Modal and Discourse Marking in L1 & L2 Spanish: A Comparative Analysis of Oral Narratives

• Published in: Corpus pragmatics : international journal of corpus linguistics and pragmatics 2021-03, Vol.5 (1), p.63-94
• Main Authors: Gras, Pedro, Galiana, Patricia, Rosado, Elisa
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Computational Linguistics; Computer Appl. in Arts and Humanities; Linguistics; Original Paper; Pragmatics; Semantics; Social Sciences
• ISSN: 2509-9507; 2509-9515
• DOI: 10.1007/s41701-020-00081-1

This study analyzes the use of discourse and modal markers by learners of Spanish as a foreign language (FL) in unplanned oral narratives. To do this, we compared two different corpora: narratives produced by native speakers and those produced by intermediate (B2) learners of Spanish (L1 Dutch). Following a functional approach to modal and discourse marking (Cuenca in The rise of modern genomics, Eumo, Vic, 2006; Cuenca, in Discourse markers and modal particles. Categorization and description, 2013), we identified and classified markers according to three macro-functions (propositional, structural, and modal). On the one hand, the total frequency of markers as well as the frequencies of each function were compared in native and learner production. On the other hand, we considered coincidence and divergence in the use of all markers so that forms produced only by native speakers, forms produced only by learners, and forms equally used by both populations are identified. Results show that in the case of markers with a Propositional function, FL learners’ production very much resembles that of native speakers of Spanish. However, for Structural and Modal functions, non-native speakers do not seem to have acquired/incorporated markers that are more specific to informal registers, failing to assign the appropriate discursive values to sentence-level adverbs and connectors ( sí `yes’, o ‘or’), or resorting to paraphrase strategies (e.g. cómo decir , cómo se dice ‘how do you say’). Our results indicate the need to include more instances of informal input in the FL classroom.