Alan Parma
Alan Parma was born in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. He studied Portuguese - Linguistics and Literatures ("Letras") at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), where he also obtained his Master's degree in Linguistics. He recently completed his Ph.D. in Spanish with a specialization in Second Language Acquisition at Florida State University. His research interests include Second Language Acquisition, development orders of acquisition, Syntax, object clitics, language transfer, third language acquisition, and Spanish and Portuguese Language Instruction. He is currently a Teaching Faculty of Spanish at Florida State University, and also works as a Portuguese Instructor at the Portuguese School at Middlebury College during the summers. He is a Fulbright Alumni and a recipient of the Language Learning dissertation grant. He is also a former circus performer at the Florida State University Flying High Circus.
Address: Florida State University
Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics
625 University Way – PO Box 3061540
Tallahassee, Florida - 32306
Address: Florida State University
Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics
625 University Way – PO Box 3061540
Tallahassee, Florida - 32306
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Books by Alan Parma
In 2016, the PLJ became the professional academic journal of the AOTP – American Organization of Teachers of Portuguese.
Papers by Alan Parma
de maneira balanceada, tema em voga devido à grande projeção econômica, social, e acima de tudo, cultural
do mundo lusófono, o presente estudo se propõe a coletar corpus didático do livro de Jouët-Pastré et al.
(2007), na busca de analisar recortes que reflitam a natureza pluricêntrica da língua portuguesa. A amostra
coletada, duma gama restrita de material pedagógico especializado em ensino contemporâneo de língua
portuguesa e cultura lusófona disponível no mercado norte-americano, indica que há uma tentativa inicial
de promoção do caráter pluricêntrico da comunidade de língua portuguesa, mas outras medidas ainda são
necessárias para que o português possa ser tratado como uma língua realmente internacional.
Talks by Alan Parma
We follow VanPatten’s (2015) claim that only after learners can correctly interpret a structure, that is, once correct form-meaning associations are made, then parameterization begins. Therefore, for learners to acquire Spanish object clitics, they first need to overcome a non-optimal strategy in which they misinterpret pre-verbal clitics as the subjects of an utterance, a phenomenon called First Noun Principle (VanPatten, 1996, 2004). Once interpretation is taken care of, then the development of clitic mental representation initiates. Spanish object clitics vary in case (dative, accusative), number and gender. Their placement in the sentence is also variable according to verbal inflection (Ordóñez, 2012). Previous research has shown that L2 Spanish learners seem to be able to acquire appropriate clitic placement, although some constructions, such as clitic climbing and causative verbs may present difficulties even for advanced learners (Duffield and White, 1999; Pérez-Leroux et al., 2011). Finally, number agreement is attained, but gender agreement can be delayed and also presents difficulties even for advanced learners (Malorvh, 2014; Santoro, 2011).
Although each of the components of clitic acquisition has been studied individually, no study has yet investigated the interpolation of them and the possibility of an implicational order of acquisition. The main goal of this study, therefore, is to determine if there is an implicational order of L2 Spanish clitic acquisition, and what this order looks like.
35 L2 Spanish learners participated in this study. All of them completed a cloze test based of the DELE proficiency exam, in order to determine their language proficiency level. They completed three tasks: a) a Picture Matching task, that targeted comprehension, in which they had to choose between two images the one that represented a sentence they heard; b)a Self-Paced Reading task, that aimed at clitic placement, in which they read sentences containing clitics in three main positions, pre-verbally (1), post-verbally (2), and clitic climbing (3); and c) an Elicited Imitation task, that targeted morphological agreement, in which they heard a sentence and repeated it after they judged the sentence based on meaning.
Results corroborate an implicational order of L2 Spanish clitic acquisition, in which interpretation precedes mental representation. Under mental representation, clitic placement is obtained before morphological agreement. Number agreement takes place before gender agreement in the developmental trajectory of clitic acquisition. No evidence of differences in the acquisition of the different cases was observed.
We follow VanPatten’s (2015) claim that learners first need to overcome a non-optimal strategy in which they misinterpret pre-verbal clitics as the subjects of an utterance in order for development of object clitic mental representation to start. Previous research has shown that L2 Spanish learners acquire appropriate clitic placement, as well as number agreement; gender agreement acquisition, however, can be delayed and difficult to be attained even for advanced learners (Duffield and White, 1999; Malorvh, 2014; Pérez -Leroux et al., 2011; Santoro, 2011).
Although each of the components of clitic acquisition has been studied individually, no study has yet investigated the interpolation of them and the possibility of an order of acquisition. The main goal of this study, therefore, is to determine if there is an implicational order of L2 Spanish clitic acquisition, what this order looks like, and why clitic acquisition develops as it does.
70 L2 Spanish learners participated in this study. They completed a simplified version of the DELE, in order to determine their language proficiency level. They completed three tasks: a) a Picture Matching task, that targeted comprehension; b) a Self-Paced Reading task, that aimed at clitic placement; and c) an Elicited Imitation task, that targeted morphological agreement.
Results indicate an implicational order of L2 Spanish clitic acquisition, initiated by interpretation. Placement is obtained as soon as learners begin to interpret clitics correctly. Then, number agreement is gradually obtained, followed by gender agreement, which has lower accuracy rates even for advanced learners. We explain these results by the origins of the features: the ones relevant for placement are given to the learner through UG and are available since the beginning of the acquisition process; whilst features relevant for morphological agreement are learned through interaction with input, and take longer to be acquired.
We follow VanPatten’s (2015) claim that only after learners can correctly interpret a structure, that is, once correct form-meaning associations are made, then parameterization begins. Therefore, for learners to acquire Spanish object clitics, they first need to overcome a non-optimal strategy in which they misinterpret pre-verbal clitics as the subjects of an utterance, a phenomenon called First Noun Principle (VanPatten, 1996, 2004). Once interpretation is taken care of, then the development of clitic mental representation initiates. Spanish object clitics vary in case (dative, accusative), number and gender. Their placement in the sentence is also variable according to verbal inflection (Ordóñez, 2012). Previous research has shown that L2 Spanish learners seem to be able to acquire appropriate clitic placement, although some constructions, such as clitic climbing and causative verbs may present difficulties even for advanced learners (Duffield and White, 1999; Pérez-Leroux et al., 2011). Finally, number agreement is attained, but gender agreement can be delayed and not be fully acquired even in advanced levels (Malorvh, 2014; Santoro, 2011).
Although each of the components of clitic acquisition has been studied individually, no study has yet investigated the interpolation of them and the possibility of an order of acquisition. The main goal of this study, therefore, is to determine if there is an implicational order of L2 Spanish clitic acquisition, what this order looks like, and why clitic acquisition develops as it does. We also discuss the differences in learners’ performances in production and comprehension manners.
70 L2 Spanish learners participated in this study. They completed a simplified version of the DELE, in order to determine their language proficiency level. Then, they completed two tasks a) a story re-telling task, which targeted the placement and morphological agreement components; and b) a self-paced reading task, targeting at the interpretation and placement components.
Results indicate an implicational order of L2 Spanish clitic acquisition, initiated by interpretation. Placement is obtained as soon as learners begin to interpret clitics correctly. Then, number agreement is gradually obtained, followed by gender agreement, which has lower accuracy rates even for advanced learners. We explain these results by the origins of the features: the ones relevant for placement are given to learners through UG and are available since the beginning of the acquisition process; whilst features relevant for morphological agreement are learned through interaction with input and take longer to be acquired. Furthermore, learners’ performance in both production and comprehension improve at similar rates.
In 2016, the PLJ became the professional academic journal of the AOTP – American Organization of Teachers of Portuguese.
de maneira balanceada, tema em voga devido à grande projeção econômica, social, e acima de tudo, cultural
do mundo lusófono, o presente estudo se propõe a coletar corpus didático do livro de Jouët-Pastré et al.
(2007), na busca de analisar recortes que reflitam a natureza pluricêntrica da língua portuguesa. A amostra
coletada, duma gama restrita de material pedagógico especializado em ensino contemporâneo de língua
portuguesa e cultura lusófona disponível no mercado norte-americano, indica que há uma tentativa inicial
de promoção do caráter pluricêntrico da comunidade de língua portuguesa, mas outras medidas ainda são
necessárias para que o português possa ser tratado como uma língua realmente internacional.
We follow VanPatten’s (2015) claim that only after learners can correctly interpret a structure, that is, once correct form-meaning associations are made, then parameterization begins. Therefore, for learners to acquire Spanish object clitics, they first need to overcome a non-optimal strategy in which they misinterpret pre-verbal clitics as the subjects of an utterance, a phenomenon called First Noun Principle (VanPatten, 1996, 2004). Once interpretation is taken care of, then the development of clitic mental representation initiates. Spanish object clitics vary in case (dative, accusative), number and gender. Their placement in the sentence is also variable according to verbal inflection (Ordóñez, 2012). Previous research has shown that L2 Spanish learners seem to be able to acquire appropriate clitic placement, although some constructions, such as clitic climbing and causative verbs may present difficulties even for advanced learners (Duffield and White, 1999; Pérez-Leroux et al., 2011). Finally, number agreement is attained, but gender agreement can be delayed and also presents difficulties even for advanced learners (Malorvh, 2014; Santoro, 2011).
Although each of the components of clitic acquisition has been studied individually, no study has yet investigated the interpolation of them and the possibility of an implicational order of acquisition. The main goal of this study, therefore, is to determine if there is an implicational order of L2 Spanish clitic acquisition, and what this order looks like.
35 L2 Spanish learners participated in this study. All of them completed a cloze test based of the DELE proficiency exam, in order to determine their language proficiency level. They completed three tasks: a) a Picture Matching task, that targeted comprehension, in which they had to choose between two images the one that represented a sentence they heard; b)a Self-Paced Reading task, that aimed at clitic placement, in which they read sentences containing clitics in three main positions, pre-verbally (1), post-verbally (2), and clitic climbing (3); and c) an Elicited Imitation task, that targeted morphological agreement, in which they heard a sentence and repeated it after they judged the sentence based on meaning.
Results corroborate an implicational order of L2 Spanish clitic acquisition, in which interpretation precedes mental representation. Under mental representation, clitic placement is obtained before morphological agreement. Number agreement takes place before gender agreement in the developmental trajectory of clitic acquisition. No evidence of differences in the acquisition of the different cases was observed.
We follow VanPatten’s (2015) claim that learners first need to overcome a non-optimal strategy in which they misinterpret pre-verbal clitics as the subjects of an utterance in order for development of object clitic mental representation to start. Previous research has shown that L2 Spanish learners acquire appropriate clitic placement, as well as number agreement; gender agreement acquisition, however, can be delayed and difficult to be attained even for advanced learners (Duffield and White, 1999; Malorvh, 2014; Pérez -Leroux et al., 2011; Santoro, 2011).
Although each of the components of clitic acquisition has been studied individually, no study has yet investigated the interpolation of them and the possibility of an order of acquisition. The main goal of this study, therefore, is to determine if there is an implicational order of L2 Spanish clitic acquisition, what this order looks like, and why clitic acquisition develops as it does.
70 L2 Spanish learners participated in this study. They completed a simplified version of the DELE, in order to determine their language proficiency level. They completed three tasks: a) a Picture Matching task, that targeted comprehension; b) a Self-Paced Reading task, that aimed at clitic placement; and c) an Elicited Imitation task, that targeted morphological agreement.
Results indicate an implicational order of L2 Spanish clitic acquisition, initiated by interpretation. Placement is obtained as soon as learners begin to interpret clitics correctly. Then, number agreement is gradually obtained, followed by gender agreement, which has lower accuracy rates even for advanced learners. We explain these results by the origins of the features: the ones relevant for placement are given to the learner through UG and are available since the beginning of the acquisition process; whilst features relevant for morphological agreement are learned through interaction with input, and take longer to be acquired.
We follow VanPatten’s (2015) claim that only after learners can correctly interpret a structure, that is, once correct form-meaning associations are made, then parameterization begins. Therefore, for learners to acquire Spanish object clitics, they first need to overcome a non-optimal strategy in which they misinterpret pre-verbal clitics as the subjects of an utterance, a phenomenon called First Noun Principle (VanPatten, 1996, 2004). Once interpretation is taken care of, then the development of clitic mental representation initiates. Spanish object clitics vary in case (dative, accusative), number and gender. Their placement in the sentence is also variable according to verbal inflection (Ordóñez, 2012). Previous research has shown that L2 Spanish learners seem to be able to acquire appropriate clitic placement, although some constructions, such as clitic climbing and causative verbs may present difficulties even for advanced learners (Duffield and White, 1999; Pérez-Leroux et al., 2011). Finally, number agreement is attained, but gender agreement can be delayed and not be fully acquired even in advanced levels (Malorvh, 2014; Santoro, 2011).
Although each of the components of clitic acquisition has been studied individually, no study has yet investigated the interpolation of them and the possibility of an order of acquisition. The main goal of this study, therefore, is to determine if there is an implicational order of L2 Spanish clitic acquisition, what this order looks like, and why clitic acquisition develops as it does. We also discuss the differences in learners’ performances in production and comprehension manners.
70 L2 Spanish learners participated in this study. They completed a simplified version of the DELE, in order to determine their language proficiency level. Then, they completed two tasks a) a story re-telling task, which targeted the placement and morphological agreement components; and b) a self-paced reading task, targeting at the interpretation and placement components.
Results indicate an implicational order of L2 Spanish clitic acquisition, initiated by interpretation. Placement is obtained as soon as learners begin to interpret clitics correctly. Then, number agreement is gradually obtained, followed by gender agreement, which has lower accuracy rates even for advanced learners. We explain these results by the origins of the features: the ones relevant for placement are given to learners through UG and are available since the beginning of the acquisition process; whilst features relevant for morphological agreement are learned through interaction with input and take longer to be acquired. Furthermore, learners’ performance in both production and comprehension improve at similar rates.