Posesión inalienable y alienable en español: la interpretación por parte de los aprendices del español

Abstract

The Romance and Germanic languages are different in terms of the interpretation of the definite articles. This master's thesis focuses on the contrasting properties of Dutch and Spanish definite articles with respect to the inalienable and alienable possession ("Marta opent haar ogen" vs. Marta abre los ojos) and the referential and distributive reading ("De jongens draaiden het hoofd om" vs. Los niños volvieron la cabeza). Second language learners of Spanish with Dutch as their mother tongue and a more advanced level in Spanish completed two experiments in Spanish (a Picture Selection Matching Task and a Truth Value Judgement Task). The results show a path to the acquisition of the inalienable possession with the use of definite articles by the Spanish learners. More challenging was the referential and/or distributive interpretation of definite articles in Spanish in more complex constructions. However, it appears that second language learners of Spanish are in a sense sensitive for the difference between the verbs. Factors that play an important role such as language transfer from Dutch into Spanish and metalinguistic knowledge will be discussed in this article.