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Introduction published In:
Parsing to Learn
Edited by Laurent Dekydtspotter and Claire Renaud
[Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 4:2] 2014
► pp. 192–221
Introduction

Examining the impact of task demands on morphological variability in native and non-native Spanish [*] *

| University of Kansas
| University of Kansas

The study tests representational and computational accounts of morphological variability in English-speaking learners of Spanish by examining performance on gender and number agreement under different task demands. Second language (L2) learners took either a Speeded grammaticality judgment task (GJT) or an Untimed GJT. The tasks targeted agreement violations of two types: errors in the use of ‘default’ morphology and errors involving ‘feature clashes’ (McCarthy, 2008). In addition, three groups of native speakers took the Speeded GJT at three different presentation rates to examine whether native speakers under a processing burden perform similarly to learners. Natives in the fastest speed performed better with feature clash errors for both gender and number. Learners showed the same pattern for number, but performed better with default errors in gender, suggesting different effects of processing demands for properties unique to the L2. On the Untimed GJT, a subset of advanced learners showed perfect performance with both gender and number.

Keywords: L2 Spanish, L2 morphological variability, gender and number agreement, markedness, task demands, default morphology.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Gender and number agreement in Spanish
  • 3.Explaining L2 morphological variability
    • 3.1Representational accounts
    • 3.2Computational accounts
  • 4.The present study
    • 4.1Research questions and hypotheses
    • 4.2Method
      • 4.2.1Stimuli
      • 4.2.2Procedure and tasks
    • 4.3Participants
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1L2 Learner results
      • 5.1.1Speeded GJT
      • 5.1.2Untimed GJT
    • 5.2Native speaker results
      • 5.2.1Accuracy
      • 5.2.2RTs
      • 5.2.3Summary
  • 6.Discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 27 May 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.4.2.03lop
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