CLIL at the linguistic interfaces

Abstract

!is study explores the e"ect of CLIL on the acquisition of nominal morphology (syntax-morphology interface) and article use (syntax-semanticsdiscourse- interface), linguistic areas that have been scarcely investigated in CLIL settings. Here we compare article omission and overuse errors in an oral production task performed by L1 Basque-Spanish learners of L3 English in two CLIL and non-CLIL groups matching in age at testing time and amount of exposure. Results indicate that as regards nominal morphology, CLIL and non-CLIL learners are equal in terms of the omission of the de#nite and the inde#nite article, but CLIL learners learn to solve article overuse more quickly than non-CLIL learners. Taking together these results and the #ndings from our previous study (Martínez-Adrián & Gutiérrez-Mangado, 2015a), which revealed the non-existence of CLIL bene#ts with respect to the acquisition of verbal morphology, we conclude that while the syntax-morphology interface seems to be una"ected by CLIL, CLIL can aid in the acquisition of features from the syntax-semantics-discourse interface.