Complexity and Distance in the Acquisition of the English Resultative Construction by Spanish Speakers of EFL

PARÍS, LUIS; CELI, MARIA ALEJANDRA

Toronto

Conferencia; 16th International Conference on Role and Reference Grammar 2021; 2021

York University, Toronto, Canada

This study reports two empiricaltests designed to identify properties of the acquisition of the EnglishResultative Construction (ERC) by Spanish speakers learning English as a ForeignLanguage (EFL). The underlying question of those tests refers to whether thedifferent subtypes of ERC ? structures with no mirror image in Spanish- arelearned at different stages correlated with different levels of proficiency. Inaddition, we contrasted the acquisition of the English Depictive Construction?that do have a mirror image in Spanish- in order to assess whether theknowledge of L1 has any bearing on that order of acquisition. Our resultsconfirm that, first, the existence of a ?natural? sequence of acquisition ofthe different ERC types and, second, L1 ?and not only proficiency- has a rolein such order. Our claim is that the intrinsic complexity of each ERC type (Complexityhypothesis) together with their relative distance from Spanish (Distancehypothesis) are the two mutually consistent factors that set the sequence ofacquisition. Sentence (1) represents the ERCsubtype ?property?. The main verb is an activity that is monovalent but it hasan Undergoer argument that is not part of the Logical Structure of the verb. Inaddition, an AP describes the result of the activity, which consists of a finalstate of the Undergoer. The two predicates constitute a complex one via anuclear juncture (Van Valin, 2005). (1) Mary danced John tired.ERC is crucially consistent with thefact that English is a satellite-framed language. In contrast, Spanish is averb-framed language and, thus, it lacks a mirror image of ERC. (1) can beexpressed by (2)(2)       Mary dejó cansado a John de tanto bailar            Mary let  tired    to  John of so-much dance            ?Mary left John tired from so muchdancing? In order toanswer the questions mentioned above, we conducted two online experiments: A Reading Comprehension Task and anAcceptability Judgement Task. We singled out three ERC subtypes that differ in their syntax-semanticinterface properties: ERC-Path, ERC-Property and ERC-Fake Reflexive. Inaddition, we included the English Depictive Construction (EDC) as part of thecritical data set since both languages present depictive constructions. Resultsshow clear differences in the comprehension of the different ERC subtypes andEDC in relation to the proficiency level of the students. We entertain twohypotheses: Complexity and Distance. On the one hand, Complexity claims thatthe number of grammatical interface properties establish a hierarchy of ERCsubtypes that determines the rate of acquisition. In contrast, Distance claimsthat this order derives from the relative distance of each subtype to theSpanish event construction style. Both Complexity and Distance make the samepredictions for the order of acquisition of ERC subtypes -i.e. ERC-Path <ERC-P < ERC-F- but only Distance accounts for the acquisition of EDC.   References:Van Valin, R.(2005). Exploring the Syntax-Semantics Interface. Cambridge: CUP