Publications

Previous research in the field of second language acquisition (L2A) has shown that linguistic features

involving interfaces (e.g., syntax-pragmatics interface or syntax-semantics interface) are more difficult

to acquire for second language learners (L2ers) than features involving only one linguistic component

(e.g., syntax) (Pérez-Leroux, Cuza, Majzlanova & Sánchez-Naranjo 2008; Slabakova & Montrul 2008).

In the field of L2A of the temporal-aspectual domain, previous studies emphasize the fact that more

research is needed to clarify (i) the role of L1 in the interpretation of acquisitional difficulties of L2ers

in syntactic and interface conditions (Pérez-Leroux et al. 2008), especially in online processing (Zheng

et al. 2021), (ii) the effect of various task types on the performance of L2ers in their interpretation and

production of syntactic and interface phenomena (Salaberry & Shirai 2002), and (iii) the relation

between L2ers’ performance in offline tasks and their online processing of the same feature (Roberts &

Liszka 2013; Renaud 2011; Zheng et al. 2021).

To address these research gaps, this poster presents the experimental design, stimuli, tasks, preliminary

results, and examples of pedagogical applications of a PhD project aimed at studying telicity in the past

temporal domain. Telicity interpretations depend both on interpretations of predicate telicity

(combinations of verbs and object arguments), represented by processes in narrow syntax (MacDonald,

2008; Slabakova & Montrul 2008; Travis 2010) and on combinations of predicates with adverbial

modifiers, which do not trigger feature-checking operations in narrow syntax, i.e., they represent the

syntax-discourse interface (Slabakova & Montrul 2008). This allows to design two types of stimuli,

involving syntactic and pragmatic cues of telicity encoding in the sentence structure. The theoretical

background of the current study is based on formal theoretical analyses of this feature in Slavic

languages, English and Spanish by MacDonald (2008) and Slabakova and Montrul (2008).

To address the research gap (i), the Interface Hypothesis (Tsimpli & Sorace 2006; Sorace & Serratrice

2009; Sorace 2011) will be tested with new data, with the aim to find out whether the differences in

telicity interpretations are related to L1-L2 differences in telicity encoding in syntactic and interface

conditions or whether syntactic cues are easier to acquire for speakers of both L1s than pragmatic cues.

Research gap (ii) is addressed by studying telicity in a series of three tasks (an offline acceptability

judgment task, an offline elicited production task and an online self-paced reading task). The

participants are L2ers acquiring English in instructional settings with two typologically different L1s

(Slovak/Czech and Spanish), divided into two proficiency groups (intermediate and advanced).

The applications of the study consist in designing a series of online pedagogical activites aimed at

teaching the difference between telic and atelic events in syntactic and pragmatic contexts to L2ers of

English since this phenomenon is not taught in instructional settings and this type of L2ers is often

reported to have problems with pragmatic and discourse phenomena (Alruwaili 2014; Kaku 2009).