Subject inversion in non-native Spanish

• An analysis of relevant syntactic and pragmatic conditions constraining SV and VS orders in Spanish is presented.
• Previous word order studies have proposed either a syntactic deficit or a deficit at the syntax-pragmatics interface.
• Our review of existing L2 Spanish literature reveals important gaps that this study fills.
• Our results are consistent with a syntactic deficit which affects the licensing of postverbal subjects.
• We argue that the type of evidence available in the input can lead to problems acquiring these structures.

This study presents new empirical evidence on the L2 acquisition of Spanish SV–VS contrasts, a syntax-pragmatics interface phenomenon. Results from a context-dependant preference task involving unergative and unaccusative verbs in different focus situations (broad and narrow focus) reveal that beginner and intermediate English speakers prefer SV in all contexts. In contrast, advanced learners, who clearly know that VS is possible in Spanish, show a pattern of optionality with unergative verbs (in both broad and narrow focus contexts), whereas VS is correctly preferred with unaccusative verbs in both broad and narrowly-focused contexts. We argue that these results can be explained by a representational deficit according to which the VS order is overgeneralised to unergative verbs regardless of the discursive situation. We argue that learners’ overuse of VS structures is exacerbated by the lack of clear evidence for the use of SV and VS forms in the native input.