This paper examines the strategies used by speakers of Spanish as a second language (L2) for marking Information Focus, a phenomenon found at the syntax-discourse interface. Sorace and colleagues have proposed the Interface Hypothesis, according to which the syntax-discourse interface poses unique challenges for bilinguals (Sorace, 2011). With…

The present article examines the effect of variable input on the acquisition of plural morphology in two varieties of Spanish: Chilean Spanish, where the plural marker is sometimes omitted due to a phonological process of syllable final /s/ lenition, and Mexican Spanish (of Mexico City), with no such lenition process. The goal of the study is to…

This self-paced reading study first tested the prediction that the garden path effect previously observed during the processing of subject-object ambiguities in native English would not obtain in a null subject language like Spanish. The investigation then further explored whether the effect would be evident among near-native readers of Spanish…

This case study examined the level of reflection in the essays written by 15 Mexican English language teachers taking a Master's Degree course in English as a foreign language (EFL). The essays were evaluated using the categorization scheme for assessing the level of reflection developed by Kember, et al. (2008). Semi-structured interviews were…

In this study, we investigate whether specific language impairment (SLI) manifests itself grammatically in the same way in Spanish and English with respect to nominal plural marking. English-speaking children with SLI are very proficient at marking plural on nouns. Spanish has two main nominal plural allomorphs: /s/ and /es/. The /es/ allomorph…

An analysis of indirect objects in San Jeronimo Mazatec describes the superficial characteristics of indirect objects and the constructions in which indirect objects occur. It is argued that they occur as prepositional phrases that are obligatorily incorporated into the verb in a specific way. The constructions containing indirect objects are…

Tested the interlanguage structural conformity hypothesis by examining how frequently young adult, native Spanish speakers in Mexico modified English two- and three-member onsets. Results indicate that three-member onsets were modified significantly more frequently than were two-member onsets and that epenthesis occurred more frequently after…

A study compared the types of information included in English narratives written by monolingual American students, English narratives by bilingual Mexican students, and Spanish narratives by monolingual Mexican students, and possible differences by grade level. Subjects were in six groups: monolingual (English-speaking) American; bilingual…