A role for verb regularity in the L2 processing of the Spanish subjunctive mood: Evidence from eye-tracking

Sara Fernández Cuenca, Jill Jegerski

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The present study investigated the second language processing of grammatical mood in Spanish. Eye-movement data from a group of advanced proficiency second language users revealed nativelike processing with irregular verb stimuli but not with regular verb stimuli. A comparison group of native speakers showed the expected effect with both types of stimuli, but these were slightly more robust with irregular verbs than with regular verbs. We propose that the role of verb form regularity was due to the greater visual salience of Spanish subjunctive forms with irregular verbs versus regular verbs and possibly also due to less efficient processing of rule-based regular inflectional morphology versus whole irregular word forms. In any case, the results suggest that what appeared to be difficulty with sentence processing could be traced back to word-level processes, which appeared to be the primary area of difficulty. This outcome seems to go against theories that suggest that L2 sentence processing is shallow.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)318-347
Number of pages30
JournalStudies in Second Language Acquisition
Volume45
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - May 20 2023

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