Montserrat Sanz

Events and predication : a new approach to syntactic processing in English and Spanish

Studies on the syntactic consequences of event type in languages have shown that Aktionsart plays a role in Universal Grammar. This book contributes to the exploration of the syntax/semantics interface by presenting a thorough comparison of event and predicate types in English and Spanish. The mapping between event and syntactic predicate types, including detransitives, is given a minimalist account based on the functional categories that embed event features and on a careful analysis of the features checked by objects. As the book delves into the theoretical issue of how parameters are characterized, it presents the most comprehensive account to date of event type phenomena in Spanish, an innovative analysis of the clitic SE and a re-definition of unaccusativity. The theory is then applied to the ongoing issues in the sentence processing literature. A proposal is made for an update of the current data in light of these latest linguistic discoveries.

THE EMPEROR'S PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

We discuss and debunk five common assumptions about the interrelation of semantics, syntax, and frequency during sentence processing. In the course of this, we explore the implications of the view that syntax is assigned as the last stage of comprehension rather than the first: Statistically based perceptual strategies propose an initial semantic representation, which then constrains the assignment of syntactic representations. This view accounts for a variety of facts, as well as suggesting some surprising new ones.

The Bottom-up Move within Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development: A Pedagogical Application for Teaching Agreement in Spanish as a Foreign Language

This paper presents the findings of a longitudinal study in which two instructional methods to teach agreement features to first-year university students specializing in Spanish in Japan are compared. On the one hand, the control group was exposed to the traditional top-down teaching of agreement paradigms and were instructed to practice them through pattern repetition. On the other, a bottom-up move informed by Vygotsky and Gal’perin’s theories of conceptual formation was induced in the experimental group by using schemata and verbalization during the task of using agreement features. The data suggest that (a) the material expression of conceptual relationships (e.g. through schemata) and (b) the verbal rendition of rules or conceptual connections, and (c) the overall framing of the task as a bottom-up move actually helped acquirers in their mastery of gender and number agreement. The results of the intervention also support Kim and Kellogg (2006) and Centeno-Cortés and Jiménez Jiménez’s (2004) paradoxical view that L1 conceptual elaboration and organization aimed at solving L2 language tasks plays an important role in L2 acquisition. The data seem to indicate that there is room for encouraging learners’ hypothesis-making in the L1 under certain conditions, such as the kind of guided induction designed for this research and the one advanced by Herron and Tomasello (1992), and Tomasello and Herron’s (1988a, 1988b). L2 native instructors who dismiss or suppress acquirers’ talk in their L1 in their communication classes should assess if that talk is part of an important process of hypothesis-making or verbalization of language rules or not and act accordingly. L1 exchanges linked to hypothesis-making or task organization seem to foster L2 development and therefore should not be treated like a waste of time by ‘Communication’ instructors. In sum, the bottom-up move within Vygotsky’s ZPD is suggested as a feasible, although more elaborate intervention, as the findings on the intervention suggest.

The retrieval of syntactic and semantic information in the production of verbs.

In Italian, there are two aspectual auxiliaries: essere (to be) and avere (to have). According to the syntactic hypothesis, aspectual auxiliary assignment in Italian is a syntactic phenomenon. Using the picture-word interference paradigm, Experiment 1 tested the predictions of this view. Results failed to support the syntactic hypothesis but could be explained within a semantic framework: A verbs thematic grid is involved in aspectual auxiliary assignment. Experiment 2 tested this hypothesis. The findings corroborated the predictions. The evidence is interpreted as suggesting the involvement of thematic information in the assignment of the aspectual auxiliary during the production of Italian verbs.