<div><div><div><p>The present study contributes to our understanding of the effects of age and type of linguistic input in the acquisition of Spanish as a second language in adulthood. I examine the Spanish syntax (word order) of three groups of speakers, monolingual Spanish speakers from Mexico and two bilingual English-Spanish speakers born and raised in the United States (N = 53) to measure the effects of an early, oral-based versus a late, written-based exposure to the target language. Results from a sentence completion task show comparable behavior across all groups in the four verb conditions, with a strong tendency to favor the no climbing (enclisis) option, and a proficiency effect among the experimental groups. Results of an acceptability judgment task show comparable behavior across all groups, accepting grammatical proclitic placement and rejecting ungrammatical sentences with climbing. Neither proficiency or group effects were found in this task, although the judgments of the experimental groups were less categorical compared to the native speakers’. The combined results of these two tasks point to an absence of age or input effects in the L2 acquisition of this syntactic phenomenon in Spanish. </p></div></div></div>

As possibilidades de colocação dos pronomes pessoais átonos em sequências de verbos do espanhol e do português brasileiro não são simétricas: enquanto neste último se verificam menos oportunidades para a chamada subida do clítico, naquele ela é claramente mais frequente. Para descrever tal situação, esta dissertação analisa a configuração de composições verbais, perifrásticas ou não, dos dois sistemas linguísticos, de modo a classificá-las de acordo com seus diferentes níveis de gramaticalização e, a partir daí, com base em determinadas características sintáticas e semânticas relevantes para a problemática do posicionamento dos clíticos nessas estruturas. A seguir, se constata, mediante o exame de alguns exemplos representativos, que a coincidência nos parâmetros anteriores não implica um mesmo padrão quanto aos lugares ocupados pelas formas pronominais átonas junto a cadeias de verbos da língua espanhola e do português do Brasil. Com o objetivo de incluir outros fatores e de encontrar respostas mais completas, se pesquisam, então, novas explicações sobre o fenômeno e essas, por fim, também são debatidas, já que se identifica que nem sempre são suficientes ou totalmente precisas. / The possibilities of positioning atonic pronouns in verbal sequences in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese are not symmetrical: while in the latter less opportunities for clitic climbing are noted, in the former it is clearly more frequent. To describe this situation, this dissertation analyses the configuration of periphrastical or not periphrastical verbal compositions of the two linguistic systems, in order to classify them according to their different levels of grammaticalization and, from there, based on certain syntactical and semantic characteristics relevant to the question of clitic positioning in those structures. Subsequently, it is evidenced, through the exam of a few representative examples, that the coincidence in previous parameters does not imply the same standard regarding the positions of atonic pronominal forms in verbal chains in the Spanish language and Brazilian Portuguese spoken in Brazil. With the objective of including other factors and finding more complete answers, we research new explanations for that phenomenon, which are finally also debated, since it is identified that not always they are sufficient or totally precise.

As possibilidades de colocação dos pronomes pessoais átonos em sequências de verbos do espanhol e do português brasileiro não são simétricas: enquanto neste último se verificam menos oportunidades para a chamada subida do clítico, naquele ela é claramente mais frequente. Para descrever tal situação, esta dissertação analisa a configuração de composições verbais, perifrásticas ou não, dos dois sistemas linguísticos, de modo a classificá-las de acordo com seus diferentes níveis de gramaticalização e, a partir daí, com base em determinadas características sintáticas e semânticas relevantes para a problemática do posicionamento dos clíticos nessas estruturas. A seguir, se constata, mediante o exame de alguns exemplos representativos, que a coincidência nos parâmetros anteriores não implica um mesmo padrão quanto aos lugares ocupados pelas formas pronominais átonas junto a cadeias de verbos da língua espanhola e do português do Brasil. Com o objetivo de incluir outros fatores e de encontrar respostas mais completas, se pesquisam, então, novas explicações sobre o fenômeno e essas, por fim, também são debatidas, já que se identifica que nem sempre são suficientes ou totalmente precisas. / The possibilities of positioning atonic pronouns in verbal sequences in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese are not symmetrical: while in the latter less opportunities for clitic climbing are noted, in the former it is clearly more frequent. To describe this situation, this dissertation analyses the configuration of periphrastical or not periphrastical verbal compositions of the two linguistic systems, in order to classify them according to their different levels of grammaticalization and, from there, based on certain syntactical and semantic characteristics relevant to the question of clitic positioning in those structures. Subsequently, it is evidenced, through the exam of a few representative examples, that the coincidence in previous parameters does not imply the same standard regarding the positions of atonic pronominal forms in verbal chains in the Spanish language and Brazilian Portuguese spoken in Brazil. With the objective of including other factors and finding more complete answers, we research new explanations for that phenomenon, which are finally also debated, since it is identified that not always they are sufficient or totally precise.

<p>This work investigates into the semantic domain of evidentiality and its grammatical expression in Spanish. A model for describing the evidentiality domain is outlined, which emphasises the scalar nature of the proposed parameters: information source (subject-internal ↔ external), access to information (exclusive ↔ universal) and mode of access (sensory ↔ cognitive), all of which are construed as bipolar continua. Support is also provided for the relevance of using the notions of deixis and perspective in describing evidentiality.</p><p>The prevailing view in current research is that of evidentiality being a grammatical category to be analysed separately from other evidential strategies. The present study challenges this view as it attempts to broaden the perspective on how evidential meanings, expressed by various grammatical means, fit into an overall picture of human cognition and communication patterns. The theoretical framework adopted is that of Cognitive Grammar, which, it is argued, is particularly suited for investigating evidentiality, in particular due to the central role given to perspective, metaphor and category fuzziness in describing grammar and grammatical structures.</p><p>Four articles constitute the body of this work, in which four different prototypical aspects of the encoding of evidentiality into grammatical devices in Spanish are addressed. In the first, the marking of common knowledge in consecutive connectives is argued to depend on a perspective shift; the second proposes the evidential values of tense morphemes to be their core meaning, time deixis being an inference; in the third and the forth it is claimed that the evidential and modal effects of both subject-raising and clitic climbing are determined through the attribution of varying degrees of prominence to the relational participants.</p>

This work investigates into the semantic domain of evidentiality and its grammatical expression in Spanish. A model for describing the evidentiality domain is outlined, which emphasises the scalar nature of the proposed parameters: information source (subject-internal ↔ external), access to information (exclusive ↔ universal) and mode of access (sensory ↔ cognitive), all of which are construed as bipolar continua. Support is also provided for the relevance of using the notions of deixis and perspective in describing evidentiality. The prevailing view in current research is that of evidentiality being a grammatical category to be analysed separately from other evidential strategies. The present study challenges this view as it attempts to broaden the perspective on how evidential meanings, expressed by various grammatical means, fit into an overall picture of human cognition and communication patterns. The theoretical framework adopted is that of Cognitive Grammar, which, it is argued, is particularly suited for investigating evidentiality, in particular due to the central role given to perspective, metaphor and category fuzziness in describing grammar and grammatical structures. Four articles constitute the body of this work, in which four different prototypical aspects of the encoding of evidentiality into grammatical devices in Spanish are addressed. In the first, the marking of common knowledge in consecutive connectives is argued to depend on a perspective shift; the second proposes the evidential values of tense morphemes to be their core meaning, time deixis being an inference; in the third and the forth it is claimed that the evidential and modal effects of both subject-raising and clitic climbing are determined through the attribution of varying degrees of prominence to the relational participants.