Comprehension and Acceptability of the English Resultative and Depictive Constructions by Spanish Native Speakers

CELI, MARIA ALEJANDRA

Leiden

Conferencia; Conference of the Student Organization of Linguistics in Europe (ConSOLE) 29th Edition; 2021

Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Leiden University

Typologically different languageslike English and Spanish use completely different linguistic strategies tocapture events in the world (Talmy, 2000). The Resultative Construction (ERC)follows the English style for building event representations and thereby has nomirror equivalent in Spanish. This absence has significant implications for itsacquisition by Spanish native speakers learning English as foreign language(EFL). The hypotheses of this research are, first, that ERC will be acquired ata later stage than the Depictive Construction, which does exist in bothlanguages; second, ERC has different subtypes that will be learned in asequence according to their degree of departure from the Spanish pattern. Weconducted two experiments -the first one a comprehension task and the second,an acceptability task- in order to test those hypotheses, which were finallybacked up by them.             English is a satelliteframed language in which verbs tend to codify manner, whereas Spanish is a verbframed language in which verbs tend to codify result. English conveys resultby means of the English Resultative Construction (ERC), a complex predicate structurewith a main verb that codifies mannerand a particle (either a Prepositional Phrase or an Adjectival Phrase) thatcodifies result as a change of stateas shown in (1)(1)             She hammered the metalflat. Spanish templates do notallow this type of syntax-semantics interface since result is codified in the verb and, in order to express manner, an additional PrepositionalPhrase is needed (Paris, 2015) as in (2)(2)             Ella aplanó    el metal   a martillazos.She flattened the metal to hammerings.´She hammered the metal flat?Spanish, however, has an equivalentsyntactic structure to the ERC, namely, the Depictive Construction (DC) as in(5), which mirrors the English Depictive Construction (EDC) as shown in (6)(3)             He returned the bookdamaged. 'El devolvió el libro dañado'Semantically, thisstructure differs from ERC since the two predicates are not related in a causalchain as in the ERC; they only overlap on a given subinterval of time.Therefore, given the absence of the RC in Spanish, our aim is to describe hownative speakers of Spanish who learn EFL comprehend ERC in contrast to EDC, andwhat effects of L1 on L2 can be found in the different acquisition stages, ifany. More specifically, the purpose of this study is, first, to evaluate thecomprehension of the different types of ERC and EDC by Spanish speakers;second, to determine the correlation between the comprehension of ERCs and EDCwith the level of proficiency in L2; and, third, to assess the possibletransfer effects from L1 to L2 that might facilitate the acquisition of EDC. Wepredict that the proficiency level would improve the comprehension of thetarget structures in general, but this effect would interact with type of ERC.If transfer effects may take place, English structures closer to Spanish (EDC)would be easier to comprehend when compared to ERCs that do not have a parallelconstruction in Spanish.            We conducted two experiments consisting on twoindependent online questionnaires. Both of them included a proficiencyquestionnaire and the vocabulary LexTALE test (Lemhöfer, K & Broersma, M.,2011). The first experimentwas a comprehension task designed to measure theinterpretation of three types of ERC (Property, Path and Fake Reflexive) andthe EDC by native speakers of Spanish with different levels of proficiency inEnglish as L2 (Low, Intermediate, and High). 285 Subject were exposed to 36sentences and they had to decide the best interpretation of the target sentenceout of 4 multiple choice paraphrasis. Totest whether the rates for correct responses would change depending onConstruction Type and its interaction with proficiency (Vocabulary LexTALEscores),we ran a mixed-effects logistic regression model which turned out significant(χ2 (3) = 68.246, p < 0.0001). Post hoc analysis indicated thatresponse accuracy increased with LexTALE scores for all construction types (z?s< -3.360, p?s < 0.0008). When we compared accuracy within differentlevels of proficiency, we observed better comprehension performance for EDCthan for Property and Fake Reflexives ERC (z?s > 3.58, p?s < 0.001) atlow proficiency level, but this was not true for intermediate or high level.Across the range of LexTALE scores, EDC did not differ significantly from PathERC. In addition, a secondexperiment was applied in order to investigate whether native speakers ofSpanish with different levels of proficiency in English as L2 would differ inthe acceptability ratings of grammatical and ungrammatical ERCs. By means of anAcceptability Judgement Task (AJT) ranking from 1-7 Likert scale, 90 subjectsrated 96 sentences including target conditions of Property, Fake Reflexive ERC,EDC (half acceptable and half with semantic violations) and fillers. We ran aseries of linear mixed-effects regression models on correct and incorrect itemsseparately. Again, we predicted that the closerthe structure is to the Spanish DC, the more acceptable they would be rated.  Both modelsturned out significant (χ2 (2)?s > 8.340, p?s < 0.015). Posthoc analysis showed that all three levels of vocabulary proficiency displayedthe same pattern: higher acceptability ratings for EDC sentences compared toboth Property and Fake Reflexive ERC (T?s > 4.578, p?s < 0.001), with nosignificant differences between the latter. In addition, acceptabilityincreased with LexTALE scores for Property and Fake Reflexive (t?s < -2.604,p?s < 0.027) ERC, but not for EDC; which may indicate a ceiling effect as itis a structure present in L1. On the other hand, acceptability of incorrect EDCand Property ERC decreased with LexTALE scores (T?s > 2.398, p?s < 0.047,while incorrect Fake Reflexives remained unaffected.This may indicate that Fake Reflexives are far more complex to accept andreject in their semantically violated form than any other ERC and EDC even inhigh proficient levels.  Taken together, resultsshow that the target structures are comprehended differently being the EDC themost easily understood and acceptedstructure in all proficiency levels (EDC>Path>Property>Fake ReflexiveERC). As vocabulary proficiency increases, comprehension of Path, Property andFake Reflexive ERC improves. EDCs are easier for Spanish native speakers thanany subtype of ERC, which may be due to transfereffects from L1 to L2. In addition, error discrimination improves withvocabulary proficiency for EDC and Property ERC, but not for Fake Reflexives.It seems that Fake Reflexives are syntactically more complex than Property andPathERC, and this difference may play a role in the comprehension andacceptability of this complex structure by Spanish speakers learners ofEFL.   ReferencesLemhöfer, K & Broersma, M., (2011) Introducing LexTALE: A quick and valid LexicalTest for Advanced Learners of English. Behav Res (2012) 44:325?343 DOI10.3758/s13428-011-0146-0Paris,L.(2015).Preferencia aspectual en el léxico y compensación morfo-sintáctica:elcontraste inglés español. En Revista deLingüística Teórica y Aplicada 53:59-81Talmy, L.(2000) TowardCognitiveSemantics,Volume 1: Concept StructuringSystems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000. 565 pp.