"That was the goal for her to understand": Spanish anaphora in L2 speech

Abstract

This dissertation examines non-native Spanish direct object expressions of old information produced in a narrative context. It focuses on the functions that these expressions served in communication, using the participants' perspectives to gain access to their goals and motivations in producing direct object nominal and pronominal forms. The participants were naïve non-native Spanish speakers and native speakers of English and were responsible for narrating and evaluating a cooking video to another Spanish learner. The methodology employed a stimulated recall following the narrative task, in order to gain access to the participants' cognitive processes. A control group of native speakers participated in the same tasks as did the learners, in order to avoid comparing the learners to unrealistic native ideals. The direct object expressions that referenced old information in the discourse were analyzed to determine the functions that they served. The results indicate that the learners' level of Spanish was important in terms of the expressions that they used. The greater use of null objects by the lower level learners suggests the presence of a stage in their interlanguage during which null objects are used instead of nouns or pronouns. However, the learners' level was not the only factor that affected their linguistic production. The expressions that they produced were also affected by where the speakers wished to center their attention, taking into consideration their assumption of the referents' accessibility, as well as their assessment of the listeners' level of Spanish and knowledge of cooking. This other-orientation on the part of the speakers extended beyond the listeners to include various third parties related and unrelated to the task as well as the speakers' cultural understanding of a Spanish tortilla, a key referent in the task. Both the non-native and the native speakers indicated that they adjusted their language to achieve pragmatic goals that related to their understanding of their listeners' perspective. With respect to the listeners' perspective, their stimulated recalls suggested that they processed the speakers' linguistic production principally for meaning rather than form, and that the direct object expressions used had little effect on their overall comprehension of the narration.