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SOCIOLINGUISTIC COMPETENCE AND INTERPRETING VARIABLE STRUCTURES IN A SECOND LANGUAGE

A STUDY OF THE COPULA CONTRAST IN NATIVE AND SECOND-LANGUAGE SPANISH

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2020

Matthew Kanwit Open the ORCID record for Matthew Kanwit [Opens in a new window]  and
Kimberly L. Geeslin
Matthew Kanwit*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
Kimberly L. Geeslin
Affiliation:
Indiana University
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Matthew Kanwit, Assistant Professor of Hispanic Linguistics, University of Pittsburgh, Department of Linguistics, 2820 Cathedral of Learning, 4200 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. E-mail: mkanwit@pitt.edu
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Abstract

Learners must develop the ability to vary language according to linguistic and situational factors to produce context-appropriate utterances. Likewise, interpreting the additional meaning conveyed through language variation is essential for successful communication. Nevertheless, research on the interpretation of the variable copulas in Spanish is scarce and we do not know how individual lexical items and patterns of co-occurrence of adjectives with particular copulas influence interpretation. Addressing this void, we compare interpretation of the copulas by native speakers and highly advanced, advanced, and intermediate learners. Participants completed an interpretation task containing the copulas paired with one of nine adjectives, categorized as typically co-occurring with ser, estar, or both copulas. The current study contributes to the body of work on communicative competence and advanced L2 proficiency by exploring the development of interpretative abilities of English-speaking learners of Spanish and the extent to which interpretation differs across adjective classes and individual adjectives.

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Research Article
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Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , September 2020 , pp. 775 - 799
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© Cambridge University Press 2020

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Footnotes

The experiment in this article earned an Open Materials badge for transparent practices. The materials are available at https://www.iris-database.org/iris/app/home/detail?id=york%3a937043&ref=search.

We are thankful to the language learners and native Spanish speakers who participated in our study and to Juan Escalona Torres for his assistance with our corpus frequency searches. All errors are ours alone.

References

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