This study examines L2 learners’ difficulties in the acquisition of the Spanish subjunctive. In particular, it investigates the interpretations English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish assign to the subjunctive in temporal, concessive, and conditional clauses, where mood choice involves the interaction of morpho-syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic knowledge. In contrast to previous research that has given little attention to the difficulties L2 learners experience, this study hypothesizes they might be attributed to “input traps” resulting from L1 transfer of syntactic and semantic properties of the subjunctive adjuncts and misanalysis of the input due to the lack of integration of different types of information. This study tests this claim by comparing the grammars of English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish with those of native Spanish speakers. If L2 learners share similar patterns with L1 speakers in contexts where both languages behave similarly, and exhibit different patterns from L1 speakers in contexts where both languages behave differently, difficulties should be attributed to L1 influence on the L2. On the other hand, if L2 learners exhibit different patterns from L1 speakers in contexts where semantic or pragmatic features determine the use of the subjunctive, difficulties should be attributed to failures in form-meaning mappings. Data collection involved a Preference Task with three possible options: a sentence with the indicative, with the subjunctive, or no preference. Subjects were asked to select which of the three choices they preferred according to the context presented in the story. Twenty advanced English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish and twenty native speakers from different Spanish-speaking countries, who served as the control group, took part in this study. Results indicate that subjunctive adjuncts present difficulties in L2 acquisition even for advanced L2 learners. Although they exhibit sensitivity to certain subjunctive features and contextual meanings, data reveal that convergence and non-convergence were primarily determined by L1 influence on L2. Crucially, those features absent from the L1 give rise to greater efforts and difficulties in L2 form-meaning mappings of mood selection.

This study examines L2 learners’ difficulties in the acquisition of the Spanish subjunctive. In particular, it investigates the interpretations English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish assign to the subjunctive in temporal, concessive, and conditional clauses, where mood choice involves the interaction of morpho-syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic knowledge. In contrast to previous research that has given little attention to the difficulties L2 learners experience, this study hypothesizes they might be attributed to “input traps” resulting from L1 transfer of syntactic and semantic properties of the subjunctive adjuncts and misanalysis of the input due to the lack of integration of different types of information. This study tests this claim by comparing the grammars of English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish with those of native Spanish speakers. If L2 learners share similar patterns with L1 speakers in contexts where both languages behave similarly, and exhibit different patterns from L1 speakers in contexts where both languages behave differently, difficulties should be attributed to L1 influence on the L2. On the other hand, if L2 learners exhibit different patterns from L1 speakers in contexts where semantic or pragmatic features determine the use of the subjunctive, difficulties should be attributed to failures in form-meaning mappings. Data collection involved a Preference Task with three possible options: a sentence with the indicative, with the subjunctive, or no preference. Subjects were asked to select which of the three choices they preferred according to the context presented in the story. Twenty advanced English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish and twenty native speakers from different Spanish-speaking countries, who served as the control group, took part in this study. Results indicate that subjunctive adjuncts present difficulties in L2 acquisition even for advanced L2 learners. Although they exhibit sensitivity to certain subjunctive features and contextual meanings, data reveal that convergence and non-convergence were primarily determined by L1 influence on L2. Crucially, those features absent from the L1 give rise to greater efforts and difficulties in L2 form-meaning mappings of mood selection.

No description available.

abstract: This study examines the effect that the modality (volition, doubt, emotion, belief, knowledge, etc.) of matrix noun clauses has on the ability of intermediate (second-year) Spanish L2 students (n=56) to properly produce the subjunctive and indicative moods, the relative order in which students tend to most accurately produce the subjunctive in response to the modalities of volition, doubt, and emotion, and students' level of syntactic ability and mood development. Each participant took a test consisting of twenty questions containing various modalities intended to elicit either the subjunctive or indicative mood. Participants also filled out a questionnaire that was designed to ascertain the participants' level of formal and informal experience with Spanish. The results of this study show that a) when the subjunctive was the target response most participants favored the unmarked indicative mood significantly more than the marked subjunctive mood, b) students most accurately produced the subjunctive to the modality of volition (VL), followed by doubt (DT), and emotion (EM), which is consistent with Collentine's study, and c) students were able to process complex syntax when producing the unmarked indicative mood but not when they were prompted to produce the marked subjunctive mood. The results of this study show that pedagogical expectations regarding the acquisition of the subjunctive mood by second-year Spanish students may be unrealistic as these students were operating somewhere between the pre-syntactic and syntactic stages. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Applied Linguistics 2011

abstract: This study investigates the effectiveness of the use of Concept-Based Instruction (CBI) to facilitate the acquisition of Spanish mood distinctions by second semester second language learners of Spanish. The study focuses on the development of Spanish mood choice and the types of explanations (Rule-of-Thumb vs. Concept-based) used by five students before and after being exposed to Concept-Based Instruction regarding the choice of Spanish mood following various modalities .The students in this study were presented with a pedagogical treatment on Spanish mood choice that included general theoretical concepts based on Gal'perin's (1969, 1992) didactic models and acts of verbalization, which form part of a Concept-Based pedagogical approach. In order to ascertain the effectiveness of the use of concept-based tools to promote the ability to use Spanish mood appropriately over time, a pre and post-test was administered to the group in which students were asked to respond to prompts containing modalities that elicit the indicative and subjunctive moods, indicate their level of confidence in their response, and verbalize in writing a reason for their choice. The development of these abilities in learners exposed to CBI was assessed by comparing pre and post-test scores examining both forms and explanations for the indicative and subjunctive modality prompts given. Results showed that students continued to rely on Rule-of-Thumb explanations of mood choice but they did expand their use of conceptually-based reasoning. Although the quantitative and qualitative analyses of the results indicate that most students did improve their ability to make appropriate mood choices (forms and explanations) after the CBI treatment, the increased use of conceptually-based explanations for their mood choices led to both correct and incorrect responses. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Applied Linguistics 2013

This dissertation addresses one of the classical philosophical and theological problems of religious language, namely, how to speak meaningfully about matters that appear to be inexpressible. While addressed extensively in a variety of literatures across cultures, the problem persists, particularly in regard to harmonizing theological, philosophical, and linguistic perspectives. The dissertation argues that (i) language is best understood as a species of ritual; (ii) so understood, religious language speaks to and about religious realities subjunctively, that is, as if such realities could be talked about; and (iii) this way of understanding language achieves greater harmony among philosophical and linguistic approaches while achieving some degree of cross-cultural generality. The argument begins with a cross-cultural comparison between modern social scientific ritual theories, especially that of Roy A. Rappaport, and the Confucian ritual theory of Xunzi. This generates a novel theory of ritual capable of engaging theories of language that have emerged in modern linguistics, philosophy of language, logic, and hermeneutics. The semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce provides the unifying framework for the theory, which leads to the first conclusion that language can be understood as a species of ritual. When language is understood as ritual, there are several options for interpreting religious speech as meaningful. An analysis of these alternatives on terms semantically demarcated by Hilary Putnam leads to the conclusion that language expresses theological insights in the same way it expresses anything else: as if reality and its elements were the way the language form and process construes and renders them. This analysis both advances critiques of language as understood under the linguistic turn, especially by Terrence W. Deacon and Daniel L. Everett, and establishes the second and third conclusions of the thesis. The proposed theory of language as ritual is in need of further development in the directions of a philosophy of mind, an underlying metaphysical semiotics, and a comparative logic. But it does formalize a novel solution to a long-standing problem in religious language that is applicable to a wide variety of religious-cultural contexts and capable of registering insights from several relevant disciplinary domains.

No description available.

This dissertation investigates the use of the subjunctive in completive clauses governed by verbs in Italian, both synchronically and diachronically, and in Vulgar Latin. By making use of the tools provided by the Variationist Sociolinguistic framework (Labov 1972, 1994), the current study sheds light on the underlying conditioning on variability using actual usage and speech-surrogate data. Contemporary actual speech data comes from LIP (De Mauro et al. 1993) and C-ORAL-ROM (Cresti & Moneglia 2005) corpora, providing spontaneous discourse in casual and careful speech as well as sub-sample divisions representative of geographical variation. In order to measure any changes in the underlying conditioning on subjunctive selection, a diachronic benchmark is established: a corpus of speech-like surrogates of 16th to 20th century Italian, COHI (Corpus of Historical Italian), and a corpus of Vulgar Latin (Cena Trimalchionis, from the Satyricon by Petronius). The subjunctives were extracted in adherence to the principle of accountability (Labov 1972), using the method developed by Poplack (1992): every complement clause governed by a matrix verb (governor) that triggered the subjunctive at least once was included. This method enables us to circumvent the issue of the lack of consensus in the literature on exactly which contexts, i.e. verbs and/or meanings, should trigger the subjunctive in discourse. This issue surfaces as well from the meta-linguistic analysis of a compendium of 58 Italian grammars and treaties (CSGI, Collezione Storica di Grammatiche Italiane), constructed for the purpose of this research. A series of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors proposed by formal and prescriptive literature are operationalized and tested against the corpora of both Italian and Vulgar Latin, in order to ascertain the nature of variability in discourse: i.e. whether the use of the subjunctive is semantically motivated, productive in speech or undergoing desemanticization and lexicalization. Despite widespread assumption of a change that occurred after the political and the subsequent linguistic unification of Italy, i.e. that the subjunctive has lost ground in favour of the indicative when it was supposedly used categorically in the past, quantitative and statistical evidence shows that subjunctive selection is largely determined by lexical identity of the governor as well as embedded suppletive forms of essere, and that this pattern has been operative at least since the 16th century. On a more socio-linguistic aspect, this study confirms the linguistic prestige that the subjunctive has acquired in contemporary speech, being selected with a wider range of infrequent and singleton governors by highly educated speakers. Also, the highly lexicalized pattern on variability was found to be largely shared amongst the four main urban centres of Florence, Milan, Rome, and Naples, thus countering the assumption of divergent linguistic behaviour between northern and southern varieties of Italian. The study also shows that despite the significant time span targeted, no evidence of desemanticization has been found. Likewise, the variationist analysis on the Vulgar Latin subjunctive shows that subjunctive choice was already largely determined by, and restricted, to a few governors, identified as ‘volitive’ and ‘emotive’ matrices. These governors remained strong predictors for the selection of the subjunctive in Italian as well, suggesting that this lexical pattern has been transferred and consistently retained in the daughter language.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T19:34:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Alice Felicissimo.pdf: 1703689 bytes, checksum: 8770a1a675553f8f6cd3dbddfdca9e92 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-09-16 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This paper describes the occurrences of the Subjunctive Mode with the notion of futurity, to express the not factual and the variation of the present subjunctive mode by use of the present Indicative Mode. The research is based on principles of linguistic functionalism and has as a starting point the grammatical rules of the normative standard proposed by Brazilian traditional grammarians. The use of Subjunctive Mode, as the variation, was studied from the perspective of the emergent grammar of Givón, focused on grammar for communication and that emerges from communicative purposes shaping the discourse. We considered as a dependent variable of verbal mode, for understanding the phenomenon of alternation between subjunctive and indicative mode, the linguistic aspects: type of clause, verbal choice of main clause and verbal tense of the occurrence (the subordinate clause or independent clause). The sememe of futurity, identified in the propositional level, tends to preserve the use of the subjunctive mode, according to the normative standard grammar, and is used by speakers of medium and high level of education. For the use of the Indicative Mode with the imperative function, we found out that the selection of verbal morphology is under pressure of pragmatic-discursive relationship. The Indicative Mode serves to express the Imperative Mode, not containing the "order". This usage occurs in Brazilian Portuguese with speakers of all levels of education in face-to-face situations and with proximity. In subordinate clauses the modality of certainty of who speaks, even if it refers to future tense, propitiates the use of the Indicative Mode. This variation also occurs with speakers of all levels of education / Este trabalho apresenta a descrição das ocorrências do Modo Subjuntivo com a noção de futuridade, de forma a expressar o não factual e a variação do Presente do Modo Subjuntivo pelo uso do Presente do Modo Indicativo. A pesquisa está fundamentada em princípios do funcionalismo linguístico e tem por ponto de partida as regras gramaticais de padrão normativo proposto por gramáticos tradicionais brasileiros. O uso do Modo Subjuntivo, assim como a variação, foi estudado numa perspectiva da gramática emergente givoniana, centrada na gramática para a comunicação, que emerge dos propósitos comunicativos moldando o discurso. Consideramos como variável dependente do modo verbal, para o entendimento do fenômeno de alternância entre os modos subjuntivo e indicativo, os aspectos linguísticos: tipo de oração, a escolha verbal da oração matriz e tempo verbal da ocorrência (na oração subordinada ou na independente). O sema de futuridade, identificado no nível proposicional, tende a preservar o uso do MS, segundo o padrão gramatical normativo, e é usado por falantes de média e alta escolaridade. Para o uso do Modo Indicativo com função de Imperativo constatamos que a seleção da morfologia verbal sofre pressão da relação pragmático-discursiva. O Modo Indicativo tem a função de expressar o Modo Imperativo, não contendo a ordem . Esse uso no Português Brasileiro ocorre com falantes de todos os níveis de escolaridade em situação presencial e de proximidade. Nas orações subordinadas a modalidade da certeza de quem fala, ainda que ela remeta ao tempo futuro, propicia o uso do Modo Indicativo. Essa variação ocorre, também, com falantes de todos os níveis de escolaridade

Este trabalho teve por objetivo estudar alguns aspectos da complementação de predicados factivos e assertivos em PB, no quadro da teoria da Ligação e Regência. Entre esses aspectos, destacamos o estatuto semântico da oração complemento, a ocorrência do subjuntivo e do infinitivo pessoal. Mostramos que, dependendo da classe a que pertence o predicado da oração matriz, o complemento oracional pode ser um pressuposto, uma asserção ou uma não-asserção. Assim, se o predicado da matriz for um factivo (lamentar, descobrir, etc.), a proposição complemento é um pressuposto (salvo em contextos bem específicos); se for um predicado assertivo (assegurar, acreditar, etc), o estatuto semântico do complemento será o de asserção, ou seja, uma proposição, afirmativa ou negativa, declarada verdadeira pelo locutor; e, finalmente, se o predicado for um não-assertivo (querer, possível, etc.), o estatuto semântico será o de não-asserção, entendida como um enunciado que por não ser nem asseverado, nem pressuposto ou implicado, é insuscetível de receber um valor de verdade. Além do mais, a pesquisa mostra que a possibilidade de ocorrência do subjuntivo em PB na oração complemento está associada à natureza não-assertiva deste, isto é, o subjuntivo somente é possível em complementos de predicados não-assertivos (querer, preferir, provável, etc). Quanto ao infinitivo pessoal no complemento, o estudo revela que sua ocorrência vai depender também da classe a que pertence o predicado da oração matriz e da possibilidade de o sujeito da oração infinitiva receber Caso nominativo. Assim, um predicado não-assertivo como querer, em hipótese alguma, permite que o seu complemento esteja na forma infinitiva pessoal (* Quero eles saírem /*quero eles terem saído), enquanto que um verbo como lamentar admite-a, sem nenhuma restrição (Lamento eles serem estúpidos/ Lamento eles terem partido). Finalmente,, lançando mão da teoria da cópia do movimento e adotando sugestão de um operador nulo no Spec de CP do complemento de um predicado factivo, explicamos por que argumentos D-linked podem ser extraídos de uma ilha factiva, enquanto adjuntos e argumentos não-D-linked não podem. / The objective of this work was the study of some aspects of the complementation of factive and assertive predicates in PB, in Government-Binding Theory. Within these aspects, it is enhanced the semantic status of the complement sentence, the occurrence of subjunctive and the inflected infinitive. It is shown that, depending on the grammatical class to which the matrix predicate belongs, the sentential complement may be a pressuposition, an assertion or a non-assertion. Therefore, if the matrix predicate is a factive (such as to regret, to find out etc.), the subordinate clause is a pressuposition (except in very specific contexts); if the matrix predicate is an assertive (to insure, to believe etc.), the semantic status should be an assertion, i. e., a statement that may be true or false; and, finally, if the predicate is a non-assertive (such as to wish, possible etc.), the semantic status will be a non-assertion, understood as a sentence that could not receive a true value. Beyond that, we will demonstrate that the possibility of occurrence of the subjunctive in PB, in the complement sentence, is associated to its non-assertive nature, i. e., the subjunctive is only possible in complement of non-assertive predicates. In relation to the inflected infinitive, the study shows that its occurrence will depend on the grammatical class to which the matrix predicate belongs, and on the possibility of the infinitival clause subject receiving nominative case. For example, a non-assertive predicate such as querer to want, in no case would allow its complement to be in the inflected infinitival form: *Quero eles saírem[third person plural] I want them leave,. On the other hand, a verb such as lamentar to regret may admit the inflected infinitival form, without any restriction: Eu lamento eles partirem{third person plural] I regret that they leave, Eu lamento eles terem[third person plural] partido I regret they have left. Finally, we propose a solution, in the Minimalism, in order to explain the asymmetry between adjuncts and arguments non-D-linked, on one side, and arguments D-linked, on the other, in relation to the possibility of extraction of the factive island, being this extraction possible to the latter, but not to the former.