Imperfect Spanish Meanings Acquisition by Advanced Russian Learners. Evidence from Acceptability Judgements Data

Iban Mañas,Svetlana Alexeeva,Elisa Rosado,Natalia Fullana

doi:10.5209/clac.76710

Abstract

This study explores the difficulties on grammatical representation descriptions of Spanish Imperfect meanings by 54 first language Russian learners of Spanish with advanced proficiency levels and a control group of 18 Spanish native speakers. The results from the on-line acceptability judgments task the participants carried out indicated that interpretations of aspectual meanings typical of the Spanish Imperfect had been formed in the non-native speaker’s grammar. Moreover, a general tendency to over-accept non-adequate Preterite sentences was observed in non-native Spanish speaker groups. Furthermore, the findings revealed that progressive meaning represented a greater challenge for Russian learners of Spanish with upper-intermediate proficiency level, whereas at more advanced levels the perceptions of this meaning became closer to that of Spanish native speakers. However, the accuracy and sensitivity scores on lexical aspectual classes evidenced a persistent difficulty for non-native speakers in non-prototypical lexical-grammatical aspect combinations, which suggested a possible remaining effect of L1 transfer

Highlights

This study focuses on the acquisition of Spanish Imperfect by Russian learners of Spanish at advanced proficiency levels
The collected data on L1 Russian learners of Spanish was analyzed to examine which conditions play a crucial role in the acceptance and rejection of sentences containing Imperfect meanings, as well as in the accuracy index measured in terms of specificity and sensitivity
In the case of Preterite sentences, the second part of the analysis looked at Preterite verbal form sentences in order to determine the participants’ degree of sensitivity to inadequate contexts where there is a clash between the verbal form and the aspectual meaning of the sentence

Summary

Introduction

2. Coding (of) Imperfective interpretations/meanings in Spanish and Russian. Crosslinguistic differences between Spanish and Russian tense-aspectual systems. The Spanish Imperfect in second language acquisition. The nature and scope of ultimate attainment in second language (L2) acquisition remains an open question (Salaberry, 2018), it is beyond doubt that mastery of tense, aspect, and modality is a challenging task for initial and intermediate L2 learners (Montrul, 2004; 2008). Several authors have confirmed an L1 effect in the interpretation and use of aspectual information throughout the development of non-native languages (Montrul & Slabakova, 2002, 2003; Gabriele, Martohardjono & McClure, 2005). Universal trends have been observed in the acquisition of tense-aspect morphology that reveal the influence of factors, such as the semantic properties of the verb and the narrative structure of discourse (Shirai, 2004)

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Conclusion