A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS BETWEEN ENGLISH AND SPANISH NATIVE SPEAKERS’ PRODUCTION AND COMPREHENSION OF N-N COMPOUNDS

Abstract

Taking as a point of departure the compoundding parameter and its process of acquisition (Snyder 1995), the present study examines both differences and similarities in the use of English N-N compounds produced by a group of English native speakers and a second group of monolingual Spanish speakers learning English as their L2. The study also analyses whether the differences among the two groups of speakers, if any, could be attributed to crosslinguistic transfer from their L1 in the case of Spanish native speakers. This possible transfer will appear in the form of compound reversals (as shown in Nicoladis 2002) and it will be further related to other constructions with a similar word order, such as the Saxon genitive and the placement of adjective and noun within the noun phrase, since word order is the most likely and clear evidence of L1 transfer when dealing with Spanish learners of English (Nicoladis 1999).

Keywords

• N-N compounds
• compounding parameter
• L1 transfer
• Saxon genitive
• periphrastic constructions
• adjectival modification