This article examines whether L2 acquisition of morphology and syntax developsindependently (the Separation Hypothesis) or not (the Rich AgreementHypothesis), focusing on the acquisition of Number specification on certainSpanish quantifiers by French speakers. In Spanish, some quantifiers arespecified for Number and directly precede the head noun, in contrast to theirFrench counterparts where a dummy preposition de must appearinside the DP. Results from a grammaticality judgement task and a productiontask show that intermediate and advanced learners perform poorly on pluralinflection with some quantifiers, and reject the use of de.This suggests that they have acquired Number specification on these quantifiers,which allows Case marking on the following noun, but do not produce theappropriate morphology. These results support the Separation Hypothesis, but notthe Rich Agreement Hypothesis.

This study examines the L2 acquisition and LI attrition of preterite versusimperfect aspectual distinctions in Spanish among English-speaking L2 learnersand long-term Spanish-speaking immigrants. Results from an acceptabilityjudgment task and a truth value judgment task demonstrate significantly lowerlevels of target performance by both groups when compared to the controlparticipants. The L2 learners outperform the native speakers undergoingattrition in some aspectual contexts, while in others both experimental groupsshow similar difficulties. To the extent that L2 learners and adult immigrantsdemonstrate comparable difficulties, L2 learners’ deficits cannot bedirectly related to impairment reasons. LI transfer of the semantic propertiesof tense heads offers a better explanation for the difficulties L2 learnersoften show in the aspectual domain.

Certain Peninsular Spanish varieties have two third-person plural forms in thesimple past indicative of verbs with ‘strong’ (stem-stressed)preterites. While this phenomenon is documented in large-scale linguistic atlassurveys, its current geographic distribution and diachronic origins remainunder-studied. This paper sets out to: 1) establish the geographic distributionof these variants; the differing methodologies and epochs of the data sourcesmake them particularly interesting to compare, showing that these analogicalstrong preterites have suffered a drastic decline over the last century; 2) usehistorical corpus data to show that the vernacular variant is by no means arecent phenomenon; 3) examine external history as a source of explanation inlinguistic reconstruction, showing that this process of analogical levellingtook place after the reconquest and resettlement of these regions. Thesefindings support the hypothesis of a feature which spread over the centuries bylinguistic diffusion.

This study investigates the complexity of the mapping task in children’s acquisition of the Spanish subjunctive in temporal clauses. We consider that children’s difficulty with this task arises from the interaction between mood and other elements determining the evaluation of the temporal clause, such as semantic factors, tense, and cognition. Forty monolingual Spanish-speaking children first completed a cognitive assessment test, evaluating false belief understanding; this was followed by a linguistic prerequisite test assessing understanding of temporal connectors and knowledge of subjunctive morphology, and finally a temporal clause production task. Results reveal that mood selection in temporal clauses does not simply start with indicative followed by its replacement by subjunctive. On the contrary, the use of subjunctive temporal clauses involves a complex process for children in which tense corresponds to a fundamental source of bootstrapping. These results confirm the view that the acquisition of mood selection undergoes a protracted development. Spanish subjunctive meanings are not immediately accessible to children.