Resumen de Morphology and L2 acquisition
The acquisition of morphology, and particularly of functional morphology, has been identified as the most problematic grammatical domain for second language acquirers. In more psycholinguistic terms, one of the main questions that researchers investigating the representation and processing of morphology have posed is whether and how morphological structure influences the recognition and production of morphologically complex words. Spanish verbal inflection is very rich in information and forms and hence typically challenging morphological component for L2 learners, particularly if their L1s have a poorer morphological verbal system. In Spanish, aspectual morphology closely interacts with temporal morphology, since aspect is only overtly grammatical in the past, with two different past tenses, one for perfective aspect and one for imperfect aspect. Spanish expresses modality on verbal morphology, with three distinctive moods, indicative, subjunctive, and imperative. Verbal forms in Spanish agree in person and number with the subject of the sentence.
