The extent to which languages share properties reflecting the non-linguistic constraints of the speakers who speak them is key to the debate regarding the relationship between language and cognition. A critical case is spatial communication, where it has been argued that semantic universals should exist, if anywhere. Here, using an experimental paradigm able to separate variation within a language from variation between languages, we tested the use of spatial demonstratives—the most fundamental and frequent spatial terms across languages. In n = 874 speakers across 29 languages, we show that speakers of all tested languages use spatial demonstratives as a function of being able to reach or act on an object being referred to. In some languages, the position of the addressee is also relevant in selecting between demonstrative forms. Commonalities and differences across languages in spatial communication can be understood in terms of universal constraints on action shaping spatial language and cognition.

This paper investigates the linguistic performance of a group of English-Spanish­ bilingual children (N = 44, age range: 10–14) with different degrees of language dominance in their use of the Spanish preposition ‘a’ using a completion task which measures the different conditions that relate to the distribution of this personal (Torrego 1998; Zagona 2002). The children’s performance was compared to a group of monolingual Spanish children of similar age (n = 10, age range: 12–15). All participants had also to complete an ethno-linguistic task which elicits data to address the impact of some external factors (e.g., language dominance and language choices) in language performance. Results revealed that bilingual children were less accurate than monolingual children in the use of the preposition ‘a’, but the two groups showed a similar pattern of errors regardless of their grade of bilingualism. More importantly, their linguistic performance does not seem to be related to any of the external factors included in this study. In line with previous research in the field, we also claim that phenomena involving the syntax-semantics interface are vulnerable in bilingual children irrespective of the grade of bilingualism and external factors (i.e., language dominance and language choice).

Demonstrative words are one of the most important ways of establishing reference in conversation. This work describes Spanish-speaking children’s demonstrative production between ages 2 to 10 using data from the CHILDES corpora. Results indicate that children feature all demonstratives in their lexicon – however, the distal term is scarce throughout development. Moreover, patterns of demonstrative use are not adult-like at age 10. We compare adult and child data to conclude that children’s development of demonstrative production is largely protracted. Adult use of the distal demonstrative is higher than in young children, although both older children and adults use the medial term ese more than any other demonstratives. In contrast, younger children use proximals relatively more frequently than older children and adults. Suggestions for future research and theoretical implications for the Spanish demonstrative system are discussed.

This paper examines the process of acquiring L2s that are closely related to the L1 through data on how adult French speakers learning L2 Spanish in a formal setting develop knowledge and use of past tenses in this L2. We consider the role of transfer and simplification in acquiring mental representations of the L2 grammar, specifically in the area of tense and aspect, and how learners deal with integrating grammatically encoded, lexical and discursive information, including mismatching feature combinations leading to particular inferential effects on interpretation. Data is presented on the Spanish past tenses (simple and compound past, pluperfect, imperfect and progressive forms) from two tasks, an oral production filmretell and a multiple-choice interpretation task, completed by learners at A2, B1, B2 and C1 CEFR levels (N = 20-24 per level). L1 influence is progressively attenuated as proficiency increases. Difficulties were not always due to negative L1 transfer, but related also to grammar-discourse interface issues when integrating linguistic and pragmatic information in the interpretation process. This has clear implications for the teaching of closely related languages: instruction should not only focus on crosslinguistic contrasts, but also prioritize uses requiring complex interface integration, which are harder to process.

Although the two copular verbs,serandestar‘to be’, have been the subject of extensive debate in theoretical linguistics (Fernández Leborans 1999), less in known about how the use of these two verbs varies from one Spanish-speaking region to another. The sociolinguistic research conducted to date (de Jonge 1993; Díaz-Campos & Geeslin 2004; Gutiérrez 1992; Silva-Corvalán 1994;) has shown that, in contexts where both copulas are allowed, some features (e.g., adjective class, frame of reference and susceptibility to change) can affect the degree to which one copula is favored over the other. We have recently begun to extend this body of research to the Spanish spoken in Spain and found that while several linguistic factors predict copula use in the Spanish spoken in Galicia (Guijarro-Fuentes & Geeslin, forthcoming), our results showed less of an effect for individual variables. In the current study, we seek to further explore the Spanish spoken in Galicia and the individual characteristics related to language use and language learning by expanding our participant group (N=155 in total) to include a less homogeneous population. Our participants include a group of monolingual Spanish speakers residing outside Galicia to whom our bilingual participants will be compared, and a group of Spanish speakers in Galicia (N=73) who vary in degree of bilingualism, language learning histories, and language use profiles. Each participant completed a background questionnaire and a Spanish contextualized preference task. The data were coded for copula choice (the dependent variable) and several independent variables describing characteristics of language learning and language use. Our results show significant effects for gender, occupation, the first language of the participant's mother, and the language normally used by the participants.

This study investigated the acquisition of Spanish Differential Object Marking (DOM) by bilingual and monolingual Spanish teenagers, evaluating to which extent their knowledge of DOM can be explained by different theories of acquisition. Two experiments with bilingual and monolingual Spanish teenagers (ages 10 to 15) were conducted. The experiments included an Elicited Production Completion Task, in which a space was to either be filled with an object marker or left blank, and a Context-Matching Acceptability Judgment Task. 54 subjects (44 bilinguals and 10 monolinguals) were tested. For both tasks, there were 6 conditions testing different syntactic–semantic features that trigger DOM (test items n = 42 in each task). The data were analysed with linear regressions and repeated measures analyses of variance. This study’s results show that bilingual teenagers do not demonstrate significant differences from age-matched monolinguals in their competence regarding the syntactic–semantic properties of DOM. Both groups are below ceiling in showing evidence of knowledge about all the syntactic–semantic features involved in DOM, indicating the possibility of a significant delay beyond childhood in their acquisition. There are few previous studies on the acquisition of DOM, and none which consider the full range of features and specific population considered here. Work by Montrul focuses on the animacy feature, while Guijarro-Fuentes considers the full range of features, but for adult L2 learners of Spanish. This study shows that the Interface Vulnerability Hypothesis, the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis, the Full Access/Full Transfer Hypothesis and the Interpretability Hypothesis have limitations in explaining its results. Instead, a feature-based approach is proposed in which the specification of features beyond animacy raises difficulties for the acquisition of DOM until late childhood.