Interrogative Constructions in Cuban Spanish as a Second Language

Abstract

This work investigates the structure and meaning of main clause wh-questions in Cuban Spanish and argues that individuals learning Cuban Spanish as a Second Language will benefit from practice with grammatical structures that illustrate this behavior. We show that grammaticality judgment data that we obtained from monolingual Cuban Spanish speakers indicate that inverted word order is more likely with non-D-linked and non-Complex wh-expressions, and least likely with D-linked and Complex wh-expressions. More broadly, we argue that this data indicates that Interrogative Inversion in Cuban Spanish is syntactically distinct from Inversion in English wh-questions, and that learners of Spanish as a Second Language thus benefit from exposure to these specific constructions.