Acquisition of estar + adjective in L2 Spanish by L1 French and Portuguese speakers

Abstract

This paper reports the developmental stages of the acquisition of estar in stage-level predicate constructions in the L2 Spanish grammar of native speakers of French and Portuguese. Copular verbs exist in the L1s of both learner groups; however, only in Portuguese is there an aspectual contrast, with copula selection conditions that partially differ from those of ser and estar in Spanish. The study used data extracted from the Corpus de Aprendices de Español (CAES), made up of written texts produced by L2 Spanish learners from CEFR A1 to C1 levels. We attempt to analyse whether, and to what degree, these L2 learners are sensitive to estar copula restrictions in adjective constructions. Our analysis of the written production of 143 L1 French speakers and 361 L1 Portuguese speakers showed differing acquisitional patterns depending on the L1. We consider that the estar overextension, found in the learners’ productions, is related to the process of developing the ability to identify the specific features that distinguish the use of copular verbs in the interlanguage of our learners. Our findings, thus, provide a more fine-grained description of the semantic representation and access of interpretable features in L2 Spanish with special relevance to current hypotheses on Second Language Acquisition such as the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere 2009).

The Acquisition of Copula Alternation Ser/Estar and Adjective in L1 Russian, Spanish Heritage Speakers

“…(Schmitt 1992;Schmitt and Miller 2007). From the point of view of bilingual acquisition, this marking condition makes forms of estar especially complex and less stable (Guijarro-Fuentes et al 2023). The by-item analysis that was carried out, taking frequency symmetry into account, revealed a more systematic presence precisely in the estar-preferred items, which agrees with previous studies acknowledging frequency effects in HS grammars in the acquisition of aspectual morphology (Thane 2023).…”

“…On the one hand, Bruhn de Garavito (2009) signaled a facilitating effect of German versus English in the distinction between eventive and stative passive constructions but did not detect an effect of the L1 on copula selection. Similarly, no L1 effect was found by (Guijarro-Fuentes et al 2023), who concluded that Spanish learners whose L1 does not have a copula choice follow a similar acquisition process.…”

“…Research on the acquisition of Spanish copula choice in ser/estar + adjective has confirmed that this is a grammatical phenomenon associated with a complex learning process that constitutes a difficulty for L2 Spanish speakers (Guijarro-Fuentes et al 2023;Geeslin 2003Geeslin , 2014Perpiñan et al 2019), even those with advanced levels (Guijarro-Fuentes et al 2023;VanPatten 1987) or heritage speakers (Cuza et al 2021;Lowther and Lindsey 2005;Requena and Dracos 2021). The results of intervention studies in formal teaching contexts have shown that the effects of explicit instruction on this construction are limited at initial-intermediate levels of competence (Winitz and Sagarna 2007).…”

“…Several studies in L2 Spanish contexts have covered various profiles of learners at various levels of competence, from studies focused on intermediate and higher levels (Guijarro-Fuentes et al 2023;Bruhn de Garavito and Valenzuela 2006;Geeslin 2003) to those considering ultimate attainment (Guijarro-Fuentes et al 2023). Empirical evidence from most of these works has shown that L2 learners of Spanish do not achieve native-like competence in copula selection.…”

“…Empirical evidence from most of these works has shown that L2 learners of Spanish do not achieve native-like competence in copula selection. This may suggest that there are differences in the ability to apply semantic and pragmatic constraints in non-native grammars (Guijarro-Fuentes et al 2023). Even when the distinction between ser/estar seems to be well established, L2 speakers seem to have difficulties related to the discrimination of the associated interpretive properties that are needed for the copula selection process (Bruhn de Garavito and Valenzuela 2006).…”