Abstract
This study investigates the acquisition of clitic placement in L2 EP, using an elicited oral production task and a speeded acceptability judgement task. Participants were 20 L1 EP speakers and 30 L1 Spanish-L2 EP adult learners at intermediate to near-native levels. Results show that enclisis stabilizes early (at least in production) and proclisis develops sequentially, following a route similar to that observed in L1 acquisition: Negation > Subjunctive complement clauses > Indicative complement clauses > Adverbial clauses, quantified subjects. The contexts that develop later are the less categorical ones in native grammars, which may give rise to greater input variability and add complexity to the acquisition task. As a result, learners need prolonged input exposure to discover the patterns of clitic placement in EP. Full convergence with the target language seems to be possible, but only at a near-native level.
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