Effects of Adjective Type on Position and Interpretation in Native Polish Classroom Learners of Spanish

Abstract

This study examines the effect of adjective type on distribution and interpretation of Spanish adjectives in native Polish classroom learners of Spanish. A native Spanish group (n = 16), an advanced Spanish learner group (n = 24), and an intermediate Spanish learner group (n = 25) completed one task examining knowledge of the syntactic distribution of intensional and classifying adjectives and two tasks examining interpretive knowledge of the syntax–semantic distribution of qualifying adjectives in Spanish. While native-like convergence largely obtained for the interpretive tasks, statistically significant differences obtained between native and learner groups on the syntactic task, perhaps a by-product of overgeneralization of the postnominal position resulting from explicit instruction. The main import of this study is that examination of an understudied and typologically–distinct language pairing allows for syntactic and syntax–semantic microvariations to inform the L2 learners’ outcomes on the tasks.