ERIC Number: EJ1127229
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016-Jul
Pages: 10
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-2254-7339
EISSN: N/A
Heritage, Second-Language and Native Speakers' Intuitions on Deictic Verbs in Spanish: Beyond the Linguist's Intuitions
Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research, v5 n2 p81-90 Jul 2016
Previous analyses of the Spanish deictic verbs "venir" "to come", "ir" "to go", traer "to bring" and "llevar" "to take" have drawn upon Fillmore's (1975) series of lectures on deixis in noting that speakers of Spanish forbid the use of the verbs "venir" and "traer" to express movement towards the hearer. Under this egocentric view (Beinhauer, 1940; Ibañez, 1983), the Spanish verbs "venir" and "traer" can only be used to describe movement towards the speaker's location. Little experimental research has been done, however, to confirm the extent to which heritage and second language (L2) speakers of the language conform to this pattern. The present study gathered data on the deictic preferences of bilingual, heritage speakers of Spanish and English (HS) and compared this data with that of L2 and monolingual native speakers of Spanish (NS). 74 participants, consisting of 12 NS, 34 HS, and 29 L2 speakers, assessed the grammaticality of 20 stimulus items that contained prescriptively correct and incorrect usages of the deictic verbs "venir," "traer," "llevar" and "ir." Both HS and L2 speakers made significantly more errors than NS when the direction expressed in the stimulus was oriented towards the hearer, suggesting both groups may benefit from instruction on this topic.
Descriptors: Native Language, Verbs, Language Usage, Second Language Learning, Preferences, Bilingualism, Monolingualism, Grammar, Error Patterns, College Students, Semantics, Questionnaires, Statistical Analysis, Spanish, English
University of Alicante. Carretera San Vincente del Raspeig, Alicante, 03690, Spain. Tel: +34-96-590-3721; Fax: +35-96-590-3464; e-mail: editor.naerjournal@ua.es; Web site: https://naerjournal.ua.es
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research; Tests/Questionnaires
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: California
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A