Chapter published in:
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 12: Selected papers from the 45th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Campinas, Brazil
Edited by Ruth E.V. Lopes, Juanito Ornelas de Avelar and Sonia M. L. Cyrino
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 12] 2017
► pp. 79–96

Chapter 6
Hiatus resolution in L1 and L2 Spanish

An optimality account

| Florida State University
| Princeton Day School
This study investigates the acquisition of vowel-vowel sequences across words in twenty-five L2 Spanish learners. Building on González & Weissglass (2016), it analyzes their acoustic realization and examines the incidence of hiatus maintenance, hiatus resolution, and glottal stop epenthesis in L2 Spanish. Eight Spanish native speakers are included for comparison. Based on our data, we propose a preliminary Optimality-Theoretic account of the different stages that L2 learners go through when acquiring vowel-vowel sequences. We find evidence for three possible target grammars in our dataset, which correlate with dialectal differences. Two of these grammars appear to have been acquired by some of the L2 learners investigated.
Keywords: hiatus, hiatus resolution, resyllabification, diphthongization, glottalization, L2 Spanish, interlanguage, Optimality Theory, acquisition, discontinuous transitions
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data and generalizations
    • 2.1Experimental design
    • 2.2Results
  • 3.An Optimality Theoretical analysis
    • 3.1Grammars and constraints
    • 3.2State initial (L1 English)
    • 3.3State n (Interlanguage)
    • 3.4State target (L2 Spanish)
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 October 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.12.06gon
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