Edited by Megan Solon, Matthew Kanwit and Aarnes Gudmestad
This volume honors the scholarly legacy of Kimberly L. Geeslin. Geeslin’s pioneering work on variation in the Spanish copula system united and extended research in the fields of second language acquisition and sociolinguistics. Geeslin laid the foundation for a growing subfield of investigation… read more
This study explored filled pauses in second language (L2) Spanish from a sociolinguistic perspective. Eighty-two L2 learners and seven native Spanish speakers were recorded during three brief monologic tasks. Filled pauses (K = 2,707) were identified, labeled as lexical or phonological, and… read more
Empirical research has reported differential effects of proficiency level on acquisition in the study-abroad (SA) context. We tested whether pre-SA proficiency influences learners’ acquisition of variable structures during SA, analyzing Spanish future-time expression, a structure conveyed… read more
Given the notable increase in participation in short-term (e.g., eight weeks or less) study abroad, especially in the US, recent empirical work on the role of context in second language (L2) learning has sought to investigate the impact of a short-term stay abroad on language development. The… read more
In face-to-face spoken interactions, language learners must construct a meaningful message consistent with the L2 grammar, articulate it comprehensibly, and manage the aspects of oral communication that reflect speaker identity, interlocutor identities, and the characteristics of the… read more
Input is a central, driving component in nearly all theories of second language acquisition, but little is known about the relationship between the instructor-provided input to which classroom second language learners are exposed and attested patterns of acquisition. Our study investigates this… read more
The present study examines the acquisition of coarticulatory patterns in Spanish as a second language (L2). Through an acoustic analysis of the production of /l/ preceded by a front vowel and by a back vowel by a large cross-sectional sample of English-speaking learners of Spanish (n = 85) and a… read more
Within the field of second-language (L2) phonetics, development in the production of a L2 phone is often conceived of as the modification of specific phonetic properties to approximate native-speaker norms. This approach permits precise accounts of L2 sound learning but can also lead to a narrow… read more
This study investigates the acquisition of nativelike variation in the production of Spanish /d/ by English-speaking learners. Specifically, we examine the production of /d/ in word-internal intervocalic position in the speech of 13 highly advanced nonnative speakers (NNSs) and 13 native… read more
The present study examines the effect of interlocutor type – second language (L2) learner versus heritage speaker – on interaction and phonetic accuracy during the completion of a dyadic map task in Spanish. Twenty intermediate-level, native English-speaking learners of Spanish and 10 heritage… read more
This paper investigates the effect of lexical frequency on third-person subject form variation by native and highly-advanced non-native speakers of Spanish. In line with previous research, verb tokens which represented 1% or more of the total tokens were categorized as frequent whereas all others… read more
