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Part of
Language Acquisition Beyond Parameters: Studies in honour of Juana M. Liceras
Edited by Anahí Alba de la Fuente, Elena Valenzuela and Cristina Martínez Sanz
[Studies in Bilingualism 51] 2016
► pp. 99–124

L2 knowledge of gender and number agreement in Spanish noun ellipsis

| The University of Western Ontario
| The University of Western Ontario
This study focuses on second language knowledge of number and gender in Spanish using ellipsis as a point of departure. Eleven adult learners of Spanish as a second language (L2), and 9 native Spanish speakers were tested on a written elicited production task and a grammaticality judgment task. Results provided evidence that L2 speakers are able to access features not present in their L1, such as gender and number, and that they are then able to compare the relevant features to antecedents. It is argued that problems in the production of gender are not due to any underlying deficit.
Keywords: nominal ellipsis, gender, number, L2 acquisition, Spanish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background: The acquisition of gender and functional features
  • 3.Noun ellipsis in Spanish
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Tasks
      • 4.2.1Production task
      • 4.2.2Grammaticality judgment task
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Production task
    • 5.2Grammaticality judgment task
    • 5.3Individual Results
  • 6.Discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 December 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.51.05bru
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