THE DELAYED DEVELOPMENT OF THE DISCOURSEPRAGMATIC PROPERTIES OF NULL AND OVERT SUBJECTS IN SPANISH L2 GRAMMARS

A REPRESENTATIONAL OR PROCESSING PROBLEM?

Abstract

The present study has investigated whether the late L2 acquisition of discursive features of Spanish null and lexical subjects is due to an underlying pragmatic impairment on learners’ part, or derives from their inability to cope with the demanding processing task. Adult English speakers learning Spanish were examined in their use of Spanish lexical subjects in focused contexts, and their interpretation of intra-sentential null and overt pronouns. Results have shown that participants encountered a lot of difficulty placing subjects in postverbal position and identifying the appropriate antecedents of anaphoric expressions. The problem, however, does not result from their failure to activate the required cognitive processes. These inconsistencies are attributable to learners’ incomplete pragmatic competence. The syntactically encoded discursive properties of Spanish subjects have been particularly complicated to account for. In any event, contrary to previous L2 studies, no visible L1 transfer effects have been observed in their L2 advanced grammar.