22.3856, Diss: Applied Ling/Spanish: Cameron: 'Native and Nonnative ...'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-22-3856. Tue Oct 04 2011. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 22.3856, Diss: Applied Ling/Spanish: Cameron: 'Native and Nonnative ...'

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1)
Date: 28-Sep-2011
From: Robert Cameron [cameronrd at cofc.edu]
Subject: Native and Nonnative Processing of Modality and Mood in Spanish


-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Tue, 04 Oct 2011 14:01:21
From: Robert Cameron [cameronrd at cofc.edu]
Subject: Native and Nonnative Processing of Modality and Mood in Spanish

E-mail this message to a friend:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/emailmessage/verification.cfm?iss=22-3856.html&submissionid=4532888&topicid=14&msgnumber=1
 Institution: Florida State University 
Program: Second Language Acquisition 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2011 

Author: Robert Cameron

Dissertation Title: Native and Nonnative Processing of Modality and Mood in
Spanish 

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics

Subject Language(s): Spanish (spa)


Dissertation Director(s):
Michael Leeser
Gretchen Sunderman
Patrick Kennell
Michael Kaschak
Carolina Gonzalez

Dissertation Abstract:

The present study reports the findings of two self-paced reading tasks (N = 98). 
The primary experiment (subjunctive task) investigated the effects of lexical 
preference on L1 Spanish and L2 Spanish readers' processing of the subjunctive 
during online sentence processing. Participants of various proficiency levels 
(intermediate, high intermediate, advanced and native Spanish speakers) read 
sentences that were either ±Form or ±Meaning. The variable 'Form' was 
operationalized as a (mis)match between the lexical expression of modality in 
the main clause of a sentence and the mood marker (indicative or subjunctive) 
on the subordinate verb. The variable 'Meaning' was operationalized as a 
(mis)match between the lexical-semantics of the subordinate verb in a sentence 
and the action or situation depicted in a corresponding image. The secondary 
experiment (local agreement task) investigated the same learners' processing of 
localized subject-verb agreement violations during online sentence processing. 
The results of the subjunctive task revealed that only native speakers 
demonstrated sensitivity (i.e., increased reading times as measured via a self-
paced reading methodology) to modality-mood mismatches (±Form). 
Intermediate through advanced-level L2 learners demonstrated sensitivity to 
sentence-image mismatches (±Meaning) only. In the local agreement task, only 
intermediate L2 learners were not sensitive to grammaticality violations. These 
findings are discussed in light of the Lexical Preference Principle (VanPatten, 
2004, 2007) and the Shallow Structures Hypothesis (Clahsen & Felser, 2006a, 
2006b, 2006c).


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