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This study investigates whether and how English-speaking L2 learners at various proficiency levels acquire the morphosyntactic and discourse-pragmatic properties of subject expression in Spanish. The crucial question is whether discourse-pragmatic properties are acquired together with syntactic features or later in the process of interlanguage development. According to the Full Transfer/Full Access Hypothesis, transfer effects should be observed at earliest stages of development and full parameter resetting at later stages. An oral production task was administered to 15 intermediate, 15 advanced and 15 near-native learners and 20 native speakers. Results indicated that the near-native speakers performed like the native speakers with the morphosyntactic and the discourse-pragmatic properties of the Null Subject Parameter, while in intermediate and advanced learners the acquisition of these two properties were dissociated: the learners were accurate with morphosyntax and inaccurate with discourse-pragmatics.

The English quotative system (featuring forms such assay,think, zero,go,allandbe likeused in direct speech reproduction and thought) has been the subject of vigorous, in-depth sociolinguistic investigation, particularly in the past two decades. However, with the notable exception of Winter’s (2002) study of quotativebe likein the speech of Melbourne adolescents, the Australian English quotative system remains virtually uncharted. I address this gap in the literature by offering a quantitative sociolinguistic analysis of the quotative system of Perth English, investigating to what extent linguistic (grammatical person, content of quote and tense) and social (age and sex) variables are implicated in the use ofbe like. My results stem from 32.5 hours (325 096 words) of spontaneous narratives of personal experience recorded with 47 speakers in Perth in 2011 and evince an overwhelming increase in the use ofbe likeparticularly amongst the youngest speakers — as compared to Winter’s (2002) findings for Melbourne in the late 1990s. Multivariate analysis usingGoldvarb X(Sankoff, Tagliamonte and Smith 2005) indicates that — although some constraints like the favouring effect of first person subjects behave similarly across the generations and are in line with other Englishes — Australianbe likeis subject to different constraints across generations of young speakers. Pre-adolescent and adolescent girls are active agents of language change by uppingbe like’s frequency and its use with the historical present in narratives. Young adults are steady users ofbe likein historical present contexts but the significant effect of sex has reversed: it is young male adults — rather than women — who favourbe likein this cohort. The findings are in line with trends noted in the literature on English quotation elsewhere and point once again to the irrevocable link between system-internal forces and social factors as speakers move through life.

Across Englishes, frequently used epistemic/evidential complement-taking predicates (e/e ctps) have undergone conventionalisation, wherebysubject + e/e verbconstructions are reanalysed as formulaic stance markers. However, the system ofe/e ctps in Australian English (AusE) – and the degree to which they have grammaticalised – remains unexplored. In this article, we offer a quantitative analysis of the most frequente/e ctps in the spoken portion of theInternational Corpus of English – Australia. Multivariate analysis shows thatthinkandguessstand as canonical encoders of speaker attitude, andreckonis multifunctional, encoding epistemic modality and evidentiality. Assuming that (inter-)subjective meaning represents the last stage in semantic change, our results indicate that AusEreckonis less grammaticalised thanthinkandguess.