Acquisition of mood selection in Spanish-speaking children

Dracos, Melisa; Requena, Pablo E.; Miller, Karen

doi:10.1080/10489223.2018.1464006

Cited by 11 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…As proposed by Perez-Cortes et al (2019) and Sánchez (2019), the use of such analytical forms in production could merely suggest a preference for these expressions over subjunctive as a result of processing constraints, without having any particular consequences at the level of representation. This trend could be reinforced by the fact that participants’ dominant language (English) also resorts to their use when reporting commands, and that they are also a frequent alternative to subjunctive among Spanish child monolinguals (Dracos et al, 2019) as well as SDCs, as seen in the results of the present study. The prevailing presence of periphrases among Intermediate and Low HSs, however, could also be an indicator of—or eventually lead to—a weakening or reconfiguration of the mapping between syntactic/semantic features and morphophonological exponents (Polinsky & Scontras, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 58%

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On Complexity and Divergence in Heritage Language Grammars

Perez-Cortes

2021

Stud Second Lang Acquis

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For more than a decade, research on heritage speakers’ (HSs’) mood selection has documented a high degree of variability in their interpretation and use of mood morphology in variable contexts. Most of the previous literature, however, has focused on late-acquired alternations, and often limited analyses to one form (i.e., subjunctive), making it difficult to draw conclusions about HSs’ knowledge of mood distinctions. This study intends to fill this gap by examining Spanish HSs’ (n = 76) and Spanish-dominant controls’ (n = 25) interpretation and use of an early acquired mood alternation, where the presence of indicative or subjunctive conveys the report of an assertion or a command. Results from two experimental tasks reveal that, even though HSs’ performance tends to differ from that of controls’—especially at lower levels of proficiency—the nature and extent of their divergences suggests the need to embrace a more nuanced analysis of HSs’ linguistic outcomes when examining modal contrasts.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 58%

“… 1 Research on Spanish monolinguals has found that children do not exhibit adult-like interpretation or use of mood alternations within these predicates until the ages of 7.0–10.0 (Blake, 1983; Dracos et al, 2019; Perez-Leroux, 2001; inter alia ). …”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

On Complexity and Divergence in Heritage Language Grammars

Perez-Cortes

2021

Stud Second Lang Acquis

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“…Findings in French native acquisition studies are in accordance with other production studies that explored the acquisition of the subjunctive in other languages, such as Spanish. For example, Dracos, Requena, and Miller [ 83 ] analyzed the mood selection of 66 Spanish-speaking children (age range 4;02–10;03) and 13 adults in a sentence-completion task (selection of verbal mood). Their results indicate that children master subjunctive use, at an adult-like level, by age 6/7.…”

Section: The French Subjunctive As An Example Of Linguistic Complexit...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Subjunctive as a Model of Grammatical Complexity: An Integrative Review of Issues Based on Combined Evidence from Mental Chronometry and Neurosciences

Grevisse,

Watorek,

Isel

2023

Brain Sciences

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The acquisition of a second language requires the construction or reconstruction of linguistic knowledge about the new language system. Learners of a second language have to acquire the linguistic structures of the second language by constructing or reassessing their own knowledge in the light of the new one. Some of these new linguistic structures may be more or less complex to process and/or difficult to acquire. In this review, we focus on an example of linguistic complexity in French, namely, the subjunctive. Through a discussion of some selected studies on the second language acquisition of the French subjunctive, our purpose is to argue that these findings, considered from a psycholinguistic perspective, could be fruitful for further research employing neuroscience techniques, such as electroencephalography or neuroimaging in order to better understand the neurocognitive processing of this complex structure both in French native speakers and in learners of French. Hence, we aim to contribute to exploring the question of linguistic transfer in the field of second language acquisition, the typological distance/relation between L1–L2, the syntactic acquisition of complex structures in adult second language learners, and the potential contributions of electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging to the processing of the subjunctive, selected as an example of linguistic complexity that has not yet received much attention.

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Tracing the emergence of the voseo/tuteo semantic split in Río de la Plata second person subjunctives

Moyna,

Requena

2024

Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics

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This study documents the history of second person singular informal variation in Rioplatense Spanish. It focuses on the competition between voseo and tuteo forms in the subjunctive and proposes that the outcome of this variation can be linked to the acquisition of these forms by children. In contrast with other verb forms in the variety, which eradicated tuteo progressively, in the subjunctive tuteo prevailed in epistemic contexts, while voseo continued to be possible in deontic contexts. By combining data from the historical record (Study 1) with converging data from contemporary children acquiring the same structures (Study 2), we show that the subjunctive forms most likely to select tuteo are acquired later, making them more susceptible to normative influence. Because changes in the second singular present subjunctive coincided with the spread of public education in the region, we argue that the semantic split resulted from the interaction of linguistic, social, and developmental factors, and sketch a sociohistorical account for the actuation of this change.

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Acquisition of mood selection in Spanish-speaking children

Cited by 11 publications

References 10 publications

On Complexity and Divergence in Heritage Language Grammars

On Complexity and Divergence in Heritage Language Grammars

The Subjunctive as a Model of Grammatical Complexity: An Integrative Review of Issues Based on Combined Evidence from Mental Chronometry and Neurosciences

Tracing the emergence of the voseo/tuteo semantic split in Río de la Plata second person subjunctives

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