Resumo

BAUTISTA MALDONADO, Salvador; PACHECO BALAM, Gina del Pilar  e  FERRER MENDEZ, Rafael. Learnability problems in the acquisition of the manner-of-motion verbs in L2 English by L1 Spanish speakers. RIDE. Rev. Iberoam. Investig. Desarro. Educ [online]. 2021, vol.11, n.22, e036.  Epub 20-Set-2021. ISSN 2007-7467.  https://doi.org/10.23913/ride.v11i22.883.

In English the construction, “John ran into the house” has got a reading of directionality whereas in Spanish the same construction has got a locational reading. The fact is that in English those verbs known as manner -of-motion can appear with a Prepositional Phrase that express a goal (goal PP) in contrast in Spanish those constructions like “John ran into the house” express a locative reading, and to express a directional goal, Spanish requires to use a different construction such as “John entered the house running”. These two differences do cause learnability problems when Spanish speakers are learning English as a Second language . Previous studies revealed that languages like Japanese, which behaves similarly as Spanish do transfer properties of their L1, Japanese, when learning the directional goals in L2 English (Inagaki, 2002), also the Korean learners of English face the same situation as Spanish speakers and Japanese speakers (Zubizarreta and Oh, 2007). Linguists agree that those problems can be analyzed using the so well- known typology classification of languages. This typology is known as verbal framed typology and the satellite framed typology which was proposed by Talmy (2000). Following this typology, we conducted a research in order to see if Spanish speakers do acquire the English typology to express directionality with the conflation of manner of motion verbs and goal PPs. It was hypothesized that Spanish speakers will initially transfer properties of their L1 and then will attain the correct grammar of the English language as their proficiency interlanguage grammars increase. Using a Picture Matching Task proposed by Stringer (2012) that was administered to 62 participants attending the Bachelor Degree in English Language at UNACAR, those participants were divided according to the results of a Placement Test in English into three main groups: elementary (n= 27), intermediate (n= 15) and advanced (n=20). Results show that Spanish speakers, even at an elementary level, select the directional reading of the conflation pattern studied here. It seems that the input the participants receive in the classroom environment trigger the right choice of the conflation to express directionality in a correct way in L2 English.

Palavras-chave : syntax-semantics interface; L1 transfer; Interlanguage; conflation; optionality.

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