Se in the interlanguage of Portuguese speakers. Spanish in Context

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Spanish in Context 9:3 (2012), 369–399. doi 10.1075/sic.9.3.01thoissn 1571–0718 / e-issn 1571–0726 © John Benjamins Publishing Company

Se in the interlanguage of Portuguese speakers

Amy S. Thompson

The struggle of L1 English learners of Spanish with the clitic se has been documented (Montrul, 2000; Toth, 2000; Zyzik, 2006), but there have not been studies to document the use of the Spanish se by L1 Portuguese speak-ers. Although Portuguese is structurally similar to Spanish in many ways, including the existence of se, this clitic has subtle usage differences in the two languages. In Spanish, Whitley (2002) and Zyzik (2006) have identified seven different categories of se; Portuguese has fewer uses and applies it less frequently (Azevedo, 2005; Cunha &Cintra, 2001; Scherre, 2005). The current study, which is a modified replication of Zyzik (2004), examines the use of se by L1 Brazilian Portuguese (BP) students of Spanish. These northeastern Brazilian students nar-rated a short story from the picture book Pancakes for Breakfast (DePaola, 1978) and then performed a stimulated recall task. Using this data, correct uses of se, omissions of se in obligatory contexts, and overgeneralizations of se by the L1 BP participants were analyzed. In addition, the participants’ noticing of errors with se was also examined through an analysis of the stimulated recall, and the results indicate that the participants did not notice any of their errors with the clitic se. The results also indicate that positive L1 transfer can partially account for the L1 Portuguese speakers’ interlanguage; however, factors other than L1 transfer need to be considered when discussing interlanguage development.

Keywords: SLA, clitics, se, L2 Spanish, L1 Portuguese, Brazil, storybook narration, stimulated recall

1. Introduction

Clitics are complex syntactic elements in that they have features of both an inde-pendent word and a bound morpheme. They “have no stress of their own and func-tion phonologically as an extra syllable attached to another word, usually a verb” (Azevedo, 2005, p. 109). All clitics, se more so than others, have been shown in the literature to cause great problems for L2 learners of Spanish (e.g., Zyzik, 2006) for a variety of reasons including their somewhat morpheme-like, somewhat word-like

© 2012. John Benjamins Publishing CompanyAll rights reserved

370 Amy S. Thompson

characteristics, as well as their complex uses in Spanish (e.g., Whitley, 2002). In the area involving the acquisition and use of se, most of the research has been done on English speakers learning Spanish (e.g. VanPatten, 1987, 1990; Zyzik, 2004, 2006; c.f. Montrul, 20001). In order to understand if errors in the production of se are primarily the result of cross-linguistic influence from the L1, a variety of L1 groups should be tested. This project is a modified replication study of Zyzik (2004) in which se was elicited from a group of L2 Spanish speakers with varying proficiencies of Spanish. Similar to Zyzik (2004), there was no hypothesis testing of a specific treatment or teaching strategy; instead the production of se across levels was observed. This study differs from Zyzik (2004) in that the participants are L1 Portuguese participants (as opposed to L1 English participants) and in that there is a stimulated recall section of this study in addition to the data elicita-tion techniques. With this project focusing on L1 Portuguese speakers, another L1 group is included in an attempt to broaden the research about the acquisition and use of the clitic se.

2. Literature review

The purpose of this literature review is multifaceted. In the first section, the struc-tures of the polyfunctional clitic se in both Spanish and Portuguese with a discus-sion of the similarities and differences in the usage of this clitic in the two languages will be presented.2 For the uses of se in Spanish, two main sources are referenced: Whitley (2002) and Zyzik (2006). The status of se in BP is more complex than in Spanish, given the wide chasm that exists between the prescriptive and descriptive grammars of BP. In order to address both prescriptive and descriptive grammars, several sources for BP are referenced: Azevedo (2005), Cunha and Cintra (2001), Kato, Cyrino, and Corrêa (2009), and Scherre (2005). Azevedo (2005) is an intro-duction to Portuguese linguistics written in English, and discusses language in use, or descriptive grammar. Cunha and Cintra (2001) is a prescriptive grammar book written in Portuguese. Kato et al. (2009) is an empirical study involving the current use of clitics in BP, and Scherre (2005) also discusses the contemporary use of se. After the current usage patterns of se for both languages are established, a discussion of previous SLA studies on this topic follows. Because this is a multi-level observational study as opposed to a pre-test/post-test design, treatments to facilitate the acquisition of se will not be analyzed.

In both Spanish and Portuguese, se is a complicated linguistic phenomenon. In Spanish, Whitley (2002) and Zyzik (2006) have identified seven different cat-egories of se: decausative, passive, impersonal, reflexive/reciprocal, intransitive-dynamic, aspectual, and inherent/lexical. Although other divisions of the use of


Se in the interlanguage of Portuguese speakers 371

se have been proposed (e.g. Toth, 2000), these seven categories are the basis of analysis for this paper.

The first type of verb in this categorization is called decausative or inchoative, henceforth in this paper labeled decausative. These types of verbs are intransitive in construction with the cause of the action left as undefined, although it should be noted that not all of these verbs are inherently intransitive. An example of a decausative se construction is as follows:

(1) Las cajas se empaparon. ‘The boxes got soaked.”

In this case, the verb is decausative because it is intransitive in this construction and the agent is unknown. The following example is a construction with empapar ‘to soak’ in a transitive form:

(2) Los hombres empaparon las cajas. ‘The men soaked the boxes.’

In this example, los hombres, ‘the men’ act as the agent and las cajas ‘the boxes’ act as the object; thus, the verb empapar ‘to soak’ is transitive in this case.

The next two categories of verbs are passive and impersonal and will be dis-cussed together. In Spanish, the passive construction can be formed in two ways: 1) the se construction and 2) the ser ‘to be’ plus the past participle construction. For the purpose of this paper, only the se passive construction will be explained. With the se passive, only transitive verbs can be used; the NP is the subject, and the verb agrees with it (Whitley, 2002).

(3) Se cerraron las puertas ‘The doors were closed.’

For impersonal se constructions, both transitive and intransitive verbs can be used as long as a human subject is implied. In addition, verbs with an impersonal con-struction are always singular (Whitley, 2002).

(4) Se come bien aquí. ‘One eats well here.’

If both the subject and verb are singular, it is difficult to interpret the sentence structure, as it could potentially be interpreted as either passive or impersonal.

The reflexive/reciprocal category is the one that is the most familiar to even beginning level Spanish students. Reflexive verbs with se are those that in English are used with himself, herself, itself, or themselves, although it must be noted that in English himself, herself, itself, and themselves are often left out.


372 Amy S. Thompson

(5) Pedro se afeitó.

The assumed English equivalent is ‘Pedro shaved himself,’ although it is more common to say ‘Pedro shaved.’ Other verbs that follow this pattern are verbs such as lavarse ‘to wash oneself,’ vestirse ‘to dress oneself,’ and bañarse ‘to bathe one-self ’ (Whitley, 2002). The crucial concept for reflexive verbs is that the agent and the patient roles are co-referent. The difference between reflexive and reciprocal constructions is that while reflexive verbs have only one agent and one patient, reciprocal verbs have “…referents of a plural subject [that] carry out something on each other” (Whitley, 2002, p. 175).

(6) Se besaron. ‘They kissed (each other).’

The intransitive-dynamic category expresses the dynamic nature indicated in such verbs (Zyzik, 2004). This optional se can be added to intransitive verbs to put em-phasis on one crucial moment when this change of state takes place. The verb-dormir versus dormirse illustrates this point.

(7) Durmió bien anoche. ‘He/she slept well last night.’

This utterance describes the entire night of sleeping, as opposed to any one specific moment, as opposed to the following sentence:

(8) Se durmió a medianoche. ‘He/she fell asleep at midnight.’

In this sentence, the focal point is on the sudden nature of the act of falling asleep.The aspectual category indicates a completive act and “…intensifies the action

like the English particles up, down, out, away” (Whitley, 2002, p. 176). Consider the contrast between the following two sentences:

(9) a. Alejandra leyó el libro ayer. Alejandra read the book yesterday. b. Alejandra se leyó el libro ayer. Alejandra read the entire book yesterday.

With the first example, it is understood that although Alejandra read part of the book yesterday, she did not necessarily read the whole book. With the second sen-tence, it is clear that Alejandra read the entire book yesterday. The difference in the sentences is the completive nature of the action. According to some linguists, the intransitive/dynamic and aspectual categories are combined into a more gen-eral “aspectual” category, which indicates the telic nature of the verbs in question



(McCready& Nishida, 2008; Nishida, 1994). However, since this study is following the categorizations found in Whitley (2002) and Zyzik (2006), the categories of intransitive/dynamic and aspectual will be analyzed separately.

The last se category for this study is the inherent/lexical distinction. This category includes a relatively small list of verbs for which the Spanish clitic se is obligatory. Such verbs include words such as quejarse, ‘to complain,’ arrepentirse ‘to regret,’ acordarse ‘to remember,’ jactarse ‘to brag,’ rebelarse ‘to rebel,’ abstenerse ‘to abstain,’ and atreverse ‘to dare to do something’ (Whitley, 2002; Zyzik, 2004). In this case, the se agrees with the subject and is not optional in Spanish, as it is an inherent part of the lexical item.

(10) a. El no se acuerda. ‘He doesn’t remember.’

b. * El no acuerda. ‘He doesn’t remember.’

In this case, Example 10b is ungrammatical because the verb acordarse requires se when used with the definition of ‘to remember.’3

Like Spanish, Portuguese also has the clitic se in its syntax, although the uses are not identical. According to Azevedo (2005) and Cunha and Cintra (2001), Portuguese has five prescriptive uses of se: decausative (though it is used mostly in European Portuguese), passive, impersonal, reflexive/reciprocal, and inherent/lexical. In recent years, there has been a shift in the descriptive grammar of the uses of se in Brazilian Portuguese as discussed in Kato et al. (2009) and Scherre (2005). Examples of the current use of se from these sources are intertwined with the discussions of each of the aforementioned prescriptive categories.

The decausative category in Portuguese is prescriptively the same as in Spanish; it is intransitive with undefined causality that indicates a change of state. This differs from verbs in the reflexive/reciprocal category in which the agent is co-referent with the patient, such as with the verb cortarse ‘to cut oneself.’ Verbs in the reflexive/reciprocal category do not indicate a change of state in either Spanish or Portuguese. The decausative category is used very rarely in BP, but is used in European Portuguese (EP), such as in example 11 (Azevedo, 2005, p. 116):

(11) Geralmente, ela se levanta às sete horas. ‘Usually, she gets up at seven o’clock.’

Although the se is obligatory according to normative grammar, it is oftentimes eliminated in BP. Thus, although the decausative category is prescriptively a cat-egory of se in Portuguese, it is a structure that is not often used in BP and is, thus, not often found in the descriptive grammar (colloquial use)(Scherre, 2005). In


374 Amy S. Thompson

fact, the construction is so rare in BP, that many BP speakers would not recognize the structure as in example 11 as decausative, despite the undefined causality as well as the change of state inherent in such verbs.

Additionally, some verbs that use the decausative se in Spanish never use a decausative se in Portuguese.

(12) a. La ventana se rompió. (Spanish) ‘The window broke.’

b. A janela quebrou. (Portuguese) ‘The window broke.’

The passive voice in Portuguese has two possible structures as in Spanish — with se and with ser ‘to be’ plus the past participle. As in Spanish, the passive verb with the se construction in Portuguese prescriptively agrees with the subject, although as exemplified in Scherre (2005), colloquial use of BP allows for both singular and plural verbs (p. 111):

(13) Vendem-se casas. (prescriptively correct) Vende-se casas. (descriptively correct) ‘Houses are for sale.’

Scherre (2005) argues that there is a difference between ‘language’ (human com-munication) and ‘prescriptive grammar’ (a special language used by those who have status and power), such that prescriptive grammars should not be the ex-pected norm for communication (pp. 84–85). For the case of the passive sentence above without subject-verb agreement, she argues that this sentence is correct by virtue of the fact that the majority of the people speak in that way. In fact, she gives examples of such passive sentences found in the newspaper Diário de Notícias that show the inconsistency of the subject-verb agreement (p. 86).

For passive sentences, the ser plus past participle formation in Portuguese is more common than in Spanish, such as in example 14 from Azevedo (2005, p. 120):

(14) O desfile da escola de samba foi patrocinado pela prefeitura. ‘The samba club parade was sponsored by City Hall.’

The impersonal se construction in Portuguese is similar to that of the impersonal se construction in Spanish. A human subject must be implied, although it is not explicitly stated, as in this example from Azevedo (2005, p, 123).

(15) Conserta-se motos. ‘Motorcyles fixed.’



As in Spanish, the prescriptive distinction between the passive and the impersonal construction in Portuguese is the agreement of the verb and the following NP.

(16) a. Vendem-se casas. (passive) ‘Houses are for sale.’

b. Vende-se casas. (impersonal) ‘One is selling houses.’

However, as noted above, BP speakers are not always cognizant of this distinc-tion (see Scherre, 2005, for an in-depth discussion of this issue). Also similar to Spanish, passive and impersonal sentences cannot be distinguished based on for-mal agreement.4

The fundamental idea of Portuguese reflexive/reciprocal se constructions is the same as in Spanish — the agent and patient roles are co-referent. However, there is a distinction with this category with Spanish and Portuguese. In Spanish, the re-flexive se is obligatory even when a direct object is present, whereas in Portuguese, if a direct object is present, it ceases to be a reflexive construction. For example, in Portuguese, lavar-se ‘to wash’ is a reflexive construction when no object is present; however, se is not used in the presence of an object. In Spanish, the se is obligatory in both cases. See examples below:

(17) a. Ela se lava (Portuguese) Ella se lava (Spanish) ‘She washes herself ’

b. Ela lava sua cara. (Portuguese) Ella se lava la cara. (Spanish) ‘She washes her face.’

Similar to Spanish, Portuguese also has a category of verbs that have an inherent/lexical se, which does not have a grammatical function other than being part of the lexical item (Azevedo, 2005). With these verbs, the clitic se is obligatory and agrees with the subject of the phrase, as in Spanish. In Portuguese, some of the verbs are queixar-se ‘to complain,’ orgulhar-se (de) ‘to be proud (of)’, and envergonhar-se (de) ‘to be ashamed (of)’ (Azevedo, 2005).

(18) Ana se queixa muito. ‘Ana complains a lot.”

Within this inherent/lexical category, the dropping of se is also possible in spoken BP, as is sometimes possible with the aforementioned reflexives, such as the ex-ample from Azevedo (2005, p. 117).


376 Amy S. Thompson

(19) Pára de queixar! ‘Stop complaining!’

A current phenomenon of the use of clitics in BP that is well documented in Kato et al. (2009) is the fact that clitics, especially third person clitics, are rapidly disap-pearing from spoken language. “One of the phenomena that contributes to the distance between spoken and written language in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) is the loss of 3rd person clitics” (p. 245). This wasn’t always the case, however. Kato et al. (2009) presents the dramatic decrease in the use of 3rd person clitics from the 16th century to the present, with the most substantial loss being in the spoken language. Interestingly, 3rd person clitics are more frequent in written BP only as the result of schooling, “…pre-school children and illiterate speakers do not have 3rd person clitics in their grammars” (Kato et al., 2009, p. 266). The authors argue that in a sense, educated speakers of BP are bilingual because they are able to code-switch between the old system (frequent clitic use) and the new system (clitic dropping) in the spoken and written modalities. Scherre (2005) would argue that learning the clitic system for the L1 is unnatural, “Língua maternal se adquire; não se aprende e nem se ensina” (p. 93) ‘One acquires the L1; it cannot be learned nor can it be taught.’ Scherre (2005) would argue that the learned system of clitics does not really constitute a BP speaker’s L1.

Table 1 below compares the uses of se in Spanish and Portuguese, accompanied by the English translations. The structure of this table is taken from Zyzik (2006), and to maintain the consistency, the Spanish sentences used in Zyzik (2006) were translated to Portuguese for comparative purposes, although the Portuguese cat-egorizations were taken from Azevedo (2005), Cunha and Cintra (2001), Kato et al. (2009), and Scherre (2005).

After the above description of the functions of se in Spanish and Portuguese, it is not difficult to understand why the acquisition of this clitic is so difficult for learners. As Zyzik (2006) states, “…the Spanish clitic se is a prime example of an exceedingly complex form-function mapping” (p. 461). This could be for several reasons; perhaps it is because of its lack of salience (how easily a feature can be noticed in the input), or perhaps because of its complicated use system. Schmidt’s (1990) Noticing Hypothesis states that in order for learners to learn a particular grammatical structure of a new language, they have to be able to notice that spe-cific structure and how it is used. “If learners are only able to notice a portion of the data available (owing to a lack of saliency or perhaps its difference from the L1), then one would expect the formulation of nontargetlike hypotheses to lead to under- or overgeneralization” (Toth 2000, p. 175). In fact, as stated in Harley (1993), there are four main features that make a grammatical structure a likely candidate for effective focus on form episodes: non-obviously different in the L2.



Tabl

e 1.

Use

s of s

e in

Span

ish a

nd P

ortu

gues

eU

ses o

f se

Span

ish

Port

ugue

seEn

glis

h tr

ansla

tion

Dec

ausa

tive:

Intra

nsiti

ve v

erb

with

caus

e left

out

. Cha

nge o

f sta

te.

1. L

a ve

ntan

a se

rom

pió.

2. G

ener

alm

ente

, ella

se

leva

nta

a la

s sie

te.

1. N

/A2.

Ger

alm

ente

, ela

se le

vant

a às

se

te h

oras

.

1. Th

e w

indo

w b

roke

.2.

She

usu

ally

get

s up

at se

ven

o’cl

ock.

Pass

ive:

Whe

n th

e sub

ject

is th

e pat

ient

, tar

get,

or u

nder

goer

of t

he

actio

n (a

s opp

osed

to th

e age

nt).

Se e

scrib

en c

arta

s lar

gas.

Escr

evem

-se

cart

as lo

ngas

.5Lo

ng le

tters

are

writ

ten.

Impe

rson

al:

Any

verb

that

can

have

a h

uman

subj

ect c

an h

ave a

n im

pers

onal

read

ing.

Se v

ive

bien

aqu

í.6V

ive-

se b

em a

qui.7

One

live

s wel

l her

e.

Refle

xive

/ rec

ipro

cal:

Whe

re a

sem

antic

age

nt a

nd p

atie

nt a

re th

e sam

e (re

flex-

ive)

and

each

of t

he p

artic

ipan

ts oc

cupi

es b

oth

the r

ole o

f ag

ent a

nd p

atie

nt w

ith re

spec

t to

each

oth

er (r

ecip

roca

l).

1. L

ola

se v

e en

el e

spej

o.2.

Ella

se e

scrib

ió u

na n

ota.

1. L

ola

se v

ê no

esp

elho

.2.

Ela

se e

scre

ve u

m b

ilhet

e. (E

scre

veu

um b

ilhet

e pa

ra si

m

esm

a.)

1. L

ola

sees

her

self

in th

e m

irror

.2.

She

wro

te h

erse

lf a

note

.

Intr

ansit

ive-

dyna

mic

:Ex

pres

ses t

he u

nexp

ecte

d or

dyn

amic

natu

re o

f an

even

t. In

Spa

nish

, som

e int

rans

itive

ver

bs ca

n ta

ke th

e opt

iona

l se

in th

is ca

se.

El co

che

se sa

lió d

e la

ca

rret

era.

N/A

The

car s

udde

nly

wen

t off

the

road

.

Asp

ectu

al:

Opt

iona

l se

in S

pani

sh. I

ndica

tes a

com

plet

ive a

ctio

n.Se

tom

aron

todo

el v

ino.

N/A

They

dra

nk u

p al

l the

win

e.

Inhe

rent

/lexi

cal:

Se is

par

t of t

he w

ord.

No

alte

rnat

ion

poss

ible.

Luis

se q

ueja

de

la ta

rea.

Luis

se q

ueix

a da

tare

fa.

Luis

com

plai

ns a

bout

the

hom

ewor

k.


378 Amy S. Thompson

and the L2, non-salient because of lack of input, relatively not important because of lack of communicative load, and easily misanalyzed or misinterpreted by learn-ers. For example, L1 English speakers might notice the difference in examples 20a and 20b because a similar distinction exists in English.

(20) a. Juan vistió a los niños. ‘Juan dressed the children.’ b. Juan se vistió. ‘Juan dressed himself ’ or ‘Juan got dressed.’

However, in examples 21a and 21b an L1 English speaker might not notice se in the input.

(21) a. Juan despertó a los niños. ‘John woke up the children’ b. Juan se despertó. ‘John woke up.’

In English no change is needed to the verb ‘to wake up’ to differentiate between transitive and intransitive. However, in Spanish, despertar ‘to wake up’ is transitive and despertarse ‘to wake up’ is intransitive. In the case of an L1 Portuguese speak-er learning Spanish, dropping the se in the above obligatory context in Spanish would result in confusion for the listener. This sentence, without either a se or an object, is semantically ambiguous and might thus result in interlocutor confusion.

Previous research has documented the difficultly of this clitic among non-native speakers of Spanish, including Montrul (1997, 1999, 2000) and Montrul, Dias, and Santos (2011). Montrul (2000) is the synthesis of three studies — L1 Spanish and L1 Turkish learners of English, L1 Spanish and L1 English learners of Turkish, and L1 English and L1 Turkish learners of Spanish. The results of Montrul (2000) indicate that the L1 plays a role in accuracy with verbs having transitiv-ity alternations. Focusing on the results of the Spanish study, L1 English speak-ers had a tendency to omit se with intransitive verbs when the translation would be accurate in English while rejecting correctly formed sentences with se. The L1 Turkish speakers patterned more similarly to the native Spanish speaker controls than did the L1 English speakers; however, even those L1 Turkish speakers who were advanced L2 Spanish speakers did not perform identically to the L1 Spanish speakers. Turkish has some structures analogous to the anticaustive Spanish se constructions, but substantial variation exists depending on the lexical item in question. The results of Montrul (2000) would indicate that speakers of languages that include clitics in the grammar, such as Turkish and Portuguese, would have an easier time acquiring the clitic se in Spanish. In English, there is no morpho-logical marking to mark agency, whereas in both Spanish and Turkish, there is. In



Spanish, the distinction is se, and in Turkish, this alternation is also represented by a clitic. Though the complete explanation of the Turkish clitic system is beyond the scope of this paper,8 verbs such as aç-mak ‘to open,’ kapa-mak ‘to close,’ and kir-mak ‘to break’ function the same in terms of clitic markings for the causative/decausative alternations as these verbs in Spanish, but as mentioned above, there is substantial difference depending on the lexical item.

Montrul (2000) showed that L1 English speakers are at an inherent disadvan-tage when it comes to clitic acquisition; however, Toth (2000) demonstrates how focused instruction improves learners’ use of se. Similarly, White (1991) illustrates that without negative evidence, L2 Spanish speakers have difficulty using se be-cause of its complexity in Spanish. However, focused instruction does not guaran-tee successful use of se (Toth, 2000); in this study, even with focused instruction, the participants were still making errors with unaccusative and alternating verbs. Additionally, Zyzik (2006) found that advanced learners improved as they gained proficiency but never reached native-like performance with se.

Thus, what are the factors involved in successful interlinguistic transfer? One factor that plays a role is the idea of salience. Harley (1998) states that salience, or lack thereof, depends on several factors; both L1 background and effect on comprehensibility play roles in determining the salience of a grammatical feature. Some features, thus, will not be learned without explicit emphasis on that feature. Additionally, both Montrul et al. (2011) and Rothman (2011) argue that typo-logical (structural) similarities facilitate transfer. In Montrul et al. (2011), there were two groups of learners: L1 English/L2 Spanish participants and L1 Spanish/L2 English participants. Both groups were learning BP, and both groups of par-ticipants transferred knowledge from Spanish (either as an L1 or and L2) for suc-cessful BP clitic acquisition. Because of the existence of se in both Spanish and Portuguese, similar to the results of Montrul (2000) — L1 Turkish speakers were able to acquire se with greater facility than L1 English speakers — and the results of Montrul et al. (2011) — speakers of Spanish as an L1 or an L2 were able to acquire BP clitics — one would expect that L1 Portuguese speakers would also have an advantage in acquiring se in the overlapping categories of Spanish and Portuguese.

3. The Study

The study examines the interlanguage of Portuguese speakers learning Spanish, spe-cifically examining the clitic se. The research questions for this study are as follows:

1. Which categories of se are produced by L1 BP speakers learning Spanish?2. Do BP speakers notice their errors with se through stimulated recall?


380 Amy S. Thompson

3.1 Context and participants

There are 18 participants in this study (13 female, 5 male), who studied Spanish for a variety of semesters: two semesters, N=9; three semesters, N=2; four semesters, N=1; five semesters, N=3; and seven semesters, N=3. These participants were stu-dents enrolled in Spanish courses in the Casa de Cultura Hispânica (CCH), which is affiliated with the Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC — the Federal University of Ceará, a northern province of Brazil) in Fortaleza, Brazil. The Casa de Cultura Hispânica was founded in 1961 with a partnership between UFC and Madrid’s Instituto de Cultura Hispânica, which is now known as Instituto de Cooperación Ibero-americana. The Casas as a whole function like a department of UFC; howev-er, the students taking these language classes do not take them for credit towards a degree. A number of students in the language classes are taking a language course for enrichment or professional purposes.

The CursoBásico de Língua Espanhola (the basic level of the Spanish language course) is a seven semester series totaling 420 hours of instruction (60 hours/semester). The Curso Básico focuses on both the spoken and written modalities through communicative activities and grammar instruction. These classes also focus on cultural knowledge of the Spanish-speaking world with an emphasis on Spain. The textbook series used for all seven semesters of these courses is the Español en Marcha series, which is a book published in Spain. The four books in the series are divided for the seven semesters of instruction: semesters I and II (Español en Marcha Básico), semesters III and IV (Español en Marcha 2), semesters V and VI (Español en Marcha 3), and semester VII (Español en Marcha 4). In ad-dition to the textbooks, a number of additional novels and short stories are used each semester as supplemental pedagogical materials.

3.2 Procedure

Choosing a data elicitation technique in SLA research is always a challenge. The researcher must carefully consider the objectives of the study in order to choose the technique that is most appropriate for the study. Doughty & Long (2000) dis-cuss elicitation strategies most commonly used in SLA research as well as the con-tinuum of the techniques that are the most constraining and least constraining in-sofar as freedom of language production on the part of the participant. Although spontaneous speech would be ideal to study “real” language use, as Gass (1994) states, it oftentimes fails to yield the specific linguistic feature for a specific study. As such, the current study uses a storybook narration task, which is similar to Pienemann’s (1998) “habitual actions” task. For this study, the elicitation task used the picture book Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie de Paola (1978), which



was the same stimulus used to collect the storybook narration task data in Zyzik (2004), a study that found this stimulus to be very effective in eliciting the third person clitic, se. For example, on the second page of the book, the woman wakes up (despertarse — decausative) and in the next page she is getting dressed (ponerse ropa — reflexive). She is often remembering (acordarse de — inherent/lexical) and forgetting (olvidarse — inherent/lexical) throughout the story, and is also going places suddenly (irse — intransitive/dynamic). Thus, there are ample opportuni-ties for the participants to use the clitic se.9 The storyline for Pancakes for Breakfast is the following: A woman wakes up with the desire to make pancakes but has trouble gathering all of the necessary ingredients. When she finally gathers the ingredients, her cat and dog eat them so that she can’t make the pancakes, but in the end, she eats pancakes at her neighbors’ house. In addition to the picture de-scription task, the participants were also asked to perform a stimulated recall task in order to examine research question 2: “Do BP speakers notice their errors with se through stimulated recall?” According to Gass and Mackey (2000), the assump-tions of stimulated recall are that internal processes can be observed much in the same way as external events and that participants have access to and can verbalize their internal thought processes. Thus, the goal of the stimulated recall was to ac-cess the participants’ internal processes to ascertain the salience of errors with se. For this project, the research design was to let the participants stop the tape them-selves upon identification of errors; the researcher did not stop the tape at any time or give suggestions about possible errors. The participants’ instructions were simply to stop the tape and comment on any error that was heard. This concept is discussed further in the results section of the paper.

For the data collection procedure, the task was first explained to the partici-pants in the following manner: “You are going to narrate the story that these pic-tures show. Please take a few minutes to look over the pictures and the vocabulary list.10 When you are ready to start, the tape recorder will be started.” Since the actual lexical items were not the point of interest, translations of key vocabulary terms were given to alleviate the participants’ anxiety while narrating the story. The participants were instructed to narrate the story of the pictures, being care-ful not to skip any of the pages. Before the narration task started, the participants had up to five minutes to look over the book and vocabulary and to ask ques-tions if necessary. When the participants were ready, they narrated the story while the investigator was taping, and when they were finished narrating the story, a stimulated recall task was performed. The tape was rewound and the participants listened to themselves narrating the story with the instructions to stop the tape and comment any time that they heard any kind of error. The participants were not aware that the specific grammatical feature under scrutiny was se; thus, they were not given specific instructions to listen for se. The participants were told that


382 Amy S. Thompson

they could comment in whichever language they felt more comfortable, Spanish or Portuguese. After the interview was over, the participants filled out a back-ground questionnaire. In addition to the L1 BP speaker data, narratives from six L1 Spanish speakers (NSs) were collected for comparative purposes. Three of these native speakers were from Spain, and three were from Argentina.

4. Results

4.1 Results of the quantitative analysis

For the analysis of the data, the interviews were first transcribed. Almost all of the transcripts were between 250–350 words; one transcript was 1000 words. Using the transcripts, the investigator analyzed three categories of se: those instances of correct use, those instances of omission in obligatory context, and those instances of overgeneralization.11 These results were checked by a second rater, specializing in Spanish applied linguistics, and then verified a third time by a native speaker of Spanish, whose research is in the area of Spanish linguistics.

Transcripts for all participants (N = 18) were first analyzed for the use of se. Next, in order to comparatively examine the usage patterns of se for the lowest and highest level learners, the transcripts of those learners in the second semester of Spanish (N = 9) and the transcripts of those participants in the fifth, sixth, and seventh semesters of Spanish (N = 6) were analyzed separately. The raw numbers indicate a similar trend among the groups; however, the number of participants and tokens in this study are too low to perform any quantitative statistics with the data, and any statistical results would be misleading (see Field, 2005, and Larson-Hall, 2010, for further information on this topic). Therefore, first the data will be present-ed as an overview of the usage of se in the three aforementioned categories: correct usage, omission in obligatory context, and overgeneralization. Then, the specific tokens per participant will be presented to show the usage of se in more detail.

Because this is not a study about L1 Spanish speaker norms with se, the results of the native speaker narratives will not be discussed in detail. Table 2 below is a summary of the uses of se by L1 Spanish speaker and by category. Native speakers 1–3 are from Spain, and native speakers 4–6 are from Argentina.

As can be seen from the above table, the L1 Spanish speakers used all cat-egories of se to varying degrees, with the exception of the passive category. The most frequent uses of se were in the reflexive/reciprocal and aspectual categories, although there was also frequent uses in the decausative, intransitive-dynamic, and inherent/lexical categories. There were only 3 total instances of se in the im-personal category. It is important to note that the NS use of se in all categories was



variable; thus, total opportunities for use of this clitic vary depending on the indi-vidual style of the speaker. In other words, there is not a specific number of obliga-tory contexts for se with this data elicitation technique because each speaker will narrate the story differently. One of the advantages of using a semi-structured nar-ration task, such as the storybook narration, is the richness of the data acquired. One of the disadvantages is that the researcher has less control over language use, and thus, cannot stipulate something like the total number of times se should be used while narrating the story.

For the L1 BP speakers, Table 3 below shows a summary of the use of se in the interlanguage of the participants at the beginning level (level 2) as well as at the advanced levels (levels 5–7) to show the descriptive statistics12 of the use of se at the beginning and advanced levels.

As can be seen from Table 3 above, the trends of the use of se between the beginning and the advanced levels is quite similar. Were the sample size larger, a t-test could be performed to illustrate group differences or similarities.

Table 2. L1 Spanish use of seNS1 NS2 NS3 NS4 NS5 NS6 Total

Decausative 2 1 1 2 1 2 9Passive 0 0 0 0 0 0 0Impersonal 0 0 0 2 0 1 3Reflexive/reciprocal 9 5 5 5 8 0 32Intransitive-dynamic 3 0 2 0 5 2 12Aspectual 8 1 1 3 6 4 23Inherent/lexical 1 4 1 1 0 3 10Total 23 11 10 13 20 12 89

Table 3. Se in the interlanguageOverallN=18

2 semestersN=9

5–7 semestersN=6

Correct K=73 (71.5%) K=36 (72%)M=4.00SD=4.12

K=26 (72.2%)M=4.33SD=4.41

Omitted in Obligatory Context K=17 (16.7%) K=8 (16%)M=0.89SD=1.27

K=6 (16.7%)M=1.00SD=0.89

Overgeneralization K=12 (11.8%) K=6 (12%)M=0.56SD=0.73

K=4 (11.1%)M=0.67SD=0.81

Total K=102 K=50 K=36


384 Amy S. Thompson

The following tables illustrate examples in each of the three aforementioned categories. In Table 4 below, the data of the correct uses of se from all 18 partici-pants are presented. As can be noted from the table, the category for which se was used correctly most often was in the inherent/lexical category. There were no uses of se in the impersonal or aspectual categories. The L1 Spanish speakers only had three instances of impersonal se, thus the non-use by the L1 Portuguese speakers is not surprising. However, the aspectual use of se was the second highest frequency category for the L1 Spanish speakers. The charts that follow give the number of tokens (K) for each instance; examples in context will be given in the discussion section of the paper.

As can be noted in Table 5 below, the L1 Portuguese speakers were omitting se in the reflexive/reciprocal category more than in the other categories. There were no obligatory context omissions for the passive, intransitive/dynamic, impersonal, or aspectual categories. In order to facilitate the comparison of the number of to-kens in the ‘correct use’ and ‘omissions in obligatory contexts’ categories, Table 6 below compares the correct uses of se to the omissions of se in obligatory contexts. Because the number of participants and tokens is too low to run quantitative sta-tistics, the frequency data is presented below in Table 7 to illustrate trends both by participant and by level.

The overgeneralization category (inserting se where no se was required) was more difficult to analyze because without directly asking the participants, it is dif-ficult to know if they were conceptualizing the overgeneralized se as being part of the lexical item or as having a grammatical function. Had the participants stopped the tape and commented on the instances of se in the stimulated recall, these dis-tinctions would have been easier to make. However, as will be discussed later in this paper, none of the participants noticed any of their errors of se in the stimu-

Table 4. Categories for correct uses of se — overviewCategory Name ExampleDecausative (K=13) despertarse ‘to wake up’ (K=8), levantarse ‘to get up’ (K=2),

acostarse ‘to go to bed’ (K=1), sentarse ‘to sit down’ (K=2) Passive (K=4) ponerse13 ‘to put on’ (K=1), completarse ‘to complete’ (K=1),

necesitarse ‘to need/require’ (K=1), tratarse ‘to be about’ (K=1)Reflexive/reciprocal (K=6) invitarse ‘to invite oneself ’ (K=1); lavarse ‘to wash’ (K=1); pre-

pararse ‘to prepare’ (K=1);ponerse ‘to put on’ (K=3)Intransitive/dynamic (K=11) irse ‘to go suddenly’ (K=9); salirse ‘to exit suddenly’Inherent/lexical (K=39) quedarse ‘to stay’ (K=29), darse cuenta ‘to realize’ (K=2) acor-

darse de ‘to remember’ (K=4), olvidarse ‘to forget’ (K=2)Total tokens (K=73)



lated recall portion of the data collection. Table 8 below shows all of the instances of the overgeneralizations of se in the transcripts.

Indeed, one of the disadvantages of using a non-intrusive stimulated recall technique is that the participants may or may not comment on the desired er-rors (see Gass and Mackey, 2000, for a complete analysis the use, advantages, and disadvantages of using stimulated recall). Nonetheless, based on the analyses used in Toth (2000) and Zyzik (2006) in conjunction with other data produced by the participants, some deductions about the intent of the learners can be made.

With the evidence at hand, some conclusions are easier to draw than others. One example of this is from the participant (participant 4) who used recordarse ‘to remember’ — overgeneralization. This same participant used olvidarse ‘to forget’ twice in the storybook narrative, and since olvidarse is the antonym of recordarse, it is logical to think that the lexicalized se would function in the same way for both of the words.

The other two examples of possible lexicalized se structures are not as clearly obvious from the language produced by the participants. Participant 14 used lle-garse ‘to arrive,’ which can perhaps be postulated as being modeled after a verb such as quedarse ‘to stay.’ Since they are both verbs that indicate movement (or lack thereof) and location, the learner could have possibly inferred that their argument structures are similar. The other example is percibirse ‘to perceive’ (participant 15), which is perhaps modeled after darse cuenta ‘to realize’. These last two examples are conjectures as there is not strong supporting evidence in the data, nor did the participants comment on these utterances during the stimulated recall session.

Table 5. Categories for se omissions in obligatory contexts — overviewCategory Name ExampleDecausative K=5 despertarse ‘to wake up’ (K=2), levantarse ‘to get up’ (K=1),

acordarse14 (BP) ‘to wake up’ (K=2)Reflexive/reciprocal K=10 ponerse ‘to put on’ (K=7), lavarse ‘to wash oneself ’ (K=2),

limpiarse ‘to clean oneself ’ (K=1)Inherent/lexical K=2 imaginarse ‘to imagine’ (K=1); olvidarse ‘to forget’ (K=1);Total tokens (K=17)

Table 6. Comparison of correct uses and omissions of seCorrect uses of se Omissions of se in obligatory contextsDecausative (K=13) Decausative (K=5)Passive (K=4) Passive (K=0)Reflexive/reciprocal (K=6) Reflexive/reciprocal (K=10)Intransitive/dynamic (K=11) Intransitive/dynamic (K=0)Inherent/lexical (K=39) Inherent/lexical (K=2)


386 Amy S. Thompson

Table 7. Categories for correct uses and omissions in obligatory contexts of seLevel Speaker Correct uses Omissions in obligatorycontexts2 17 N/A Decausative (acordarse, [BP] K=1)2 16 Passive (ponerse, K=1)

Reflexive/reciprocal (invitarse, K=1)Reflexive/reciprocal (ponerse K=1)

2 12 Inherent/lexical (quedarse, K=4) N/A2 11 Decausative (despertarse, K=1)

Reflexive/reciprocal (lavarse, K=1)Intransitive/dynamic (irse, K=1)

2 14 Decausative (despertarse, K=1)Passive (completarse, K=1), Inherent/lexical (quedarse, K=1)

N/A

2 10 Intransitive/dynamic (irse, K=1) Inherent/lexical (quedarse, K=2)

Decausative (despertarse, K=1)

2 7 Decausative (sentarse, K=1) Inherent/lexi-cal (quedarse, K=3; acordarse de, K=4)

N/A

2 1 N/A Reflexive/reciprocal (ponerse, K=4)2 3 Decausative (sentarse, K=1) Intransitive/

dynamic (irse, K=1)Inherent/lexical (quedarse, K=8; darse cuenta, K=3)

Decausative (despertarse, K=1; levantarse, K=1)Reflexive/recipro-cal (lavarse, K=1)

3 6 Reflexive/reciprocal (prepararse, K=1)Inherent/lexical (quedarse, K=1)

N/A

3 13 Decausative (despertarse, K=1; acostarse, K=1)Inherent/lexical (quedarse, K=3)

Reflexive/reciprocal (limpiarse, K=1; ponerse, K=1)

4 15 Decausative (despertarse, K=1)Inherent/lexical (quedarse, K=3)

Reflexive/reciprocal (ponerse, K=1)

5 18 Decausative (levantarse, K=1)Passive (tratarse, K=1)Reflexive/reciprocal (ponerse, K=1)Inherent/lexical (quedarse, K=4)

N/A

5 4 Inherent/lexical (olvidarse, K=2) Decausative (acordarse, [BP] K=1)Inherent/lexical (olvidarse, K= 1)

5 2 Decausative (despertarse, K=1)Passive (necesitarse, K=1)


7 9 Decausative (despertarse, K=1; levantarse, K=1)Reflexive/reciprocal (ponerse, K=2)Intransitive/dynamic (irse, K=6; salirse, K=2)

N/A

7 8 N/A Reflexive/reciprocal (lavarse, K=1; ponerse, K=1)

7 5 Decausative (despertarse, K=2)Inherent/lexical (darse cuenta, K=1)




Another category of verbs that can be successfully analyzed with the data at hand is the one with the verbs that use se in some contexts but not in others. Within the verbs that the participants overgeneralized, there were three examples: ponerse ‘to put on’ (participant 14), volverse ‘to go back’ (participant 4), and irse ‘to go sud-denly’ (participant 12). In these cases, the participants were correct in thinking that the verbs could be used with the clitic se; they were, however, incorrect about the context. Similar learner errors are discussed in Zyzik (2006) and Montrul (2000), and this suggests that they have the lexical items in the interlanguage but do not yet have a complete understanding of the appropriate context in which to use them. One example of this phenomenon is illustrated in a phrase from participant 12:

(22) …va a pegar sus cosas para hacer la receta y coloca los instrumentos para que todo se va bien.

‘She is going to get her things to make the recipe, and she gets the utensils so that everything goes well.’

In Spanish, the verb irse exists in the intransitive/dynamic sense with the meaning ‘to go somewhere quickly.’ In this case, the learner overgeneralized the se from this intransitive/dynamic structure.

Three more of the examples of overgeneralization can be attributed to nega-tive transfer from the L1 (BP). Two of the participants used the verb pasarse when describing the backdrop of the story (participants 6 and 17), which is possible to do in BP, but not in Spanish. One example is given for illustrative purposes, and in the following example, the Spanish utterance from participant 17 is followed by both Portuguese and English glosses:

(23) La historia se pasa en una casita en una región de nieve. (Overgeneralization) A história se passa em um cainha em uma região de neve. (Correct in BP)

Table 8. Overgeneralizations of seExamplespasarse ‘to pass’ (K=2) — participants 17 and 6ponerse ‘to put on’ (K=1) — participant 14llegarse ‘to arrive’ (K=1) — participant 14depararse (BP) ‘to come across’ (K=1) — participant 3darse ‘to give’ (K=1) — participant 6percibirse ‘to perceive’ (K=1) — participant 15recordarse ‘to remember’ (K=1) — participant 4volverse ‘to go back’ (K=1) — participant 4haberse estado ‘to have been’ (K=1) — participant 2buscarse ‘to look for’ (K=1) — participant 9irse ‘to go suddenly’ (K=1) — participant 12Total tokens (K=12)


388 Amy S. Thompson

‘The story takes place in a cute house in a snowy region.’

The other example attributed to negative transfer from the L1 is the use of darse ‘to give’. Although some variations of darse exist in Spanish, such as the lexicalized form of darse cuenta ‘to realize’, it cannot exist on its own in Spanish whereas it can in Portuguese. The following is an example from participant 6:

(24) Entonces, se dio hasta allá, y los vecinos le recibieron, le recibió muy bien.(Overgeneralization)

Então, se deu que os vizinhos a receberam, a receberam muito bem. (Correct in BP)

‘So, it happened that her neighbors welcomed her, welcomed her warmly.’

In fact, it can be noted from the above example that the meaning completely changes when se is used with dar in Portuguese. In Spanish, dar means ‘to give’ and darse exists only in a few idiomatic expressions. However, in Portuguese, darse in third person singular form means ‘it happened that.’ Thus, example 24 above is strong evidence for negative L1 transfer being that the participant conjugated darse correctly in Spanish while maintaining the Portuguese meaning.

The last two examples of overgeneralization cannot be categorized based on the information from previous research, L1 transfer, or information from the data. Buscarse ‘to look for’ and haberse estado ‘to have been’ were used by participants 9 and 2 respectively.

(25) a. Antes se buscó una tigela, entonces, después, buscó a la harina… ‘First, she found a bowl, then after that, she found the flour…’ b. Mientras ponía los huevos en la canasta, el gato que se había estado en

casa, pues solo el perro la había acompañado. ‘While putting eggs into the basket, the cat that had been in the house,

so only the dog had accompanied her.’

As can be noted in examples 25a and 25b, neither Spanish nor BP use se with the verbs in question; thus the only explanation for this is that they are forms in the interlanguage of the learners that will eventually be organized into correct gram-matical functions. These examples are prime illustrations of interlanguage as de-fined by Gass and Selinker (2008): “There are also elements in the IL that do not have their origin in either the NL or the TL. These latter are called new forms and are the empirical essence of interlanguage” (p. 14). These examples of the use of se do not exist in Spanish or in BP but have been organized into the language of the learner and will be reorganized upon receiving feedback or explicit instruction.



4.2 Results of the simulated recall

The first point about the results from the stimulated recall is that not a single par-ticipant commented on the use of se. In total, there were 79 comments, but the number of comments does not necessarily coincide with the number of times that the participants stopped the tape. In other words, in some cases, comments about several categories were made at once. The categories for the stimulated recall were as follows: general language use, pronunciation, lexicon, and grammar. The num-ber of comments was calculated based on the total number of times the partici-pants commented on one of these categories. The total number of tokens during the stimulated recall were ‘general language use’ (K=18), ‘pronunciation’ (K=14), ‘lexicon’ (K=29), and ‘grammar’ (K=18). The categorization of ‘general language use’ includes those comments about frequent word repetitions. This category also includes comments about general fluency or quality of the narration with indica-tions of the childlike nature of the speaking or the fact that the narration wasn’t very good. The ‘pronunciation’ category includes those comments that indicated an error of a specific phoneme, or in some cases, an entire word that was mis-pronounced. Several participants also indicated that they thought that they were nasalizing too much, which was also classified as a ‘pronunciation’ comment. The ‘lexicon’ category is for those errors identified as the use of the incorrect word. For many comments in the ‘lexicon’ category, the participant noticed that a Portuguese word was used instead of the Spanish equivalent. There were also cases in which a Spanish word was used, but not the correct Spanish word. The ‘grammar’ category includes comments that indicated something was amiss with the structure of the utterance. The majority of these comments indicated errors in subject-verb agree-ment, gender agreement, and verb tense.

The comments about general language use were as follows:

(26) a. Yo hablo mucho “si.”15

‘I say “si” often.’ b. Eu acho que não foi bem. Eu acho que deveria ter sido bem melhor, né? ‘I don’t think it was very good. I think it should have been much better,

right?’

As for pronunciation, there were comments such as those illustrated in 27a and 27b:

(27) a. Creo que mi nasalización es muy fuerte. ‘I think I’m nasalizing too much.’ b. Estaban. La pronunciación. ‘They were. Pronunciation.’


390 Amy S. Thompson

Most of the comments that surfaced during the stimulated recall were about lexi-cal items, many of which were some variation of “I think that was a Portuguese word.” Some examples of such comments are illustrated in 28a and 28b:

(28) a. Falei forma que é em português. ‘I said “forma,” which is in Portuguese.’ b. No es tigela es recipiente. Otro error. ‘It’s not tigela (‘bowl’-Portuguese), it’s recipiente (‘bowl’-Spanish).’

Though grammatical comments were not the most prolific, they are some of the most insightful, especially considering the topic at hand. These comments about the grammar show that these students do possess a certain metalinguistic knowl-edge, although it did not emerge with regards to se. The following are some ex-amples of such comments:

(29) a. Yo hablé quise. No es quise. Quiso. ‘I said I wanted. It isn’t I wanted. She wanted.’ b. Yo he corregido. Es femenino, la leche. ‘I corrected myself. Milk is feminine.’ c. Un error de concordancia. Faltan los huevos. ‘There is an agreement error. Faltan should agree with what follows it.’

As shown by the stimulated recall task, the participants were indeed noticing er-rors, and some were making comments about their errors using metalanguage. Despite this noticing of errors, none of the participants noticed their errors with se. Possible reasons for this will be discussed below.

5. Discussion and conclusion

The first research question is the following: “Which categories of se are produced by L1 BP speakers learning Spanish?” From the data analysis presented above, it can be seen the L1 BP speakers were not using se in a way that could be en-tirely predicated by positive L1 transfer. Referring back to Table 6, which com-pared the correct and incorrect uses of se, it was predicted that, like the L1 Turkish speakers in Montrul (2000), the L1 Portuguese speakers would perform well in the functions of se that were similar in Portuguese and Spanish. The participants did perform well in the inherent/lexical category, which was anticipated since this category exists in both languages. Interestingly, however, the participants also per-formed well in the decausative category, even though this category is not common in Brazilian Portuguese. In addition, the participants had more errors than correct forms in the reflexive/reciprocal category.



The results of the reflexive/reciprocal category are not surprising, considering the subtle differences in Spanish and Portuguese for the use of se with such verbs. As discussed in the literature review, with reflexive verbs in Spanish, se is obliga-tory regardless of whether there is an object or not. In Portuguese, however, if an object follows the verb, the clitic is dropped. In the current study, every error in the reflexive/reciprocal category was when an object followed the verb.

(30) a. Maria, eh, pone el delantal. (Participant 1) ‘Maria, um, puts on her apron.’ b. … lava su rostro, pone su delantal y va a buscar en la estantería un libro

de recetas.(Participant 8) ‘She washes her face, puts on her apron, and goes to the bookshelf to get

a cookbook.’

This error with se in the reflexive/reciprocal category was also not level-dependent. Example 30a is from a level 2 student, and example 30b is from a level 7 student. Because the structure is very similar in Spanish and Portuguese, many students are not realizing the subtle difference in usage. However, there are also examples from the data of evidence of successful acquisition of the reflexive/reciprocal function of se, such as in the following sentence by participant 9 in the seventh semester of Spanish:

(31) Entones, se levantó, se fue a la cocina, se puse el delantal, pero no sabía como hacer los panqueques.

‘So, she got up, went to the kitchen, put on an apron, but didn’t know how to make pancakes.’

In fact, the use of the verb poner is one of the most noteworthy lexical items in this data set. As mentioned above, in Spanish, the verb poner is reflexive when it is used in the sense of ‘to put something on oneself.’

(32) Ella se pone el delantal. ‘She puts on her apron.’

In BP, the equivalent of poner is pôr and this verb is not reflexive when followed by a direct object.

(33) Ela põe o avental ‘She puts on her apron.’

However, “pôr” is used with se in the decausative manner in Portuguese, which is the same structure as Spanish.

(34) a. O sol se põe. (Portuguese) b. El sol se pone. (Spanish) ‘The sun sets.’


392 Amy S. Thompson

In the narration from the Portuguese speakers, there was only one person out of the eighteen that used ponerse correctly in Spanish (participant 9, 7th semester of Spanish); all the others used poner without the se. However, there were successful uses of decausative structures as shown in example 35.

(35) Ella se despertó temprano. (Participant 14) ‘She woke up early.’

From these examples, it would seem that the Portuguese speakers have more trou-ble with those verbs for which se can be used in both Spanish and Portuguese, but with subtle differences, which is consistent with the literature on cross-linguistic influence (see De Angelis, 2007, for an overview of this topic).This issue is also dis-cussed in Gass and Selinker (2008) with the idea of the ‘Hierarchy of difficulty’ for language learning. This idea was originally discussed in Lado (1957) and is used to analyze the language learning process based on the languages that the learners already know. There are five ‘difficulty’ levels in this hierarchy; starting with the most difficult, they are ‘differentiation,’ ‘new category,’ ‘absent category,’ ‘coalesc-ing,’ and ‘correspondence.’ The categories that pertain to the present study are dif-ferentiation and correspondence. ‘Differentiation’ is when the L1 has one form and the L2 has two forms, such as the case of an L1 English speaker learning Spanish and having to learn the difference between the verbs conocer and saber. The ‘cor-respondence’ category is when there is a one-to-one correlation with the forms in the L1 and the L2, such as the idea of plurality for an L1 English speaker learning Spanish (see Gass&Selinker, 2008, pp. 100–101 for further details). Regarding the use of pôr vs. poner for these participants, it is an unusual combination of the ‘dif-ferentiation’ and ‘correspondence’ categories in the sense that there is one-to-one correspondence for some uses of the verb (the decausative uses), but that they have to differentiate the use of this verb when used in the reflexive sense. Although this is a slightly different interpretation of the ‘differentiation’ category (differen-tiation between use and non-use, as opposed to the differentiation between lexical items), this interpretation of the ‘Hierarchy of difficulty’ explains why the learners in this case are having problems using these verbs correctly.

As seen in the above tables, the category for which the participants used se the most was in the inherent/lexical category. This can partly be explained by the fre-quent use of ficar (literally “to stay” with additional figurative uses) in Portuguese which the participants translated directly into the Spanish quedarse (also liter-ally “to stay” with additional figurative uses).Although the translation is fairly close, there are some slight usage differences between ficar and quedarse. Thus, even though se was used appropriately with the verb, the use of quedarse by the Portuguese speakers was not the same as natural L1 Spanish speech. For example, in Portuguese, the sentence as in example 36 is perfectly natural.



(36) Ela fica triste. ‘She is sad.’

However, the Spanish equivalent is as in example 37.

(37) Ella está triste. ‘She is sad.’

This sentence in Spanish does not contain the verb quedarse, but the Portuguese sentence does contain the verb ficar. Many of the Portuguese speakers produced Spanish sentences such as 38a and 38b:

(38) a. Y se quedó muy contenta. (Participant 14) ‘And she was very happy.’ b. …los animales se queden en casa. (Participant 3) ‘…the animals stay at home.’

In fact, there is direct evidence of this negative L1 transfer from BP to Spanish in the utterance of participant 12:

(39) Entonces, ela fica, ela se queda muy espantada. ‘So, she is [BP], she is [SP] very startled.’

This is evidence for positive transfer from Portuguese to Spanish (ficar to que-darse), but the use of the lexical item is not exactly accurate. In other words, the L1 Portuguese speakers were transferring their L1 Portuguese knowledge to their L2 Spanish output, but this transfer did not always produce native-like speech in Spanish, even with the correct use of se in quedarse. Thus, in the categorizations of se some uses were technically correct while not entirely native-like. However, there was also evidence in the data of correct uses of lexicalized se, even from the same participants who have misinterpreted the subtle difference between ficar and quedarse.

(40) …pero, ella se da cuenta que falta otro ingrediente. (Participant 3) ‘…but she realizes that she is missing another ingredient.’

Thus, the data indicate that successful acquisition of lexicalized se has indeed oc-curred in some instances.

There is also evidence of monitoring16 in the data, which is an important pro-cess for SLA researchers to analyze in order to understand the language learn-ing processes that second language learners undergo (Gass & Selinker, 2008). Participant 13 self-corrects, which is evidence of monitoring, for this case, of the use of se in the decausative sense.


394 Amy S. Thompson

(41) Entonces, ela un dia, ela despertó, se despertó, si, y pensó en hacer unas panquecas.

‘So, one day she woke up [no se], she wokeup [with se] and thought about making pancakes.’

The utterance illustrates that the participants have learned to use se in their Spanish speech, and also that using se is not automatized for the participants in this stage of their interlanguage development. Although the use of clitics in modern spoken BP is declining (Scherre, 2005), BP speakers have been exposed to the idea of learn-ing clitics in the L1 through formal classroom education (Kato et al., 2009); thus, learning how to use clitics in an L2 is not a novel concept. It is also the case that because there are some overlapping categories for the use of se in BP and Spanish, the participants were able to successfully learn how to use se in many instances, which are parallel to the results in Montrul (2000) and Montrul et al. (2011).

The second research question was “Do Portuguese speakers notice their er-rors with se through stimulated recall?” For this project, the research design was to let the participants stop the tape themselves upon identification of errors; the researcher did not stop the tape at any time or give suggestions about possible errors. The participants’ instructions were simply to stop the tape and comment on any error that was heard. Did the participants notice their errors with se? The answer is a resounding “No.” While the participants did notice other errors, they did not notice any of their errors with se. Perhaps this is due to a lack of explicit instruction for this rather non-salient feature of Spanish, and it could be posited that more explicit attention needs to be brought to this grammatical feature before successful acquisition can take place. As previously stated in the literature review, se is an extremely difficult grammatical feature for L2 speakers of Spanish (Zyzik, 2006), perhaps because of its lack of salience, or perhaps because of its complicated use system. Schmidt’s (1990) Noticing Hypothesis states that in order for learners to learn part of a new language, they first have to be able to notice that specific structure and how it is used. This sentiment is echoed in Toth (2000), who states that when learners don’t notice all of the features in the input/data, they are likely to make incorrect hypotheses about correct language use, which could lead to in-accurate utterances. Because of the participants’ lack of commentary regarding er-rors with se, it cannot be determined whether they lack explicit knowledge of some facets of this specific linguistic feature or whether in fact, the lack of commentary is due to the lack of salience of se.

What errors did the participants notice? Other than very general com-ments, the participants noticed errors in pronunciation (K=14), lexicon (K=29), and grammar (K=18). Most of the grammar comments were items such as gen-der agreement and subject-verb agreement. Most of the lexical error comments



were regarding an incorrect word choice, most commonly, lexical transfer from Portuguese. An interesting point of discussion is the commentary on the perceived errors in pronunciation, when, in fact, the “error” did not impede comprehension. The fact that the participants noticed such errors adds evidence to the fact that both language learners and non-language learners are overly concerned with a perceivable non-native-like accent. In fact, many language learners strive for the untenable native speaker pronunciation when, in fact, they should be concerned with other features of their interlanguage that impede comprehension (see Davies, 2003, for an in-depth discussion of this topic).

As argued by both Montrulet al. (2011) and Rothman (2011), transfer is facili-tated between those languages for which there are typological similarities. Spanish and Portuguese are typologically similar languages, thus, some facilitation of lin-guistic transfer is expected; however, as evidenced in the data of this study, ty-pological similarity between languages does not guarantee error-free acquisition. In fact, se has been shown to be problematic for learners of Spanish from the re-sults of the current study as well as results from previous studies (Montrul, 2000; Montrul et al., 2011; Toth, 2000; Zyzik, 2004; 2006).

As seen in Table 5, the participants were making the most omissions in oblig-atory contexts in the reflexive/reciprocal category. Upon closer analysis, these learners were directly transferring the BP structure of reflexive verbs (omission of se in the presence of a direct object) into their Spanish utterances, which was an error that existed across proficiency levels. The participants’ errors with se in conjunction with the fact that not one participant commented on these errors of se during the stimulated recall portion of the study, indicates the lack of attention that the learners place on this clitic. Se is not a salient grammatical form and is a feature that would benefit from focus on form in the classroom, as indicated by the criteria from Harley (1993); thus, negative evidence is needed to incite noticing and ultimate attainment as Toth (2000) found. Although se is, in fact, taught in the Spanish classes of the participants in the current study, it is clear that not enough awareness raising takes place with regards to this grammatical feature. The results from this study indicate that even though the L1 BP speakers have an advantage in learning Spanish because of the typological similarity between the languages, these participants still lack complete understanding of se, especially when the uses in Spanish and Portuguese are similar, but not identical. Would these Portuguese speakers produce this grammatical structure with greater accuracy after having more explicit instruction about the nuances of this clitic? The clitic se is truly a complicated grammatical form, and additional work is needed to find the balance of implicit and explicit instruction needed for the successful acquisition of this structure in Spanish.


396 Amy S. Thompson

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Eve Zyzik for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. Also, thank you to my native speaker informants for Portuguese, Célia Davies, Flávia de Deus Martins, and Semiramis Sampaio, as well as my Spanish native speaker informant, Sonia Ramírez Wohlmuth. Additionally, the two anonymous reviewers provided valuable feedback that substantially im-proved manuscript. All remaining errors are my own.

Notes

1. Montrul (2000) studied the acquisition of se with both L1 English and L1Turkish speakers.

2. An in-depth discussion of the colloquial uses of the clitic se in Spanish and Portuguese is beyond the scope of this paper, although further references are provided for those who would like more information on the subject. For example, Azevedo (1980) provides a thorough dis-cussion of the comparison of passive sentences in English and Portuguese, and Chapter 3 in Scherre (2005) offers an in-depth discussion of se in modern BP. Several other references are listed within the text as well as on the references page.

3. The verb acordar can be used without se to mean ‘to agree upon.’

4. See Veldre & Gerner, 2005, for an in-depth discussion of this issue; see also Azevedo (1980) for an in-depth discussion of passive sentences in English and Portuguese.

5. According to Scherre (2005), many BP speakers use singular verbs in such constructions: “Escreve-se cartas longas.”

6. The use of uno as the subject is an increasingly popular alternative to expressing impersonal ideas, such as in the sentence Uno come bien aquí ‘One eats well here’. See Quesada (1997) and Suñer (1976) for more details on this topic.

7. In spoken Brazilian Portuguese, se is oftentimes omitted, and with a syntactic alternative, it is possible to convey the same idea. For example, in a sentence with an indeterminate semantic actor, the use of se might be replaced with infinitives, or even with the use of você in Brazilian Portuguese, a construction similar to the impersonal you in English, as well as to the non-spe-cific tú in Spanish.

8. See Montrul (2000) and Lewis (1967) for a more in depth discussion of Turkish clitics.

9. There were no other clitics of any kind elicitied from this data collection technique, including other reflexive pronouns, such as te, me, nos, etc.

10. The vocabulary provided consisted of nouns and verbs. The verbs were presented in the infinitive, and the nouns appeared without the articles. No verbs with se were presented to the participants. The following is a list of the vocabulary in the form and order that they were pre-sented to the participants: delantal, sacar, estante, receta, ingredientes, harina, recipiente, echar, gallinero, gallinas, canasta, ordeñar la vaca, establo, revolver, mantequilla, jarabe, olor.



11. Overgeneralization errors are those that occur when participants apply “intransitive verbs to transitive frames in order to achieve a causative meaning” (Zyzik, 2006, p. 445). In other words, this is when the participants insert se in contexts that do not require se.

12. N = number of participants; K = number of tokens; M = mean; SD = standard deviation

13. Ponerse is more commonly used as a reflexive, but in this case, jarabe para se poner sobre los panquecas, it is used in a passive sense.

14. Acordarse de in Spanish means ‘to remember.’ In BP, acordar means ‘to wake up.’ Two par-ticipants used the BP word acordar for the Spanish meaning of despertarse ‘to wake up,’ which requires se.

15. Note that these are non-native speakers of Spanish, so even though many of them chose to do the stimulated recall in Spanish, their comments contain non-native-like structures.

16. Monitoring (a cognitive process) should not be confused with Krashen’s Monitor Theory. See Gass & Selinker (2008) for more information on this topic.

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Author’s address

Amy S. ThompsonAssistant Professor of Applied LinguisticsUniversity of South FloridaDepartment of World Languages4202 E. Fowler AvenueCPR 419Tampa, Florida 33620

[email protected]

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Se in the interlanguage of Portuguese speakers. Spanish in Context

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