The Acquisition of the Telic “se” by Native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese Spanish learners as L2

Abstract

Telicity is a semantic aspectual notion characterized by the presence of a linguistically marked inherent endpoint of the situation. In Portuguese, it can be done through the presence of a delimited direct complement and/or a delimiter prepositional phrase. In Spanish, in addition to the existing forms in Portuguese, it is possible to use a clitic, known as a telic “se”, accompanied by a delimited direct complement. The aim of this investigation is to contribute to the understanding of the acquisition of aspectual categories by native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese Spanish learners as L2. More specifically, we intend to verify whether learners recognize and use the telic “se” to express the aspectual value of telicity in the L2. For this purpose, two linguistic tests were applied, one for production and one for comprehension, to students of the graduation course in Spanish at intermediate and advanced levels. The results indicate that, at both levels, there are subjects who use the telic “se”, while others do not, while there are subjects who consider the presence of this aspectual clitic in the sentence as grammatical while others consider it ungrammatical. It was also observed that there is no significant difference in the results of learners at intermediate and advanced levels.