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    The Role of Discourse Context and Verb Class in Native and Non-Native Spanish Postverbal Subjects

    Cover for The Role of Discourse Context and Verb Class in Native and Non-Native Spanish Postverbal Subjects
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    Creator
    Zach, Ariel
    Advisor
    Campos, Héctor
    Lardiere, Donna
    ORCID
    0000-0001-5506-9150
    Abstract
    Recent research on the second language (L2) acquisition of postverbal subjects in Spanish has focused on the important role of discourse context in licensing postverbal subjects with unaccusative and unergative verbs (Hertel, 2003; Lozano, 2006; Domínguez & Arche, 2008; Domínguez, 2013). While these studies have made important advances in early L2 research within the generative framework, in which the structure was studied as a part of the pro-drop parameter (White, 1985; 1986, Liceras, 1988; 1989), they only examine intransitive verbs, do not consider the role of nuclear stress, and do not compare postverbal subject use across discourse contexts nor include contrastive focus as a discourse context. These shortcomings have led to variable performance by the native speaker controls, which make any claims of native or non-native like performance on the part of L2 learners questionable. This dissertation uses empirical data to incorporate discourse context, verb type, and nuclear stress into one experiment examining postverbal subjects in Spanish by native speakers and English-speaking L2 learners. A multi-componential experiment was conducted, consisting of two oral assessment tasks, in order to gauge native speakers’ and L2 learners’ ability to produce and rate sentences with postverbal subjects compared to those with preverbal subjects. It considers three discourse contexts: wide, narrow, and contrastive focus, four verb types: unaccusative, unergative, transitive, and ditransitive verbs, and transitive verbs with topicalized objects. Ninety-five L2 learners from four proficiency levels and thirty-seven native speaker controls completed the study. Results show that for the contexts in which native speakers most frequently use postverbal subjects, namely with topicalized objects and in contrastive focus, L2 learners from low through advanced proficiency can also use postverbal subjects, and knowledge of postverbal subjects increases significantly with proficiency. The optionality of pre- and postverbal subjects in narrow and contrastive focus is explained syntactically by positing a null pro[FOC] that can optionally be used in the numeration along with the lexical subject when it bears matching agreement and focus features. The Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2008; 2009) can explain L2 behavior by positing difficulty in reassembling the features from one lexical item in English, the lexical subject, to two lexical items in Spanish, the lexical subject and pro[FOC].
    Description
    Ph.D.
    Permanent Link
    http://hdl.handle.net/10822/1042948
    Date Published
    2016
    Subject
    Applied Linguistics; Discourse; Second Language Acquisition; Syntax; Linguistics; Language and languages -- Study and teaching; Language and culture; Linguistics; Foreign language education; Language;
    Type
    thesis
    Publisher
    Georgetown University
    Extent
    353 leaves
    Collections
    • Graduate Theses and Dissertations - Spanish and Portuguese
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    Georgetown University Seal
    ©2009 - 2023 Georgetown University Library
    37th & O Streets NW
    Washington DC 20057-1174
    202.687.7385
    digitalscholarship@georgetown.edu
    Accessibility