This article examines whether L2 acquisition of morphology and syntax develops independently (the Separation Hypothesis) or not (the Rich Agreement Hypothesis), focusing on the acquisition of Number specification on certain Spanish quantifiers by French speakers. In Spanish, some quantifiers are specified for Number and directly precede the head noun, in contrast to their French counterparts where a dummy preposition de must appear inside the DP. Results from a grammaticality judgement task and a production task show that intermediate and advanced learners perform poorly on plural inflection with some quantifiers, and reject the use of de. This suggests that they have acquired Number specification on these quantifiers, which allows Case marking on the following noun, but do not produce the appropriate morphology. These results support the Separation Hypothesis, but not the Rich Agreement Hypothesis.

This study examines the L2 acquisition and LI attrition of preterite versus imperfect aspectual distinctions in Spanish among English-speaking L2 learners and long-term Spanish-speaking immigrants. Results from an acceptability judgment task and a truth value judgment task demonstrate significantly lower levels of target performance by both groups when compared to the control participants. The L2 learners outperform the native speakers undergoing attrition in some aspectual contexts, while in others both experimental groups show similar difficulties. To the extent that L2 learners and adult immigrants demonstrate comparable difficulties, L2 learners’ deficits cannot be directly related to impairment reasons. LI transfer of the semantic properties of tense heads offers a better explanation for the difficulties L2 learners often show in the aspectual domain.

Certain Peninsular Spanish varieties have two third-person plural forms in the simple past indicative of verbs with ‘strong’ (stem-stressed) preterites. While this phenomenon is documented in large-scale linguistic atlas surveys, its current geographic distribution and diachronic origins remain under-studied. This paper sets out to: 1) establish the geographic distribution of these variants; the differing methodologies and epochs of the data sources make them particularly interesting to compare, showing that these analogical strong preterites have suffered a drastic decline over the last century; 2) use historical corpus data to show that the vernacular variant is by no means a recent phenomenon; 3) examine external history as a source of explanation in linguistic reconstruction, showing that this process of analogical levelling took place after the reconquest and resettlement of these regions. These findings support the hypothesis of a feature which spread over the centuries by linguistic diffusion.

This study investigates the complexity of the mapping task in children’s acquisition of the Spanish subjunctive in temporal clauses. We consider that children’s difficulty with this task arises from the interaction between mood and other elements determining the evaluation of the temporal clause, such as semantic factors, tense, and cognition. Forty monolingual Spanish-speaking children first completed a cognitive assessment test, evaluating false belief understanding; this was followed by a linguistic prerequisite test assessing understanding of temporal connectors and knowledge of subjunctive morphology, and finally a temporal clause production task. Results reveal that mood selection in temporal clauses does not simply start with indicative followed by its replacement by subjunctive. On the contrary, the use of subjunctive temporal clauses involves a complex process for children in which tense corresponds to a fundamental source of bootstrapping. These results confirm the view that the acquisition of mood selection undergoes a protracted development. Spanish subjunctive meanings are not immediately accessible to children.