UVALAL - Artículos de revista https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/32620 2026-04-11T08:55:49Z 2026-04-11T08:55:49Z Álvarez de la Fuente, María Esther Fernández Fuertes, Raquel https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/82681 2026-02-10T20:01:03Z 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z

Natural translation or natural interpreting (NI) – performed by bilingual speakers without formal training – has received little attention in bilingualism studies, as it is often unfairly considered a byproduct of linguistic competence development (e.g., Harris, 1980a, 1980b, 2013; Álvarez de la Fuente & Fernández Fuertes, 2015, 2024; Hornáčková Klapicová, 2021; Álvarez de la Fuente et al., 2019). Similarly, the field of translation has largely dismissed it, regarding it as non-professional and rudimentary (see Álvarez de la Fuente & Fernández Fuertes, 2012a for a review). However, our paper presents a theoretical proposal that frames NI as a language-contact phenomenon playing an essential role not only in L1 bilingualism studies but also in those of L2 bilingualism. In fact, the way bilingual children acquire their two languages simultaneously in natural and family contexts has been recently drawn upon to offer a more accurate model for language production in fields such as language teaching (e.g., Marsh, 2000; Leonardi, 2010; Sneddon, 2012; García, 2013; Laviosa, 2019; González-Davies, 2020). The authenticity of family interactions presented in such bilingual acquisition contexts seems to provide better insights for the study of both language acquisition and teaching because they reflect how language naturally evolves. Therefore, our goal is to highlight that L1 NI studies can be extended to an L2 context. In this spirit, we offer an analysis of L2 NI cases following the framework of L1 NI to showcase the universality of NI and its pervasiveness in language interactions, whether in L1 or L2, within family or school settings.

2025-01-01T00:00:00Z Fernández Fuertes, Raquel Álvarez de la Fuente, María Esther Mujcinovic, Sonja Gómez Carrero, Tamara https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/78263 2025-10-03T08:32:53Z 2022-01-01T00:00:00Z

Cada vez hay más personas bilingües y multilingües en el mundo. Entre el 60 y el 70 % de la población mundial habla más de una lengua, un porcentaje que llega hasta el 90 % en el caso de África. El contacto de lenguas es una constante en nuestros días, ya sea entre dos lenguas maternas o entre una lengua materna y una lengua extranjera. Estudios como los que llevamos a cabo en nuestro laboratorio, el UVALAL, tratan de dar respuesta a preguntas claves sobre este contacto. ¿En qué contextos se produce este contacto? ¿Qué consecuencias tiene para el hablante bilingüe? ¿Cómo puede el cerebro bilingüe procesar las dos lenguas? ¿Procesan de manera diferente las dos lenguas los individuos bilingües dependiendo de qué tipo de bilingües sean? Al tratarse de un fenómeno tan extendido, abundan las investigaciones científicas que buscan superar los mitos que han existido acerca del bilingüismo.

2022-01-01T00:00:00Z Mañas Navarrete, Iban Rosado Villegas, Elisa Mujcinovic, Sonja Fullana Rivera, Natalia https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/68736 2024-07-15T19:01:02Z 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z

The Imperfect/Preterite aspectual contrast is one of the most studied topics in Spanish as a second language research. However, there are few works focused on describing the acquisition of modal uses of the Imperfect by L2 speakers. This paper investigates the L1 Russian L2 Spanish speakers’ mastery of politeness, evidential and nonfactual modal values of the Imperfect. Based on a Timed Acceptability Judgments Task (TAJT), this study examines the degree of acceptability of Imperfect forms in modal contexts in three groups of advanced level L2 Spanish learners. The results show that only the Imperfect of politeness achieves acceptance rates similar to those of native speakers at the most advanced levels of proficiency. The high degree of lexicalization of some imperfect forms, which function as pragmatic routines in certain communicative situations, is alleged to facilitate this tendency. In contrast, the evidential and nonfactual Imperfect forms present greater challenges for the L2 Spanish speakers. The results of our study indicate that (i) the imperfect forms are not recognized as legitimate alternatives for marking evidentiality and nonfactuality and (ii) reflect a partial form-function mapping of learners’ knowledge of the Imperfect and its associated values

2024-01-01T00:00:00Z Gómez Carrero, Tamara Ogneva, Anastasiia https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/67418 2024-05-08T19:02:05Z 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z

This study addresses the acquisition of second language (L2) Spanish grammatical gender by native speakers of two typologically different languages: English (n = 39) and Russian (n = 37). We aim to explore if the presence or absence of gender features in the first language (L1) influences the acquisition of Spanish grammatical gender. Participants completed an acceptability judgment task consisting of 40 sentences with grammatical and ungrammatical Spanish Determiner Phrases (DPs). They included masculine and feminine Ns (Nouns) with transparent or opaque endings. Our findings show that (1) both groups are sensitive to gender non-matching structures, although L1 Russian speakers gave the lowest scores to ungrammatical structures in Spanish; (2) higher rating scores to masculine matching DPs point to the use of masculine as default by both L2 groups; (3) Ns with transparent endings act as cues for L2 Spanish learners, since both groups of participants rated the non-matching DPs with transparent Ns more accurately than those with opaque Ns. Therefore, our findings suggest that gender in L2 Spanish can be acquired regardless of the presence or the absence of these grammatical property in the L1, although its presence in the L1 seems to accelerate this process.

2024-01-01T00:00:00Z Fernández Fuertes, Raquel Gómez Carrero, Tamara Liceras, Juana M. https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/66773 2024-03-18T20:06:00Z 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z

Codeswitching has been used as a tool to investigate how the properties of the two language systems interact in the bilingual mind with relatively few studies investigating bilingual children. We target two groups of L1-Spanish–L2-English children in Spain to address language activation and language inhibition in the processing of codeswitching between a determiner (DET) and a noun (N). We investigate how the mental representation of the formal features involved is responsible for the sensitivity to grammatical gender, which in turn affects how bilinguals’ language activation and inhibition processes are at play and shape processing. We target both the directionality of the switch (English-DET–Spanish-N vs. Spanish-DET–English-N) and the type of implicit gender agreement mechanism (in the case of Spanish-DET–English-N switches) by using offline acceptability judgment data and eyetracking during reading data. Results suggest lower processing costs of English DET switches and higher ones of non-congruent Spanish DET switches. We interpret the preference for classifying the non-gendered Ns along the lines of the gendered Ns in the gendered language as evidence for the integrated representation hypothesis which states that both Ns depicting the same concept are connected in the mind of the bilingual.

2024-01-01T00:00:00Z Álvarez de la Fuente, María Esther Fernández Fuertes, Raquel https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/64524 2024-01-15T20:01:38Z 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z

Bilingual children can perform natural interpreting in two different spontaneous settings, i.e., at home when acquiring their two languages and when practicing language brokering. In both cases, as natural interpreters and as child brokers, bilingual children can act as interpreters between two monolingual adults, although the scenario in which they interpret (domestic versus non-domestic settings, respectively) and the goal (raising children bilingually versus mediating for their family, respectively) may differ. Recently, some scholars have revealed how negatively or positively child brokers may see their role as family-society mediators. Likewise, natural interpreters may show positive or negative attitudes towards interpreting, and these may vary as they grow up as bilinguals. In order to observe how bilingual children respond to interpreting as they develop linguistically, experimental data from CHILDES involving a pair or twins across three elicited interpreting sessions were used (i.e., ages 4;6, 5;05, 6;03). The results show that both children translate efficiently and mainly when required to do so, providing predominantly simplified translations in their first experience and later an equal proportion of simplified and literal translations. To interpret these results, some external variables associated with experimental conditions (e.g., the aim behind interpreting; the interlocutors’ needs and roles; the duration of the sessions) are also taken into consideration which help characterize how natural interpreters face natural interpreting.

2024-01-01T00:00:00Z Álvarez de la Fuente, María Esther Fernández Fuertes, Raquel https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/58620 2023-03-16T14:50:25Z 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z

This paper investigates two of the most widely analyzed universals in translation research, namely simplification and explicitation. We examine the oral production of bilingual children with different language pairs as available in the CHILDES project (MacWhinney 2000) (i.e. the FerFuLice, Ticio, Deuchar, Vila, Genesee and Pérez-Bazán corpora) as well as in other compilation forms (i.e. Ronjat 1913; Leopold 1939-1949; Swain 1972; Lanza 1988, 1997, 2001; and Cossato 2008). We address two main issues: whether instances of simplification and explicitation appear in the production of non-instructed interpreters and, if so, how their occurrence relates to the type of data (i.e. spontaneous or experimental) and the language pair involved. The results show that children acquiring two first languages often translate and use simplification and explicitation at varying degrees irrespective of the language pair. We conclude that the analysis of acquisition data can contribute to shed light on the nature of these translation universals.

2015-01-01T00:00:00Z Liceras, Juana M. Spradlin, K. Todd Fernández Fuertes, Raquel https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/57478 2022-11-25T20:02:11Z 2005-01-01T00:00:00Z

We have argued that the grammatical features spell-out hypothesis (GFSH) (Liceras, Spradlin, Perales, Fernández, & Álvarez, 2003; Spradlin, Liceras & Fernández, 2003a) accounts for the functional-lexical mixing patterns that prevail in the case of Determiner Phrases produced by bilingual (English-Spanish) children. This hypothesis (Liceras, 2002; Spradlin, Liceras & Fernández, 2003b) states that in the process of activating the features of the two grammars, the child, who will rely on the two lexicons, will make codemixing choices which will favor the functional categories containing the largest array of uninterpretable features (Chomsky, 1998, 1999). This implies that in the case of English/ Spanish child acquisition data, mixed utterances such as el book (Spanish Determiner + English Noun) will prevail over mixed utterances such as the libro (English Determiner + Spanish Noun). Thus, in the process of acquisition, children pay special attention to the visible morpho-phonological triggers which lead to the activation of abstract formal features.

2005-01-01T00:00:00Z Fernández Fuertes, Raquel Gómez Garzaran, Eduardo Mujcinovic, Sonja Mañas Navarrete, Iban https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/57150 2025-01-29T13:50:59Z 2022-01-01T00:00:00Z

The study focuses on the interaction between length of exposure and instruction in the L2 English acquisition process of L1 Spanish school children. Two target structures involving noun premodification are targeted: noun–noun (NN) compounds and adjective–noun (AN) strings. Four groups of participants have been studied for 3 years: a group that has been exposed to a specifically designed teaching program targeting NN compounds and a group that has received the regular English instruction program which does not address this structure as part of the curriculum. Two age subgroups appear in each case. The longitudinal judgment data elicited show that performance improves in the cooperation between length of exposure and the exposure to the NN instruction program. Furthermore, it is this last issue that actually takes the lead in that the NN instruction program directly impacts on not only NN compounds but also AN strings. This points to instruction being determinant in the L2 learning process; that is, a consciously and carefully directed instruction is proven to be more effective than length of exposure itself. This study on longitudinal experimental data contributes to shed light on the factors involved in instructed L2 acquisition.

2022-01-01T00:00:00Z Sánchez Calderón, Silvia Fernández Fuertes, Raquel https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/55731 2025-03-26T19:10:04Z 2022-01-01T00:00:00Z

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: We examine the acquisition of English active and passive monotransitives by English–Spanish bilingual children. These data are compared to English monolinguals from previous studies. We explore whether bi- and monolinguals show similar onset patterns given the shared grammatical properties of actives in the bilinguals’ two languages, and whether they differ in the onset of passives given the grammatical properties in English (canonical determiner phrase [DP]-movement) and Spanish (canonical DP-movement and se-passives). We also investigate the role played by adult input in child output. Design/methodology/approach: We analyze the spontaneous production data from eight English–Spanish bilinguals (ages: 1;01–6;11), and the adults who interact with them. Data and analysis: We perform a double analysis: (1) the onset of these structures in the spontaneous production of bilinguals to determine whether emergence patterns differ from those of monolinguals and (2) their incidence through language development to focus on production frequency. Findings/conclusions: Bilinguals start producing passives at the age of 3, later than actives that emerge at the age of 2, akin to English monolinguals. This acquisition order effect is also seen in the lower incidence of passives when compared to actives in the two child groups. The distributional properties of the two passive types do not seem to have interfered in the bilinguals’ acquisition of the English passive type, causing delay. These data suggest that the emergence and the incidence of the two constructions in bi- and monolinguals could be explained by the DP-movement maturation and/or adult input effects given the adults’ lower frequency of exposure to passives with respect to actives. Originality: This is the first study that addresses bilingual acquisition data and compares child output to adult input. Significance/implications: It contributes to elucidate how the bilinguals’ two languages interact in the acquisition and incidence of English actives and passives.

2022-01-01T00:00:00Z Sánchez Calderón, Silvia Fernández Fuertes, Raquel https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/42052 2021-06-24T07:30:03Z 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z

This work investigates the acquisition of Spanish dative alternation (DA) in the production of English-Spanish bilingual and Spanish monolingual children. We explore whether a/para-datives and dative clitic doubled (DCLD) structures are syntactically derived from one another or, whether they are different structures. We also examine whether bilinguals follow similar developmental paths to monolinguals in the acquisition of Spanish DA or whether they differ from their peers given the influence from the syntactic status of English DA in their other language. We conduct an analysis of the spontaneous data from nine English-Spanish bilingual and nine Spanish monolingual children, along with the adults that interact with them, as available in CHILDES database (MacWhinney, B. 2000. The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk. 3rd ed. Hillsdale: Erlbaum. Accessed December 10, 2018. http://childes.talkbank.org). Our results reveal that bilinguals begin to produce DCLDs and a/para-datives at an approximately similar age. This suggests a syntactic underived relationship between the two DA structures, akin to that in monolinguals’ data. Nevertheless significant, the bilinguals and the monolinguals show a delay in the onset and a lower incidence in the production of a/para-datives when compared to DCLDs, which seems to be in line with adult input factors. The monolingual-like patterns in the bilinguals’ data point to a lack of crosslinguistic influence from English DA.

2020-01-01T00:00:00Z Gómez Garzaran, Eduardo Fernández Fuertes, Raquel https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/41174 2025-01-29T13:50:46Z 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z

The relative order of constituents within determiner phrases (DP) in which the noun is modified by an adjective (AN) has traditionally been taught in English as an L2 subject in the Spanish context. This is not the case for the same type of phrase in which the N-head is modified by another N (NN). This study aims to assess the impact of direct instruction in English NNs as part of the school curriculum. Acceptability judgement data and production have been elicited from two groups of L1 Spanish-L2 English children living in Spain, one receiving explicit NN instruction and the other following the regular only-AN instruction. Results show an advancement of the instruction group not only in NNs but also in ANs. This has a double implication: that NNs and ANs might share a common morphosyntactic underlying structure and that explicit teaching of grammatical properties that are shared by different structures might result in better attainment.; En el aula de inglés como lengua extranjera en España se enseña el orden relativo de los elementos en sintagmas determinantes (SDet) en los que un adjetivo modifica a un nombre (AN). No ocurre lo mismo con sintagmas de este tipo en los que el nombre núcleo está modificado por otro nombre (NN). En este estudio se evalúa el impacto de la instrucción directa de los compuestos NN como parte integral del currículum. Se obtuvieron datos a partir de pruebas de juicios de aceptabilidad y de producción de dos grupos de escolares con español como primera lengua (L1), residentes en España, que cursaban estudios de inglés como segunda lengua (L2); uno de ellos con instrucción explícita sobre la estructura NN y el otro con instrucción tradicional únicamente sobre la estructura AN. Los resultados revelan mayor avance del grupo con instrucción explícita, no solo en relación con las estructuras NN sino también con las estructuras AN. La implicación es doble: por un lado, las estructuras NN y AN podrían compartir una estructura morfosintáctica subyacente común y, por otro lado, la enseñanza explícita de las propiedades gramaticales compartidas por estructuras diferentes podría mejorar el rendimiento en todas ellas.

2020-01-01T00:00:00Z Fernández Fuertes, Raquel Sánchez Calderón, Silvia https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/40989 2021-06-24T07:30:01Z 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z

This study deals with the syntactic (non-)derivational relationship of English dative alternation (DA) –double object constructions (DOCs) and to/for-datives–, as seen in the spontaneous production of English-Spanish bilinguals when compared to English monolinguals. While a chronological progression and a difference in use between the two English DA constructions could suggest a syntactic-derivational relationship between DOCs and to/for-datives, a fairly similar emergence and a possibly similar rate of use could point to the two constructions not displaying a syntactic-derivational status. We also explore whether English-Spanish bilinguals show divergent developmental paths when compared to English monolinguals. To address these issues, we analyze data from nine English-Spanish bilingual children and twelve English monolingual children, along with the adults interacting with them. The analysis shows that both DA structures emerge at a similar age, which suggests they are not syntactically derived from one another. Despite these differences, the later onset and the lower incidence of to/for-datives could be associated with the case and theta role mediated properties of prepositions as well as with the frequency of exposure to DA in the adults’ speech. As no differences appear between bilinguals and monolinguals, transfer from Spanish does not seem to be an issue.

2020-01-01T00:00:00Z Sánchez Calderón, Silvia Fernández Fuertes, Raquel https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/40903 2024-02-06T07:37:59Z 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z

This study examines whether biological gender differences appear in the early stages of acquisition in the case of English dative alternation (DA) structures (double object constructions (DOCs) and to/for-datives). Girls have been found to show faster syntactic development when compared to boys (Lovas, 2011). In the case of the acquisition of DA, an order in the emergence and in the incidence of English DA would entail a syntactic derivational status between DOCs and to/for-datives with one being the original structure and the other the derived one (Gu, 2010). However, analogous ages of onset and fairly similar frequency rates in the production could suggest the construction of two underived structures. We investigate whether biological gender differences appear in the case of DOCs and to/for-datives. We also investigate whether the exposure to English DA (adult input) results in differences between the girls’ output and the boys’ output. We analyze data from eight monolingual English girls and five monolingual English boys, and the adults that interact with them, as available in CHILDES. Our findings reveal that monolingual girls and monolingual boys pattern closely in the acquisition of the syntactic non-derivational relationship between DOCs and to/for-datives, as seen in their similar emergence. Biological gender differences are not seen either in the acquisition of the additional properties of to/for-datives given their later onset and their lower incidence when compared to DOCs. These production patterns also correlate with the frequency with which these structures are heard in the adult input.

2023-01-01T00:00:00Z Fernández Fuertes, Raquel Gómez Carrero, Tamara Martínez González, Alejandro https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/40412 2021-06-24T07:29:58Z 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z

La alternancia de códigos posee gran potencial para explorar cómo interactúan dos sistemas lingüísticos en la mente del bilingüe. Exploramos esta situación de lenguas en contacto a través de datos de seguimiento ocular de bilingües de español L1 e inglés L2. Dado que las comunidades bilingües inglés-español muestran una clara tendencia a producir alternancia entre determinante y nombre (la window / the ventana), desde un punto de vista formal analizamos la direccionalidad de la alternancia y el tipo de mecanismo de concordancia de género implícita que se produce en el caso del determinante español (la/el window // el/la book). Los resultados muestran que se tardan más en procesar tanto la alternancia con determinante español como la del determinante español sin género analógico. Interpretamos estos resultados a la luz de propuestas formales de representación del género y argumentamos que la gramaticalidad del género en la L1 de los participantes determina los costes de procesamiento en este tipo de alternancia.

2019-01-01T00:00:00Z Sánchez Calderón, Silvia Fernández Fuertes, Raquel https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/39146 2021-06-23T10:13:27Z 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

This paper analyzes the syntactico-semantic factors which trigger Dative shift in English dativizable verbs, i.e. those verbs that allow alternation between double object and prepositional complement constructions. It also focuses on non-dativizable verbs that restrict their subcategorization framework to either double object or prepositional complement constructions. This syntactico-semantic relation between dativizable and nondativizable structures is addressed in acquisition by examining the incidence for the two verb types in a set of English/Spanish 2L1 bilingual twins. Our results show that the syntactic and semantic features that dativizable and non-dativizables present go hand in hand with the age of rst occurrence and the language development of the participants. Hence, dativizable to-dative double object constructions (DOC) are the utterances produced the earliest at the age of 2, as opposed to dativizable to/for-datives and non-dativizable constructions, which begin to emerge at around the age of 3. Finally, our results also suggest that the high adult input frequency explains the twins' early production of dativizable structures and that, in the same way, the children's low exposure to non-dativizable utterances correlates with the later occurrence in the twins' spontaneous production.

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z