Reasuntivos y doblado del clitico: En torno a la caracterizacion del termino "Casi-Nativo"

Abstract

In this dissertation we investigate whether the term 'near-native speaker' should be used to refer to speakers who, in spite of having been in contact with the Spanish language since childhood, differ from the Spanish standard norm sanctioned by grammarians and linguists with respect to both their grammatical competence and their ability to process this language. In order to carry out this investigation we have used two constructions that evidence unstable areas of the Spanish language: (a) Resumptive Pronouns in ambiguous Restrictive Relative Clauses (Pintaron los techos de unas casitas i que cuando nos fuimos a vivir al camp las i vimos en malas condiciones.); and (b) Optional Dative Clitic Doubling (Sally Potter (les) dedico el premio a los tangueros.) versus Obligatory Dative Clitic Doubling (El nino travieso le rompio el jarron a la abuela. ). Three groups of speakers with Spanish as their mother tongue participated in our study: an SC (Spanish Control) group consisting of speakers who have always lived in a Spanish speaking country; an LC (Late Contact with English) experimental group formed by L1 Spanish / L2 English speakers, and an EC (Early Contact with English) group which consisted of so-called heritage speakers. Our aim was to revise the term near-native so that it is not only the experimental groups' global grammatical competence that determines their being near-native versus native speakers, but also these experimental groups' local grammatical competence in relation to their acceptance and processing of Resumptive Pronouns and Dative Clitic Doubling constructions. We carried out three off-line and two on-line experimental tasks (Acceptability Judgments, Magnitude Estimation and Sentence Matching) intended to evaluate the grammatical and processing abilities of the three groups of speakers, who represented two varieties of Spanish: the Peninsular variety and the Rioplatense variety. The results show that the experimental groups' (LC, EC) global grammatical competence differs significantly from that of the Control group (SC). However, in relation to the acceptability and processing of the Resumptive Pronouns and Dative Clitic Doubling constructions, the experimental groups differ from the Control group only with respect to certain aspects of these constructions while they evidence native competence in relation to other aspects. This leads us to propose that the term 'near-native' cannot be applied across the board.