Results of both tasks show that acceptability of the indicative is greatest when the future eventuality is presumed by the speaker to be settled, whereas the subjunctive is preferred in non-settled cases. Ratings were converted into z-scores, and data from both tasks were analyzed using mixed-effects regressions in R. In the acceptability judgment task, participants evaluated 8 target items and 16 fillers for acceptability using a 7-point Likert scale. In the forced-choice task, participants were presented with 8 target items and 16 fillers, each containing a preceding context and a bolded sentence, and chose between an indicative and a subjunctive form to fill in the blank. The quantitative data come from an online questionnaire completed by 429 native speakers of Bonaerense Spanish which consisted of a forced-choice task (n=151) and an acceptability judgment task (n=278). I then use qualitative methods to examine more closely the behavior of each individual contextual factor. That is, cases presumed as settled are, whereas non-settled stimuli are. I operationalize settledness using stimuli that are maximally distinct in terms of contextual factors related to speaker confidence. Presumed settledness is the semantic-pragmatic notion that every future world compatible with the speaker’s beliefs at speech time is one in which the future eventuality necessarily occurs. ‘When you get off the bus, call me.’ Here I demonstrate that the speaker’s presumption of settledness (Kaufmann 2002, 2005) of the realization of the future eventuality conditions native-speaker acceptance of the indicative. ‘When you come, I’ll lend it to you.’ However, data from Bonaerense Spanish reveal that the indicative may appear in future-framed adverbial clauses (3). ‘When it rains, everything floods.’ (2) Cuando vengas, te lo presto. Traditional descriptions of Spanish adverbial clauses containing a subordinated verb in the present tense state that the indicative mood expresses eventualities occurring prior to or simultaneous with speech time (1), while the subjunctive must be used for future eventualities unrealized at speech time (2). These findings are discussed in light of the Lexical Preference Principle (VanPatten, 2004, 2007) and the Shallow Structures Hypothesis (Clahsen & Felser, 2006a, 2006b, 2006c). In the local agreement task, only intermediate L2 learners were not sensitive to grammaticality violations. Intermediate through advanced-level L2 learners demonstrated sensitivity to sentence-image mismatches (±Meaning) only. The results of the subjunctive task revealed that only native speakers demonstrated sensitivity (i.e., increased reading times as measured via a self-paced reading methodology) to modality-mood mismatches (☟orm). The secondary experiment (local agreement task) investigated the same learners’ processing of localized subject-verb agreement violations during online sentence processing. The variable “Meaning” was operationalized as a (mis)match between the lexical-semantics of the subordinate verb in a sentence and the action or situation depicted in a corresponding image. The variable “Form” was operationalized as a (mis)match between the lexical expression of modality in the main clause of a sentence and the mood marker (indicative or subjunctive) on the subordinate verb. Participants of various proficiency levels (intermediate, high intermediate, advanced and native Spanish speakers) read sentences that were either ☟orm or ±Meaning. The primary experiment (subjunctive task) investigated the effects of lexical preference on L1 Spanish and L2 Spanish readers’ processing of the subjunctive during online sentence processing. The present study reports the findings of two self-paced reading tasks (N = 98).
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