The Interpretation of Adjective-N Sequences in Spanish Heritage

Camacho, José

doi:10.3390/languages3040046

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…(24) Its lower levels of acceptance are consistent with the fact that the majority of the speakers in this sample are above 70% in the proficiency task. The robust nature of the judgements on Spanish adjective orderings suggests that at least for this sample no convergence in linear ordering is taking place unlike in the previous study by Camacho (2018).…”

Section: (22)contrasting

confidence: 68%

“…Finally, Camacho (2018) focused on heritage speakers of Spanish who are bilinguals living in an English dominant environment. Heritage speakers of Spanish in the US are exposed to Spanish as a home language and in the course of their lives, experience a shift in dominance from their home language to the socially dominant language (Valdés 2000, Montrul 2011, Kupisch and Rothman 2018.…”

Section: Adjectival Ordering In Second Language and Heritage Spanishmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Adjectives in Heritage Spanish

Sánchez¹,

Camacho²

2021

isogloss

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Ordering of predicative adjectives within the Noun Phrase varies cross linguistically in systematic ways (Cinque 2010). In Spanish adjectival ordering exhibits more flexibility than in English. To test the extent to which the stricter word order in English affects Spanish adjectival ordering, 35 heritage bilingual Spanish speakers living in an English dominant environment were asked to judge adjectival word orders and interpret adjective elisions. Results indicate acceptance of adjectival ordering involving roll up movement (Cinque 2010), not possible in English. They also show the ability to interpret elisions in contexts involving the same type of movement. These results provide evidence for the availability of flexible ordering in Spanish even among Spanish-English bilinguals.

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Section: (22)contrasting

confidence: 68%

Section: Adjectival Ordering In Second Language and Heritage Spanishmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adjectives in Heritage Spanish

Sánchez¹,

Camacho²

2021

isogloss

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“…We also included monolingual sentences, sentences in which the adjective and the noun are in the same language. In this case, these sentences were in Spanish, so that we could confirm that these heritage speakers cannot use a Type 4 adjective pre-nominally in Spanish (Camacho 2018). These sentences were the same sentences used in the experiment with Type 4 adjectives but this time, they were all monolingual.…”

Section: Task and Stimulimentioning

confidence: 69%

“…Some authors (Cinque 2010;Camacho 2018) argue that the unmarked position for English adjectives is prenominal and thus, it can be said that Spanish and English diverge in the position of the adjective.…”

Section: Adjective Placement In Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adjective Placement in English/Spanish Mixed Determiner Phrases: Insights from Acceptability Judgments

Nicolás

López

2022

Languages

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The present study examines the relative order of noun-adjective sequences within code-switched Determiner Phrases. Several hypotheses have been considered: (i) Order is a property defined by the noun; (ii) it is a property defined by the adjective; (iii) it is a property governed by the carrier phrase. The studies that have investigated the issue all assume that the class of adjectives is homogeneous, but in fact, there exist several sub-classes of adjectives which in many languages, including Spanish, exhibit distinct ordering properties. We propose to add the variable ‘adjective type’ to our study and use code-switching of English/Spanish, two languages that differ in the position of adjectives, as our database. A total of thirty English/Spanish heritage speakers took part in an experiment. Our results show that both the language of the adjective and the carrier phrase are significant factors of word order in the noun phrase; on the other hand, the noun itself does not seem to play a role.

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“…Adjectival order and interpretation is not a phenomenon particularly vulnerable to bilingual transfer. Camacho (2018) found that heritage Spanish speakers evidenced the same ordering restrictions as baseline speakers; they rated post-nominal adjectives higher than pre-nominal adjectives in restrictive contexts. This was true of color and nationality adjectives, which are lexically restricted to post-nominal position, and adjectives that could, in principle, appear in either position.…”

Section: Amentioning

confidence: 79%

Old Grammars New (?) Scope: Adjective Placement in Native and Non-Native Spanish

2021

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Prior studies have examined the association between modifying adjective placement and interpretation in second language (L2) Spanish. These studies show evidence of convergence with native speaker’s intuitions, which is interpreted as restructuring of the underlying grammar. Two issues deserve further study: (i) there are debates on the nature of native speaker’s interpretations; (ii) previous results could be explained by a combination of explicit instruction and access to the first language (L1). The present study re-examines native and non-native intuitions on the interpretation of variable order adjectives in pre-nominal and post-nominal positions, and extends the domain of inquiry by asking if L2 learners have intuitions about the order of two-adjective sequences, which appear in mirror image order in English and Spanish (faded blue pants vs. pantalones azules desteñidos). Two-adjective sequences are rare in the input, not typically taught explicitly, and have a different word order that cannot be [partially] derived from the L1 subgrammar. Two groups of non-native speakers (n = 50) and native speaker controls (n = 15) participated in the study. Participants completed a preference task, testing the interaction between word order and restrictive/non-restrictive interpretation, and an acceptability judgement task, testing ordering intuitions for two-adjective sequences. Results of the preference task show that the majority of speakers, both native and non-native, prefer variable adjectives in a post-nominal position independent of interpretation. Results of the acceptability judgement task indicate that both native and non-native speakers prefer mirror image order. We conclude that these results support underlying grammar reanalysis in L2 speakers and indicate that the semantic distribution of variable adjectives is not fully complementary; rather, the post-nominal position is unmarked, and generally preferred by both native and non-native speakers.

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The Interpretation of Adjective-N Sequences in Spanish Heritage

Cited by 4 publications

References 38 publications

Adjectives in Heritage Spanish

Adjectives in Heritage Spanish

Adjective Placement in English/Spanish Mixed Determiner Phrases: Insights from Acceptability Judgments

Old Grammars New (?) Scope: Adjective Placement in Native and Non-Native Spanish

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