Developmental stages in the acquisition of the verb gustar
Date
2017
Authors
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Despite the general consensus regarding the existence of stages in the development of grammatical structures in L2, few studies have been conducted to identify the developmental stages of the Spanish psychological verb gustar. This verb creates difficulties for L2 learners, since unlike the verb to like ―which follows a S-V-P structure (subject-verb-predicate)― the verb gustar follows a reverse P-V-S structure. The adoption of a dual theoretical perspective combining Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) and Cognitive Linguistics (CL) is proposed here as a suitable framework for the analysis of the structure and acquisition of the verb gustar. On the one hand, LFG conceptualizes the construction of grammatical structures by means of levels ranging from semantics to syntax. On the other hand, Cognitive Linguistics (CL) complements the LFG approach by explaining how the construction of verb structures depends on the cognitive processes and conceptual structures underlying the surface form of a sentence (Marras & Cadierno, 2008). ☐ The evolution of the use of the verb gustar across the Spanish curriculum at a four-year University in the United States is described, and the transfer stage hypothesis (a developmental phase characterized by the use of parsing strategies from L1 to build sentences in L2) is tested by means of a grammatical judgment test and a short production task administered to learners of Spanish ranging from the first to the fourth year of instruction at a North American University. Pedagogical implications of this investigation for the teaching of gustar and other similar psychological verbs will be discussed.
Description
Keywords
Education, Developmental stages, English speakers, Foreign language pedagogy, Gustar, SLA, Spanish