The Interpretation of Spanish Subjunctive and Indicative Forms in Adverbial Clauses

Abstract

The present study fi lls a need for investigations of learner and native speaker (NS) interpretation of the Spanish subjunctive in contexts that allow variation. The analysis compares responses by NSs and three levels of learners on a written interpretation task in which each item contained a temporal indicator ( cuando "when", después de que "after", or hasta que "until") and in which verbal mood, verbal morphological regularity, the order of clauses, and the temporal indicator were manipulated. Participants indicated their interpretation of each item by selecting that the event happened habitually or had not yet occurred, or that both were possible. Results show that NSs' and highly advanced learners' interpretations corresponded with verbal mood, whereas intermediate learners patterned separately. Using models generated with binomial regressions, the current study proposes stages of development for the interpretation of adverbial clauses that are essential for the growing number of theoretical approaches to language variation.The second language (L2) acquisition of the contrast between the subjunctive and indicative moods has received quite a bit of attention

Exploring Lexical Effects in Second Language Interpretation

“…As with the current study, Quer focused on adverbial clauses and argued that in these contexts linguistic elements indicated whether an event had already occurred and that this cue was used in interpreting these forms. Kanwit and Geeslin (2014) also investigated the interpretation of subjunctive and indicative forms in adverbial clauses by NSs of Spanish and learners at three levels of instruction, ranging from fifth semester to graduate-level learners. Their 24-item written task, which manipulated the linguistic variables verb form (subjunctive or indicative), position of the main clause (preposed or postposed), and regularity of the verbal morphology (regular or irregular), asked participants to indicate whether an event was habitual or had not yet taken place.…”

“…Aside from overall frequency, however, the predictions for NSs as compared to various levels of L2 learners are less clear. This is because there is support in the literature for lexically based strategies as a starting point for learners (e.g., Quesada, 1998) and for NSs who show a greater tendency toward lexically variable patterns as compared to L2 learners (e.g., Kanwit & Geeslin, 2014). The present study was designed precisely to reconcile these competing hypotheses.…”

“…It has been argued that to acquire this contrast, learners must be able to use complex syntactic structures (Collentine, 2003), to apply semantic and pragmatic constraints rather than simply employing a lexical strategy (Quesada, 1998), and to adjust their rates of use of subjunctive and indicative forms in contexts that allow variation and the degree to which a variety of linguistic and social constraints come to bear on those rates of use (Gudmestad, 2012). Although there are few studies that address interpretation (as opposed to production), recent research has shown that not only do learners fail to produce the subjunctive forms with nativelike frequency, but also that even highly advanced nonnative interpretation of these variable forms may differ from that of NSs (Kanwit & Geeslin, 2014). The current study is designed to better understand the acquisition of these interpretive abilities in L2 Spanish.…”

What We Gain by Combining Variationist and Concept‐Oriented Approaches: The Case of Acquiring Spanish Future‐Time Expression

“…Furthermore, to the extent that variationists are often interested in social variables, L2 work in this vein also accounts for factors, such as the register and regional variants to which learners are exposed in the input (e.g., Tarone, ). This approach, applied to L2 Spanish, has led to a growing body of empirical research in the past two decades (e.g., Geeslin, ; Geeslin & Gudmestad, ; Gudmestad, ; Kanwit & Geeslin, ; Kanwit & Solon, ). An account for variation has also been beneficial in informing second language acquisition (SLA) research more generally, perhaps most importantly in methodological changes implemented over the past few decades, such as the use of multivariate analyses and the coding of linguistic variables based on L1 variationist research (Geeslin, ).…”

Normas pedagógicas contra normas lingüísticas en la selección del modo en español como L2: interfaz morfológico-semántica

“…Research on the acquisition of Spanish has focused both on the production and the interpretation of the subjunctive by English L1 speakers in formal and study abroad settings (Kanwitt and Geeslin, 2014;Russell 2009, Massery 2009, Llopis 2008, Adrada-Rafael, 2017Isabelli 2007;Isabelli and Nishida, 2005). Selecting mood is extremely difficult for native English speakers to acquire, because according to Collentine (1995: 122), English-speaking intermediate learners do not possess the "appropriate linguistic foundation with which to fully benefit from mood-selection instruction".…”