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Article published In: Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 34:2 (2021) ► pp.371–401

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Adjectival and verbal agreement in the oral production of early and late bilinguals

Fluency, complexity, and integrated knowledge

ORCiD logo with link | Wake Forest University
Published online: 15 December 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/resla.19050.ala
Abstract
Extended oral production has seldom been used to explore adjectival and verbal agreement in L2 Spanish. This study examines oral narrations to compare the agreement behavior, speech rates, and patterns of errors of highly proficient Spanish heritage and L2 learners (early and late bilinguals, respectively), whose L1 is English, with those of native controls. Although both bilingual groups displayed high agreement accuracy scores, only the early bilinguals performed at or close to ceiling. In addition, the L2 learners spoke significantly more slowly than the heritage and native speakers, who displayed similar speech rates. Explanations accounting for the differences in speech rates and agreement accuracy include age of acquisition of Spanish, syntactic distance between a noun and its adjective, and task effects. All of these factors favored the early bilinguals, enhancing their advantages over L2 learners. Findings suggest that the integrated knowledge and automatic access needed for native-like attainment in agreement behavior in extended oral production is more easily achievable by early than by late bilinguals.
Resumen
Concordancia adjetival y verbal en la producción oral de bilingües tempranos y tardíos: Fluidez, complejidad y conocimiento integrado
La producción oral extensa rara vez ha sido usada para investigar la concordancia adjectival y verbal en el español como L2. Este estudio examina narraciones orales a fin de comparar la concordancia, la fluidez de habla y los patrones de errores en hablantes de herencia y aprendices de L2 a nivel avanzado de español (bilingües tempranos y tardíos, respectivamente), cuya L1 es inglés, con aquellos de nativos del grupo de control. Aunque ambos grupos bilingües mostraron altos niveles de precisión en la concordancia, solo los bilingües tempranos se desempeñaron a nivel máximo o cuasi máximo. Asimismo, los aprendices de L2 hablaron significativamente más lento que los hablantes de herencia y nativos, quienes mostraron una rapidez similar. Estas diferencias en la precisión de la concordancia y la fluidez se pueden atribuir a la edad de adquisición del español, la distancia sintáctica entre un sustantivo y su adjetivo y el tipo de tarea. Todos estos factores favorecen a los bilingües tempranos sobre los aprendices de L2. Los resultados sugieren que el conocimiento integrado y el acceso automático necesarios para la concordancia a nivel nativo en la producción oral extensa es más probable de lograr en los bilingües tempranos que en los tardíos.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Agreement in Spanish and English
    • 1.2Studies on Spanish gender agreement: HS and L2 learners
    • 1.3Studies on Spanish subject-verb agreement: HS and L2 learners
    • 1.4Studies of gender agreement and number agreement in oral narratives
  • 2.The current study
    • 2.1Research questions and hypotheses
    • 2.2Participants
    • 2.3Task and procedures
    • 2.4Coding and analysis
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Error analysis
  • 4.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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