Om semantikens roll för att förstå syntaktiska strukturer i talat språk. För- och efterled i talad spanska och svenska.

RAKEL ÖSTBERG (STOCKHOLMS UNIVERSITET)

Om semantikens roll för att förstå syntaktiska strukturer i talat språk. För- och efterled i talad spanska och svenska.

Språk: svenska

This paper investigates the structure of syntactic peripheries in the colloquial speech produced by three groups: native users of Spanish, native users of Swedish, and Swedish very advanced users of L2 Spanish. The main aspect addressed is the distribution of left- and right-periphery constituents across three categories defined in semantic terms, viz. denotative, indexical and nonreferential (pragmatic) expressions. The research questions concern (1) to what extent two typologically distinct languages such as Spanish and Swedish differ in this respect, (2) to what extent the Spanish L2 productions align with native use, and (3) whether any transfer from Swedish occurs in the Spanish L2 formulations. The analysis shows important divergences between Spanish and Swedish native use, not only with regard to the size of the respective peripheries but also in the distribution across the three semantic categories. Thus, although in all three groups the proportion of pragmatic constituents is much larger than for the two other categories, this gap is considerably wider in the Swedish L1 data. As regards the Spanish L2 data, a high degree of alignment with native use can be reported, and hardly any transfer from Swedish can be found in these highly proficient L2 speakers. However, a certain overrepresentation of indexical expressions can be observed in the L2 data.