L2 use and development of mood selection in Spanish complement clauses

Analyses of Spanish mood contrast in complement clauses suggest that the use of the indicative and the subjunctive is a very complex grammatical phenomenon. Students of Spanish are confronted with two sets of morphological forms that constitute the formal expression of syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects underlying mood selection. This dissertation examines the L2 production and development of Spanish mood contrast in complement clauses by three language level groups, second-, third-, and fourth-semester undergraduate students at the University of Southern California. The main goal of this dissertation is to investigate the extent to which the L2 use of mood structures is produced in the course of these three groups.; The L2 mood selection abilities of a total of 71 students are examined in four different tasks. The results of the qualitative and quantitative analyses are interpreted in light of psycholinguistic and variationist models of L2 acquisition that have shown the influence of linguistic factors, task type and task demands on L2 performance. Although the results suggest a general semantic development in the acquisition of mood forms, the interaction between mood selection and academic level does not present a similar pattern of development in the written and oral tasks. While there is a significant effect for academic group in the written (controlled) tasks for subjunctive forms, there are no differences among the groups in the L2 production of these embedded structures in the oral (more spontaneous) task.; These findings seem to validate the utility of explicit grammar instruction and focus on form as a way to facilitate L2 acquisition of subjunctive embedded forms in controlled tasks. However, the low rates of accurate subjunctive forms in the oral interview and the modest improvement in the appropriate use of target forms in a written task suggest that, even after four semesters of language instruction, oral communicative uses of mood embedded structures are still problematic for many L2 learners. This study provides a picture of how formal learners develop grammatical competence of mood forms in complement clauses across academic levels and considers a number of pedagogic implications for L2 grammar instruction.