The current study contributes to the argument regarding whether L2 learners up to advanced levels make agreement errors on grammatical gender. It reports gender agreement accuracy on a written Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT) and an Elicited Oral Production Task (PDT) on known nouns assigned the correct gender by participants on a vocabulary…

This study examines the variable occurrence of preposition duplication in contexts of coordination in Spanish (e.g., "Fui con mi madre y (con) mi padre"). We build on previous research on this variable morphosyntactic phenomenon (namely, prepositions in contexts of coordination) by expanding the type of data and the independent variables…

In this paper we examine the use of Guarani affixes and clitics in colloquial Paraguayan Spanish. We depart from the traditional view of these as "borrowings," and instead explore the idea that these phenomena can be integrated within Muysken's (2000, 2013, 2014) typology of code-mixing. We claim that most of these uses may stem from a…

The present study compared the performance of two groups of second language learners processing three linguistic structures in Spanish. The linguistic targets were passives, object pronouns in O[subscript pro]VS sentences, and gender-cued null subjects in subordinate clauses. The primary differences between the two groups were language experience…

This current study reports the findings of sociolinguistic research investigating the place of the "voseo" in the Spanish language curriculum in the United States. The study describes the results of questionnaire responses from 177 US Spanish teachers and survey responses from 560 US college students of Spanish. Both instruments sought…

The acquisition of sociolinguistic variation by second language learners has gained increased attention. Some research highlights the value of naturalistic exposure through study abroad while other studies point out that classroom input can facilitate the acquisition of particular features of variation. Nevertheless, said attention to the…

Although millions of speakers of Spanish employ "voseo", the twentieth century did not see a single article published in "Hispania" that suggested incorporating instruction on "voseo" into the language classroom. In contrast, the twenty-first century has already seen three articles published in "Hispania"…

The present study investigates whether the implementation of a dictogloss task within a proactive Focus on Form approach (e.g., Long 1991; Long and Robinson 1998) has significant effects on the acquisition of Spanish present subjunctive. A total of sixty-six learners in a fifth-semester Spanish course participated in the study and were assigned to…

The purpose of this paper is to compare structured input (SI) with other input-based instructional treatments. The input-based instructional types include: input flood (IF), text enhancement (TE), SI activities, and focused input (FI; SI without implicit negative feedback). Participants included 145 adult learners enrolled in an intermediate…

In this article, we examine whether the effectiveness of processing instruction (PI) is limited to forms targeted in the instructional treatment (primary effects) or whether it also extends to other forms (transfer-of-training effects). L2 Spanish learners (N = 123) received either PI or traditional instruction (TI) targeting third-person…

This study examines the effects of processing instruction (PI) alone versus PI and output (O) on the acquisition of three conjunctional and infinitival phrases in Spanish. Seventy intermediate and advanced-intermediate high school participants received: 1) PI on three consecutive days (PI + PI + PI); 2) PI for two days and meaning-based output…

In the present study, we examine the roles of 1) explicit information about language provided to learners prior to treatment and 2) aptitude (specifically grammatical sensitivity) within Processing Instruction. Forty-two learners of Spanish in their third-semester of study were divided into two groups: those who received explicit information (EI)…

The study examined heritage speaker grammars and to what extent they diverge with respect to grammatical gender from adult L2 learners. Results from a preference task involving code-mixed Determiner Phrases (DPs) and code-mixed copula constructions show a difference between these two types of operations. Heritage speakers patterned with the…

This article attempts to highlight the importance of theoretical linguistics and empirical cognitive linguistics studies for the practical teaching of Spanish as a second language. Looking at the domain of subject pronominal use as an example, I endeavor to show how formal linguistics can be useful to language instructors. This is a significant…