Cascadilla Proceedings Project: Paper 1284


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Selected Proceedings of the 7th Conference on the Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese as First and Second Languages
edited by Carol A. Klee and Timothy L. Face

ISBN 1-57473-409-1 library binding
vi + 194 pages
publication date: 2006
published by Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville, MA, USA

Table of contents



Abstract

Aarnes Gudmestad
L2 Variation and the Spanish Subjunctive: Linguistic Features Predicting Mood Selection
170-184 (complete pdf)

The present study examines Spanish mood selection in a written preference task among intermediate and advanced-level second language (L2) learners of Spanish according to specific morphological and semantic linguistic features. Two intact university classes of English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish participated in the study: one advanced (N=20) and one intermediate (N=17) class. The written preference task includes subjunctive items coded for the presence or absence of four linguistic features: irregular subjunctive verbs, expressions of desire, expressions of futurity, and expressions of emotion. Results show advanced-level learners select the subjunctive significantly more than the intermediate-level participants. The linguistic features that significantly predict subjunctive selection also differ between the two groups. Whereas only irregular subjunctive verbs predict subjunctive selection for the intermediate-level learners, irregular verbs and expressions of desire work together to predict the advanced-level learners' subjunctive selection. Thus these results suggest that for L2 learners, morphological features of subjunctive verbs predict subjunctive selection before other semantic features such as desire, futurity, and emotion.


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