Who’s in the Mood for Mood? - Multilingual study on the subjunctive in Spanish

Abstract

In this study, we explore the acquisition of the Spanish subjunctive by foreign language learners in a multilingual setting comparing two groups of Canadian university students in third and fourth year Spanish classes. The following two groups are (1) English group - university students who started learning Spanish in university or high school and whose first language is English and (2) French Immersion group - university students who started learning Spanish in university or high school and who attended a French Immersion primary and high school with English as a first language. The present subjunctive and the imperfect subjunctive were examined in sentences where the use of the subjunctive is obligatory in Spanish and French such as volitional, adverbial and impersonal contexts. Participants were asked to complete a grammaticality judgment task and an oral elicitation task. Results show that although both groups struggled with the imperfect subjunctive, the French Immersion group performed significantly better than the English group in the present subjunctive in both receptive and productive skills.