The current research presentation aims to show the benefits of integrating two disciplines (i.e., sociolinguistics and second language acquisition) and of combining two distinct approaches (i.e., concept-oriented and variationist approaches). It also endeavors to demonstrate how one project can fruitfully inform the next. It takes as its point of departure learners’ communicative competence, or their ability to communicate successfully in a second language (L2), not only based on grammatical knowledge, but also contextual sensitivity to when one form might be expected over another, along with strategies for successful communication (Canale & Swain, 1980; Celce-Murcia, 2008; Kanwit & Solon, 2023; Ortega, 2019).
The focus of the presentation is on the results of two groups of studies, each based on variable expression of futurity in Spanish (see Aaron, 2010; Orozco, 2021). The first pair of studies compares two groups of learners of Spanish who participated in intensive seven-week immersion programs in Valencia, Spain, and Mérida, Mexico, along with two groups of expert (i.e., native) speakers from the same regions. Upon arrival and at the end of their stay in the target environment, learners completed a contextualized preference task created to examine the selection of morphological future (e.g., saldré ‘I will leave’), periphrastic future (e.g., voy a salir ‘I am going to leave’), and present indicative forms (e.g., salgo esta noche ‘I leave tonight’) in future-time contexts. Overall, the data indicate significant differences between expert speakers in the two regions and that the learners were sensitive to regional norms, adjusting both the frequency of selection of a particular form and the linguistic predictors of such selection.
The second group of studies considers five groups of learners of Spanish currently living in the midwestern United States and a group of expert speakers of Spanish residing in the same region. The study includes two tasks which target the oral production and written selection of variable future forms and combines L2 variationist (e.g., Bayley & Tarone, 2012; Geeslin, 2003, 2022; Gudmestad, 2022) and functionalist, concept-oriented approaches (e.g., Andersen, 1984; Bardovi Harlig, 2000, 2017, 2020; Shirai, 1995; von Stutterheim & Klein, 1987). Results indicate notable task-related differences between production and selection, along with learner one-to-one associations giving way to multifunctionality (Andersen, 1984, 1990; Bardovi-Harlig, 2020). Regional differences are discussed across both groups of studies, along with the acquisition of variable future-time expression according to proficiency level and location of study abroad.
Throughout the presentation, the benefits of combining variationist and concept-oriented approaches are explored, along with the expected and perhaps unexpected ways that learners reveal communicative competence, as also mediated by lexical frequency and morphological regularity and informed by how variants have grammaticalized over time (Brown, 2018; Bybee et al., 1994; Howe, 2018; Torres Cacoullos, 2016)