The present study examines knowledge of the discourse-appropriateness of Clitic Right Dislocation (CLRD) in a population of Heritage (HS) and Spanish-dominant Native Speakers in order to test the predictions of the Interface Hypothesis (IH; Sorace 2011). The IH predicts that speakers in language contact situations will experience difficulties with integrating information involving the interface of syntax and discourse modules. CLRD relates a dislocated constituent to a discourse antecedent, requiring integration of syntax and pragmatics. Results from an acceptability judgment task did not support the predictions of the IH. No statistical differences between the HSs’ performance and that of L1-dominant native speakers were evidenced when participants were presented with an offline task. Thus, our study did not find any evidence of “incomplete acquisition” (Montrul 2008) as it pertains to this specific linguistic structure.

This study investigates the degree to which native-English-speaking learners of Spanish can generate expectations for information likely to occur in upcoming portions of an unfolding linguistic signal. We examine Spanish clitic left dislocation, a long-distance dependency between a topicalized object and an agreeing clitic, whose felicity depends on the discourse. Using a self-paced reading task, we tested the predictions of the shallow structure hypothesis (Clahsen & Felser, 2006a, 2006b) and the reduced ability to generate expectations hypothesis (Grüter, Rohde, & Schafer, 2014). Learners successfully demonstrated sensitivity to the violation of expectations set up by the syntactic and discourse context. In addition, the behavior of the second language (L2) learners was dependent on proficiency: the higher their proficiency, the more their behavior mirrored native-speaker processing. These results support a view of SLA in which knowledge of L2 discourse-grammatical relationships is acquired slowly over the course of L2 learning.

The strategies used to signal information focus — the non-presupposed part of a sentence — in Spanish are under debate. The literature suggests that focus must appear rightmost; however, empirical evidence shows that speakers also realize focus in-situ. Moreover, there is limited research investigating the effects of language variety or knowledge of another language on focus marking. We address these questions via a paced elicited production task, testing speakers who learned Spanish naturalistically in infancy, including two groups of monolinguals and two groups of Spanish/English bilinguals: (a) Spanish natives who learned English after childhood, and (b) early bilinguals exposed to English in early childhood (heritage speakers). Confirming previous empirical studies, results show that all participant groups choose a similar range of focus-marking strategies, vastly preferring in-situ marking with rightmost marking used rarely. Results challenge both theoretical accounts of Spanish focus realization and expectations of special vulnerability at the syntax-discourse interface for bilinguals.

Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou (2007) propose the Interpretability Hypothesis (IH), according to which uninterpretable features present an insurmountable difficulty in adult second language acquisition. The experimental study supporting the IH examines Greek native speakers’ knowledge of gaps versus resumptive pronouns in English wh-movement. A crucial assumption is that Greek allows resumptives optionally. Alexopoulou and Keller’s (2002, 2007) findings confirm that assumption. In our replication of Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou’s study, we divide Spanish native speakers into those who accept resumptives and those who do not; then we look at their acceptance of gaps and resumptives in English. The results indicate that both groups of advanced learners, those that do and those that don’t have resumptives in their individual grammars, have acquired the ungrammaticality of resumptives in English, although there may be lingering native language effects. The effects of d-linking, animacy, syntactic function of the resumptive/gap (subject vs. object), and presence of the complementizer that are also examined.

In this Forum piece, we address several common misunderstandings of the generative L2A framework that are current in the wider L2A literature. Many of these misunderstandings stem from proposals that, although tested and eventually discarded, are still cited as though they were still accepted and in active use. We hope that by addressing four of the most persistent myths, we can persuade the wider L2A field to let them go and move on. By highlighting what generative researchers have in common with the proponents of other frameworks, we want to pave the way for increased collaboration between frameworks.