L2 Plural Inflection in Spanish: Contrastive Study between Italian and English Late Learners

Abstract

[eng] The aim of this study is to explore two aspects of the acquisition of Spanish L2 morphological feature of plural inflection. Firstly, whether morphological knowledge of number agreement at native level is attainable. Secondly, if learners’ L1 has any influence in this regard. To answer these questions, 20 Italian and 20 English speakers at two levels of proficiency, together with a control group of 20 native speakers, conducted an off-line grammaticality judgement task and an online self-paced reading task. The results indicate that: (1) native-like level can be achieved, since both natives and advanced L2 speakers of the two groups showed longer RT in agreement violations, contradicting the critical period hypothesis (Lenneberg, 1967); (2), both Italians and English are able to internalize new formal features despite differences in their L1 morphological features, supporting Full Access Theories (FTFA)(Schwartz, 1996); and (3) lack of sensibility to agreement violations only happens in beginners, which may be explained through Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH)(Haznedar & Schwartz, 1997; Prévost & White, 2000; Sagarra & Herschensohn, 2010). These results match with the existence of a dualmorphology, justifying that certain superior linguistic aspects such as the feature of number are acquired over time and after learning the basic syntactic rules of a second language, and would also explain intralinguistic but not interlinguistic differences; mistakes can be due to initial Representational Deficit Account (RDA) (Hawkins & Liszka, 2003) or transfer (de Garavito, 2007; Goad & White, 2004), but full access can be achieved as knowledge improves and level of L2 increases (Hopp, 2010).