Cover not available
Article published In:
Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 27:1 (2014) ► pp.54–86

Processing ser and estar to locate objects and events

An ERP study with L2 speakers of Spanish

| Penn State University
In Spanish locative constructions, a different form of the copula is selected in relation to the semantic properties of the grammatical subject: sentences that locate objects require estar while those that locate events require ser (both translated in English as ‘to be’). In an ERP study, we examined whether second language (L2) speakers of Spanish are sensitive to the selectional restrictions that the different types of subjects impose on the choice of the two copulas. Twenty-four native speakers of Spanish and two groups of L2 Spanish speakers (24 beginners and 18 advanced speakers) were recruited to investigate the processing of ‘object/event + estar/ser’ permutations. Participants provided grammaticality judgments on correct (object + estar; event + ser) and incorrect (object + ser; event + estar) sentences while their brain activity was recorded. In line with previous studies (Leone-Fernández, Molinaro, Carreiras, & Barber, 2012; Sera, Gathje, & Pintado, 1999), the results of the grammaticality judgment for the native speakers showed that participants correctly accepted object + estar and event + ser constructions. In addition, while ‘object + ser’ constructions were considered grossly ungrammatical, ‘event + estar’ combinations were perceived as unacceptable to a lesser degree. For these same participants, ERP recording time-locked to the onset of the critical word ‘en’ showed a larger P600 for the ser predicates when the subject was an object than when it was an event (*La silla es en la cocina vs. La fiesta es en la cocina). This P600 effect is consistent with syntactic repair of the defining predicate when it does not fit with the adequate semantic properties of the subject. For estar predicates (La silla está en la cocina vs. *La fiesta está en la cocina), the findings showed a central-frontal negativity between 500–700 ms. Grammaticality judgment data for the L2 speakers of Spanish showed that beginners were significantly less accurate than native speakers in all conditions, while the advanced speakers only differed from the natives in the event+ser and event+estar conditions. For the ERPs, the beginning learners did not show any effects in the time-windows under analysis. The advanced speakers showed a pattern similar to that of native speakers: (1) a P600 response to ‘object + ser’ violation more central and frontally distributed, and (2) a central-frontal negativity between 500–700 ms for ‘event + estar’ violation. Findings for the advanced speakers suggest that behavioral methods commonly used to assess grammatical knowledge in the L2 may be underestimating what L2 speakers have actually learned.
Keywords: L2 sentence processing, ser/estar, ERPs, objects and events, locative predicates
Published online: 8 August 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/resla.27.1.03dus
References
Abutalebi, J.
(2008) Neural aspects of second language representation and language control. Acta Psychologica, 1281, 446–478. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ainsworth-Darnell, K., Shulman, H.G., & Boland, J.E.
(1998) Dissociating brain responses to syntactic and semantic anomalies: Evidence from event-related potentials. Journal of Memory and Language, 381, 112–130. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berg, P., & Scherg, M.
(1991) Dipole models of eye movements and blinks. Electroencephalography & Clinical Neurophysiology, 791, 36–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bosque, I., & Demonte, V.
(Eds.) (1999) Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española. (31 vols.). Madrid: Espasa Calpe.Google Scholar
Brown, E.L., & Torres-Cortés, M.
(2012) Syntactic and pragmatic usage of the [estar + adjective] construction in Puerto Rican Spanish: ¡Está brutal! In K. Geeslin & M. Díaz-Campos (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 2010 Hispanic Linguistic Symposium (pp. 61–74). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Bruhn de Garavito, J., & Valenzuela, E.
(2006) The status of ser and estar in late and early bilingual L2 Spanish. In T. Face & C. Klee (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 8th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium and 7th Conference on the Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese as First and Second Languages (pp. 100–109). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Bull, W.
(1965) Spanish for teachers. New York: Ronald Press.Google Scholar
Butt, J., & Benjamin, C.
(2000) A new reference grammar for modern Spanish. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Camacho, J.
(2012) ‘Ser’ and ‘estar’: Individual/stage level predicates or aspect? In J.I. Hualde, A. Olarrea & E. O’Rourke (Eds.), The Blackwell handbook of Hispanic Linguistics (pp. 453–476). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clements, J.C.
(1988) The semantics and pragmatics of the Spanish <copula+adjective> construction. Linguistics, 261, 779–822. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2005) “Ser” and “estar” in the predicate adjective construction. In J.C. Clements & J. Yoon (Eds.), Functional approaches to Spanish syntax: Lexical semantics, discourse, and transitivity (pp. 161–202). London: Palgrave-Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Collentine, J., & Asención-Delaney, Y.
(2010) A corpus-based analysis of the discourse functions of ser/estar+ adjective in three levels of Spanish as FL learners. Language Learning, 601, 409–445. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cortés-Torres, M.
(2004) ¿Ser o estar? La variación lingüística y social de estar más adjetivo en el español de Cuernavaca, México. Hispania, 871, 788–795. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Delbecque, N.
(1997) The Spanish copulas ser and estar . In M. Verspoor, K.D. Lee & E. Sweetser (Eds.), Lexical and syntactical construction and the construction of meaning (pp. 247–270). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Díaz, B.
(2009) Why do some people master a second language? (while others do not). Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Barcelona.Google Scholar
Fernández Leborans, M.J.
(1999) La predicación: Las oraciones copulativas. In I. Bosque & V. Demonte (Eds.), Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española (pp. 2354–2460). Madrid: Espasa Calpe.Google Scholar
Foucart, A., & Frenck-Mestre, C.
(2012) Can late L2 learners acquire new grammatical features? Evidence from ERPs and eye-tracking. Journal of Memory and Language, 661, 226–248. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Frenck-Mestre, C., Osterhout, L., McLaughlin, J., & Foucart, A.
(2008) The effect of phonological realization of inflectional morphology on verbal agreement in French: Evidence from ERPs. Acta Psychologica, 1281, 528–536. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gallego, A., & Uriagereka, J.
(2011) The lexical syntax of ser and estar . Ms., Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona & University of Maryland.Google Scholar
Geeslin, K.
(2000) A new approach to the second language acquisition of copula choice in Spanish. In R. Leow & C. Sanz (Eds.), Spanish Applied Linguistics at the turn of the millennium: Papers from the 1999 conference on the L1 & L2 acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese (pp. 50–66). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
(2005) Crossing disciplinary boundaries to improve the analysis of second language data: A study of copula choice with adjectives in Spanish. Munich: LINCOM Publishers.Google Scholar
(2006) Linguistic contextual features and variation in L2 data elicitation. In C. Klee and T. Face (Eds.), Selected proceedings from the 7th conference on the acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese as a first and second language (pp. 74–85). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Geeslin, K., & Guijarro-Fuentes, P.
(2006) The second language acquisition of variable structures in Spanish by Portuguese speakers. Language Learning, 561, 53–107. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2008) Variation in contemporary Spanish: Linguistic predictors of estar in four cases of language contact. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 111, 365–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
González-Vilbazo, K., & Remberger, E.M.
(2005)  Ser and estar: The syntax of stage level and individual level predicates in Spanish. In C. Maienborn & A. Wöllstein (Eds.), Event arguments in syntax, semantics, and discourse (pp. 89–112). Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Gunterman, G.
(1992) An analysis of interlanguage development over time: Part II, ser and estar . Hispania, 751, 1294–1303. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hagoort, P., Brown, C.M., & Groothusen, J.
(1993) The syntactic positive shift as an ERP-measure of syntactic processing. Language and Cognitive Processes, 81, 439–483. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holtheuer, C.
(2009) Learning ser and estar: A study of production and comprehension in Chilean Spanish. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation. The Australian National University, Canberra.Google Scholar
Indefrey, P.
(2006) A meta-analysis of hemodynamic studies on first and second language processing: Which suggested differences can we trust and what do they mean? Language Learning, 561, 279–304. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kim, A., & Osterhout, L.
(2005) The independence of combinatory semantic processing: Evidence from event-related potentials. Journal of Memory and Language, 521, 205–225. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
King, L., & Suñer, M.
(2004) Gramática española: Análisis y práctica. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Kotz, S.A.
(2009) A critical review of ERP and fMRI evidence on L2 syntactic processing. Brain and Language, 1091, 68–74. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kotz, S.A., Holcomb, P.J., & Osterhout, L.
(2008) ERPs reveal comparable syntactic sentence processing in native and non-native readers of English. Acta Psychologica, 1281, 514–527. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kroll, J.F., & Dussias, P.E.
(2013) The comprehension of words and sentences in two languages. In T. Bhatia & W. Ritchie (Eds.), The handbook of bilingualism and multilingualism, 2nd edition (pp. 216–243).Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Kroll J.F., & Stewart E.
(1994) Category interference in translation and picture naming: Evidence for asymmetric connections between bilingual memory representations. Journal of Memory and Language, 331, 149–174. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kutas, M., & Hillyard, S.A.
(1980) Reading between the lines: Event-related potentials during natural language processing. Brain and Language, 111, 354–373. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kutas, M., & Federmeier, K.D.
(2011) Thirty years and counting: Finding meaning in the N400 component of the event-related brain potential (ERP). Annual Review of Psychology, 621, 621–647. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leone-Fernández, B., Molinaro, N., Carreiras, M., & Barber, H.A.
(2012) Objects, events and “to be” verbs in Spanish: An ERP study of the syntax-semantics interface. Brain and Language, 1201, 127–134. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leonetti, M.
(1994)  Ser y estar: Estado de la cuestión. Barataria, 11, 182–205.Google Scholar
Linck, J., Kroll, J.F., & Sunderman, G.
(2009) Losing access to the native language while immersed in a second language: Evidence for the role of inhibition in second language learning. Psychological Science, 201, 1507–1515. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Luján, M.
(1981) The Spanish copulas as aspectual indicators. Lingua, 541, 165–210. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maienborn, C.
(2005) A discourse-based account of Spanish ser/estar . Linguistics, 431, 155–180. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McLaughlin, J., Osterhout, L., & Kim, A.
(2004) Neural correlates of second-language word learning: Minimal instruction produces rapid changes. Nature Neuroscience, 71, 703–704. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miller, K., & Schmitt, C.
(2012) Variable input and the acquisition of plural morphology. Language Acquisition, 191, 223–261. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Misra, M., Guo, T., Bobb, S.C., & Kroll, J.F.
(2012) When bilinguals choose a single word to speak: Electrophysiological evidence for inhibition of the native language. Journal of Memory and Language, 671, 224–237. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Neville, H., Nicol, J.L., Barss, A., Forster, K.I., & Garrett, M.F.
(1991) Syntactically based sentence processing classes: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 31, 151–165. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oldfield, R.C.
(1971) The assessment and analysis of handedness: The Edinburgh inventory. Neuropsychologia, 91, 97–113. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Osterhout, L., & Holcomb, P.L.
(1992) Event-related brain potentials elicited by syntactic anomaly. Journal of Memory and Language, 311, 785–806. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Osterhout, L., McLaughlin, J., Pitkänen, I., Frenck-Mestre, C., & Molinaro, N.
(2006) Novice learners, longitudinal designs, and event-related potentials: A paradigm for exploring the neurocognition of second-language processing. Language Learning, 561, 199–230. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Osterhout, L., & Mobley, L.A.
(1995) Event-related potentials elicited by failure to agree. Journal of Memory and Language, 341, 739–773. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pakulak, E., & Neville, H.J.
(2011) Maturational constraints on the recruitment of early processes for syntactic processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 231, 2752–2765 DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pérez-Leroux, A.T., Álvarez, Y., & Battersby, T.
(2010) Cuando era feliz, e indocumentado: An aspectual approach to copula choice in L2 Spanish. In C. Borgonovo, M. Español-Echevarría & P. Prévost (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 12th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (pp. 209–220). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Ryan, J., & Lafford, B.
(1992) The acquisition of lexical meaning in a study abroad environment. Hispania, 751, 714–722. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Salazar, M.L.
(2007) Está muy diferente a como era antes: Ser and estar + adjective in New Mexico Spanish. In K. Potowski & R. Cameron (Eds.), Spanish in contact: Policy, social and linguistic inquiries (pp. 343–353). Amsterdan: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmitt, C.
(1996). Aspect and the syntax of noun phrases. Unpublished PhD dissertation. University of Maryland, USA.Google Scholar
(2005) Semi-copulas: event and aspectual composition. In P. Kempchinsky & R. Slabakova (Eds.), Syntax, semantics and the acquisition of aspect (pp. 121–145). Springer: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Schmitt, C., Holtheuer, C., & Miller, K.
(2004) Acquisition of copulas ser and estar in Spanish: Learning lexico-semantics, syntax and discourse. Proceedings supplement of the 28th Boston University Conference on Language Development . Online: [URL].
Sebastián-Gallés, N., Martí, A., Carreiras, M., and Cuetos, F.
(2000) LEXESP: Una base de datos informatizada del español. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona.Google Scholar
Sera, M.
(1992) To be or to be. Journal of Memory and Language, 311, 408–427. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sera, M., Gathje, J., & Pintado, J.C.
(1999) Language and ontological knowledge: The contrast between objects and events made by Spanish and English speakers. Journal of Memory and Language, 411, 303–326. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, C., & Montanari, S.
(2008) The acquisition of ser, estar (and be) by a Spanish-English bilingual child: The early stages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 111, 341–360. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Steinhauer, K., White, E.J., & Drury, J.E.
(2009) Temporal dynamics of late second language acquisition: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Second Language Research, 251, 13–41. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sunderman, G.
(2014) Translation recognition tasks. In J. Jegerski & B. Van Patten (Eds.), Research methods in second language psycholinguistics (pp. 185–211). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tokowicz, N., & MacWhinney, B.
(2005) Implicit and explicit measures of sensitivity to violations in second language grammar: An event-related potential investigation. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 271, 173–204. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
VanPatten, B.
(1985) The acquisition of ser and estar by adult learners of Spanish: A preliminary investigation of transitional stages of competence. Hispania, 681, 399–406. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1987) Classroom learners’ acquisition of ser and estar: Accounting for the data. In B. Van Patten, T.R. Dvorak & J.F. Lee (Eds.), Foreign language learning: A research perspective (pp. 61–76). Cambridge, MA: Newbury House.Google Scholar
(2010) Some verbs are more perfect than others: Why learners have difficulty with ser and estar and what it means for instruction. Hispania, 931, 29–38.Google Scholar
Woolsey, D.
(2008) From theory to research: contextual predictors of estar + adjective and the study of SLA of Spanish copula choice. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 111, 277–296. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zagona, K.
(2010)  Ser and estar: Phrase structure and aspect. In C. Nishida & C. Russi (Eds.), Selected proceedings of Chronos 8 (pp. 303, 327). Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Antonicelli, Giada & Stefano Rastelli
2023. Event-related potentials in the study of L2 sentence processing: A scoping review of the decade 2010-2020. Language Acquisition 30:2 ► pp. 163 ff. DOI logo
Kanwit, Matthew & Kimberly L. Geeslin
2020. SOCIOLINGUISTIC COMPETENCE AND INTERPRETING VARIABLE STRUCTURES IN A SECOND LANGUAGE. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 42:4 ► pp. 775 ff. DOI logo
Perpiñán, Silvia, Rafael Marín & Itziri Moreno Villamar
2020. The role of aspect in the acquisition ofserandestarin locative contexts by English-speaking learners of Spanish. Language Acquisition 27:1 ► pp. 35 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 10 november 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.