Mood Selection in Relative Clauses

Borgonovo, Claudia; Garavito, Joyce Bruhn de; Pelletier, Philippe

doi:10.1017/s0272263114000321

Cited by 28 publications

(28 citation statements)

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“…In isolation, the use of subjunctive mood in an ARC, according to Borgonovo et al (2015), results in an attributive reading, implying, in this case, that the speaker does not presuppose the existence of the trilingual robot in question. The use of the indicative mood, on the other hand, triggers what Borgonovo et al have called a referential reading, signaling that the speaker does, in fact, presuppose the existence of a particular trilingual robot (e.g., his own trilingual robot who tends to get lost a lot.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Late(r) Bird Gets the Verb? Effects of Age of Acquisition of English on Adult Heritage Speakers’ Knowledge of Subjunctive Mood in Spanish

Giancaspro

2019

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Many previous studies have found that adult heritage speakers exhibit significant variability in their production and comprehension of mood morphology in Spanish. Nonetheless, it remains unclear what specific factors predict heritage speakers’ likelihood of exhibiting such variability. The present study contributes to this question by testing the effect of both (a) age-of-acquisition of English and (b) Spanish proficiency on heritage speakers’ productive and receptive knowledge of mood morphology. Seventeen “early” heritage speakers (age of acquisition of English: 0 to 3.5 years), 20 “late” heritage speakers (age of acquisition of English: 4 to 6 years), and 18 later childhood immigrants (age of arrival in the US: 8 to 12 years) completed a Contextualized Elicited Production Task and a Mood Preference Task. Results of the two experiments suggest that the later childhood immigrants, despite “overusing” subjunctive in +Presupposition adjectival relative clauses, are significantly more likely than “early” and “late” heritage speakers to produce and prefer subjunctive mood in expected subjunctive contexts (with para que and in -Presupposition adjectival relative clauses). Within the heritage speaker groups, however, Spanish proficiency was a stronger predictor of subjunctive knowledge than age of acquisition of English, a finding with implications for both heritage language research and pedagogy.

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confidence: 99%

The Late(r) Bird Gets the Verb? Effects of Age of Acquisition of English on Adult Heritage Speakers’ Knowledge of Subjunctive Mood in Spanish

Giancaspro

2019

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“…Despite the extensive instruction L2 speakers receive on the subjunctive, it remains a vulnerable area for this population, especially in those contexts where mood is variable and determined by semantic and pragmatic features (Iverson et al 2008;Borgonovo et al 2015). Similar problems are reported for heritage speakers of Spanish e.g., (Silva-Corvalán 1994;Montrul 2009).…”

Section: The Subjunctivementioning

confidence: 76%

“…In example (2), if the speaker refers to a specific shirt, indicative is more appropriate, but if he is looking for any shirt (as long as it has big buttons), subjunctive is more felicitous. Given that the specificity (a semantic feature) of the antecedent is involved, this use of the subjunctive pertains to the interface between syntax and semantics following (Borgonovo et al 2015).…”

Section: The Subjunctivementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The subjunctive has been investigated extensively, predominantly in Spanish-English bilingual populations in the U.S. The literature generally shows the subjunctive to be a vulnerable area, particularly in those contexts where mood is variable and depends on semantic and pragmatic factors, and this applies to both heritage speakers (e.g., Silva-Corvalán 1994;Montrul 2009;Van Osch et al 2017) and L2 speakers of Spanish (Iverson et al 2008;Borgonovo et al 2015).…”

Section: The Subjunctivementioning

confidence: 99%

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Implicit and Explicit Knowledge of a Multiple Interface Phenomenon: Differential Task Effects in Heritage Speakers and L2 Speakers of Spanish in The Netherlands

et al. 2018

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This paper compares heritage speakers and second language (L2) speakers of Spanish with Dutch as their dominant language, in order to explore the role of age of onset and manner of acquisition in the nature of the knowledge (implicit vs. explicit) of the subjunctive. Differently from previous studies, all items were presented orally and in written form, so that language mode of presentation could be excluded as a confounding factor. Moreover, the groups were matched on their general proficiency in Spanish using both an explicit and an implicit proficiency task. The results showed that the L2 speakers outperformed the heritage speakers in the explicit knowledge task and vice versa in the implicit knowledge task, suggesting that differential task effects, which thus far have only been attested for morpho-syntactic phenomena, can be extended to interface phenomena as well. These findings imply that age of onset and manner of acquisition have an influence in the way knowledge is represented in these two populations, and moreover emphasize the importance of using different task types in bilingual research.

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“…The contrast between the indicative and subjunctive moods in Spanish relative clauses has garnered significant attention in the fields of First Language (L1) (Blake 1983; Pérez-Leroux 1998), Second Language (L2) (Borgonovo et al 2015), and Heritage Language (HL) (Montrul 2007; Montrul and Perpiñán 2011) Acquisition. With respect to L1, it has been found that, even though children acquire Spanish subjunctive morphology early in the language acquisition process, they only master mood selection in relative clauses around the age of 12 (Blake 1983), showing a correlation between cognitive and linguistic development (Pérez-Leroux 1998).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mood Selection in Relative Clauses by French–Spanish Bilinguals: Contrasts and Similarities between L2 and Heritage Speakers

2018

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In this paper, we explore three issues related to the acquisition of mood selection in Spanish relative clauses by second language (L2) and heritage (HL) speakers of Spanish: (1) whether HL speakers are more native-like than L2 learners; (2) whether the speakers' performance differs depending on task modality (written vs. oral), since HL speakers are known to perform better in oral tasks and L2 learners tend to do better in written tasks; and (3) whether knowledge of French as an L1/dominant language (DL) has an impact on the acquisition of Spanish subjunctive, since both languages include this mood in their grammars, but it is used more productively in Spanish. Results from a sentence combination felicity task (SCFT) in Spanish-in written and oral forms-and a written elicited production task (EPT) in French, administered to advanced L2 and HL speakers of Spanish whose L1/DL is French and two monolingual (Spanish and French) control groups, revealed that L2 learners pattern more closely with the control group than HL speakers in the SCFT, both written and orally. In the EPT, all bilingual speakers display higher levels of subjunctive use than the control group, showing a potential influence from the L2/weaker language on the L1/DL. Languages 2018, 3, 31 2 of 23 these two groups of speakers may be task-induced. Specifically, L2 learners, who have received more instruction in the classroom, tend to obtain better results in tests that maximize explicit or metalinguistic knowledge (e.g., written tasks), whereas HL speakers, who typically acquire their heritage language at home, are more accurate in tests that measure implicit knowledge (e.g., oral tasks) (Bowles 2011;Montrul 2012;Montrul et al. 2008). This finding will be discussed in more detail in Section 2.2.In turn, tapping into language typology, it has been discussed whether the presence of the subjunctive mood in the L1 represents an advantage in the L2 acquisition of mood selection in Spanish relative clauses. Specifically, when comparing L1 French (L1FR) with L1 English (L1EN) speakers learning Spanish as an L2, it has been found that L1FR speakers acquire the indicative-subjunctive contrast faster and pattern more closely with Spanish native speakers than L1EN speakers (Borgonovo et al. 2008;Boudreau 2007). However, as Boudreau (2007) claims, differences could be, again, task-induced, since the participants in her study performed different tasks. Namely, the L1FR group completed a written sentence combination felicity task (Boudreau 2007), while L1EN participants completed an appropriateness judgment task (Borgonovo et al. 2008). When comparing L1EN learners of Spanish with French as a third language (L3) with L1EN learners with no knowledge of French, Restorick Elordi (2012) found indications of positive cross-linguistic influence from the L3 to the L2, suggesting that L2 learners are at an advantage acquiring an interface phenomenon if they are also learning an L3 that presents the same phenomenon. However, it is important to take into account that, even ...

show abstract

Mood Selection in Relative Clauses

Cited by 28 publications

References 51 publications

The Late(r) Bird Gets the Verb? Effects of Age of Acquisition of English on Adult Heritage Speakers’ Knowledge of Subjunctive Mood in Spanish

The Late(r) Bird Gets the Verb? Effects of Age of Acquisition of English on Adult Heritage Speakers’ Knowledge of Subjunctive Mood in Spanish

Implicit and Explicit Knowledge of a Multiple Interface Phenomenon: Differential Task Effects in Heritage Speakers and L2 Speakers of Spanish in The Netherlands

Mood Selection in Relative Clauses by French–Spanish Bilinguals: Contrasts and Similarities between L2 and Heritage Speakers

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