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Part of
Romance Linguistics 2012: Selected papers from the 42nd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Cedar City, Utah, 20-22 April 2012
Edited by Jason Smith and Tabea Ihsane
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 7] 2015
► pp. 3–16

The acquisition of clitics in L2 Spanish

Examining restrictions on clitic solidarity

| Indiana University
| University of Reading & UiT Arctic University of Tromso

This study examines the mental representation of clitic object pronouns in English L2 Spanish speakers of beginning, intermediate and advanced proficiencies. We present the results of a scalar grammaticality judgment task, which examines knowledge of clitic placement in both Exceptional Case Marking (ECM) verb constructions and non-ECM (finite and modal + infinitival) constructions. Our findings suggest that these advanced L2 learners have converged on the Spanish grammar, showing high sensitivity to the restrictions placed on clitic solidarity in ECM constructions coupled with acute knowledge of the distribution pattern of Spanish clitics in non-ECM environments. We argue that this pattern supports UG-accessibility approaches to adult L2 acquisition.

Published online: 28 August 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.7.01hal
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Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

García-Tejada, Aída
2022. Direct object anaphora resolution in L1 English-L2 Spanish. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics DOI logo

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