Word Order with Transitives and the Interface Hypothesis in L2 Greek and L2 Spanish

Abstract

This study examines if the syntax-pragmatics interface is more complex to acquire than the syntax-semantics interface, as proposed in the interface hypothesis (ΙΗ) (Tsimpli & Sorace, Differentiating interfaces: L2 performance in syntax-semantics and syntax-discourse phenomena. In D. Bamman, T. Magnitskaia, & C. Zaller (Eds.), Proceedings of the 30th annual Boston university conference on language development (pp. 653–664). Cascadilla Proceedings Project. http://www.enl.auth.gr/staff/tsimpli/diffinterfaces.pdf, 2006), or the pragmatics interface is eventually acquirable at higher competence levels (Rothman, Pragmatic deficits with syntactic consequences? L2 pronominal subjects and the syntax-pragmatics interface. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(5), 951–973. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2008.07.007, 2009). The IH is tested in the L2 acquisition of Greek by L1 Spanish learners and Spanish by L1 Greek learners, Greek and Spanish being two languages that allow similar word order alternations with transitive verbs. An acceptability judgment task was designed, with a version in Greek and another version in Spanish. The results show that both experimental groups of L2 Greek attained native-like acceptance of the felicitous word order in neutral contexts, but the intermediate group of L2 Spanish did not perform native-like in the respective contexts. In contrastive contexts with adverbials, the advanced groups of both L2s achieved native-like patterns, while both intermediate groups had problems with the VSO order. The IH did not predict the learners’ performance.