by Rocío Pérez Tattam
This book first published 2011
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2011 by Rocío Pérez Tattam
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-4438-2701-0, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-2701-0
To family and friends

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements....................................................................................ix
Introduction.................................................................................................1
Chapter One.................................................................................................7
A Cross-linguistic Account of Control, Raising
and Exceptional Case Marking
1.1. Control and Raising Structures in Generative Syntax
1.1.1. Control and Raising Structures in
the Theory of Principles and Parameters
1.1.2. Control and Raising Structures in
the Minimalist Program
1.1.3. Exceptional Case Marking in the Minimalist Program
1.2. Raising and Control Structures in Spanish and English
1.2.1. Optional Control Structures
1.2.2. Raising to Object Structures
1.2.3. Other differences between Spanish and English
1.3. Summary
Chapter Two..............................................................................................39
Learnability in Second Language Acquisition
2.1. Language Acquisition and Learnability
2.2. The Acquisition of Infinitival Clauses in Complex Structures
2.2.1. The Acquisition of the Complementizer
2.2.2. The Acquisition of Control
2.3. The Learnability Hypothesis of Control, Raising
and Exceptional Case Marking
2.4. Summary
Chapter Three............................................................................................65
The Acquisition of Control, Raising and Exceptional Case Marking
3.1. Predictions for the Acquisition of Control, Raising and
Exceptional Case Marking
3.2. Experimental Design
3.2.1. Method
3.2.2. Participants
viii Table of Contents
3.3. Results
3.3.1. Language Proficiency Test
3.3.2. Grammaticality/acceptability judgment task
3.3.3. Forced choice task
3.4. Conclusions of the Experimental Study
3.5. Summary
General Conclusions..................................................................................93
Appendix A...............................................................................................99
Main Verbs
Appendix B..............................................................................................103
Language Assessment Questionnaire
Appendix C..............................................................................................105
Grammaticality Judgment Task
Appendix D.............................................................................................113
Forced Choice Task
Bibliography............................................................................................121
Index........................................................................................................137
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This volume adapts and expands the research carried out for my PhD
dissertation, which I defended in 2007 at the University of Ottawa,
Canada. I am greatly indebted to my advisor, Prof. Juana M. Liceras, for
many of the ideas, methods and analyses presented in this volume.
I would like to thank the members of the PhD committee, Prof. José
Camacho, Prof. Helmut Zobl, Dr. Joyce Bruhn de Garavito and Dr. Eta
Schneiderman, for their comments and suggestions for further research.
These have been incorporated to a certain extent into this volume. A very
special thanks goes to Dr. Alex Cuza from Purdue University, Dr. Raquel
Fernández Fuertes from the University of Valladolid, as well as several
colleagues, friends and family members for their invaluable help in
recruiting and testing participants.
The research for my PhD dissertation was partially funded by several
sources, which I would like to acknowledge here: an Admission Scholarship
from the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies of the University of
Ottawa, a Summer Graduate Scholarship in Humanities and Sciences from
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and a
research grant from the Academic Development Fund of the Association
of Part-Time Professors of the University of Ottawa (APTPUO).