THE INTERPRETATION OF SPANISH SUBJUNCTIVE AND INDICATIVE FORMS IN ADVERBIAL CLAUSES

Abstract

The present study fills a need for investigations of learner and native speaker (NS) interpretation of the Spanish subjunctive in contexts that allow variation. The analysis compares responses by NSs and three levels of learners on a written interpretation task in which each item contained a temporal indicator (cuando“when”,después de que“after”, orhasta que“until”) and in which verbal mood, verbal morphological regularity, the order of clauses, and the temporal indicator were manipulated. Participants indicated their interpretation of each item by selecting that the event happened habitually or had not yet occurred, or that both were possible. Results show that NSs’ and highly advanced learners’ interpretations corresponded with verbal mood, whereas intermediate learners patterned separately. Using models generated with binomial regressions, the current study proposes stages of development for the interpretation of adverbial clauses that are essential for the growing number of theoretical approaches to language variation.