A new look at referential direct objects in L2 Spanish: evidence from production and interpretation of L1 English and L1 Mandarin Chinese learners

• Autores: Aída García Tejada
• Directores de la Tesis: Amaya Mendikoetxea (dir. tes.), Cristóbal Jesús Lozano Pozo (dir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid ( España ) en 2024
• Idioma: español
• Número de páginas: 302
• Títulos paralelos:
  • Una nueva mirada a los objetos directos referenciales en español L2: evidencias de producción e interpretación de aprendices L1 inglés y L1 chino mandarín
• Enlaces
  • Tesis en acceso abierto en: Biblos-e Archivo
• Resumen

  • This dissertation investigates the second language acquisition (SLA) of 3rd person singular direct object referring expressions (DO REs) such as clitics or full DPs, focusing on learners of Spanish with English (L1 English -L2 Spanish) or Chinese (L1 Chinese-L1 Spanish) as their first language, a phenomenon so far underexplored. The study adopts a multidimensional approach, examining both morphosyntactic and discourse factors that influence the production and interpretation of DO REs from a formal and pragmatic perspective which is rarely adopted in L2 clitic acquisition research. Regarding morphosyntactic factors, we investigated the effect of gender and animacy as morphosyntactic features of the leísta variety spoken in central Spain. We also studied discourse factors in subject Anaphora Resolution (AR) studies such as potential ambiguity due to the number and gender combinations of antecedents, referential distance, and antecedent bias of human DO REs. This dissertation also explores the role of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) and language experience-related variables in L2 acquisition, utilizing various research methods to provide a comprehensive understanding and triangulated data of the phenomenona under study. In order to achieve this, we conducted s corpus-based study, an Elicited Oral Production Task (EOPT), a Picture Selection Task (PST), and a Truth Value Judgement Task (TVJT). The data provided evidence to ascertain the following: i) how the multiple factors constrain the production and comprehension of DO REs such as clitics, full DPs, and clitic omission; ii) how the acquisition of DO REs develops in L2 Spanish learners across intermediate and very advanced levels of proficiency; and iii) how production and comprehension data of the different factors can be accounted for by theoretical model such as the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH) (Prevost & White, 2000), the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (FRH) (Lardiere, 2009), and the Pragmatic Principles Violation Hypothesis (PPVH) (Lozano, 2016, 2018, 2021). Our findings revealed that although learners at advanced levels showed significant pragmatic deficits in the resolution of DO REs, morphosyntactic factors posed significant challenges absent in the AR of other grammatical roles such as subject AR. Morphosyntactic deficits were found in production, but also in comprehension indicating that a representational account of the deficits may explain our data better than a performance-based account. In this line, we proposed that the problems stem from underspecification of the gender feature in clitics especially related to those clitic forms that pose more difficulties due to their markedness (i.e., feminine and inanimate clitics) in line with the FRH and universal feature hierarchies of pronouns (Carminatti, 2005; Harley & Ritter, 2002). Overall, learners were redundant with the use of non-economical full DPs where clitics are the most pragmatically appropriate choice aligning with the main tenets of the PPVH. Crucially, our data revealed that clitic omission is not a purely oral phenomenon as it also takes places in written production in L1 English. Importantly, we found clear L1 effects as L1 Chinese learners omitted clitics more frequently than L1 English learners in oral production. Finally, our findings showed the importance of carefully assessing proficiency and dominance in statistical models as at the same levels of proficiency L1 Chinese learners performed more accurately than L1 English learners across tasks which emphasized the role of dominance as a better predictor for L2 variable outcomes