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L1 Acquisition and L2 Learning: The view from Romance
Edited by Larisa Avram, Anca Sevcenco and Veronica Tomescu
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 65] 2021
► pp. 355–378

Chapter 14
The acquisition of mood in child Spanish

| Universidad Complutense de Madrid
| Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia

This chapter presents an empirical study exploring the relationship between the development of Theory of Mind (ToM) and the first language acquisition of the subjunctive mood in Spanish. An analysis of the contrast between Spanish indicative and subjunctive verbal moods is proposed, linking it with the expression of modal meaning and propositional attitude information. Children (n = 40) between 4 and 7 years of age participated in false belief and wish recognition tasks, and in a joint story-retelling task in which the use of the subjunctive was elicited in a variety of sentential contexts. Results suggest a progression in the acquisition of the full command of the subjunctive from nominal to adverbial clauses and correlated with ToM abilities.

Keywords: Spanish, Theory of Mind, subjunctive, mood, child language, pragmatics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Cognitive correlates of Spanish verbal mood
    • 1.1Uses and effects of the Spanish subjunctive
    • 1.2Verbal mood in context – relations with Theory of Mind
    • 1.3The subjunctive in L1 acquisition
  • 2.Method
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Tasks
      • 2.2.1Theory of Mind tasks
        • Belief task
        • Wish task
      • 2.2.2Elicitation of subjunctive sentences task
  • 3.Results
  • 4.Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 17 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.65.14ahe
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