Semantica, frequenza e morfosintassi in polacco L2: la lezione glottodidattica di un esperimento acquisizionale

This paper investigates the role of input in a first-exposure study on the acquisition of Polish L2. Within the VILLA project, 17 Italian L1 learners with no experience of the target language were exposed to controlled input in the form of a 14-hour Polish course taught by a native speaker, whose speech was planned, recorded and transcribed. This methodology makes it possible to correlate teacher input with the output produced by the learners, probed through repetition and comprehension tests as well as semispontaneous interaction. The target structure was the accusative case marking in the paradigm of feminine nouns in -a. Accuracy proved markedly higher in the structured tests than in interaction: in the latter context, however, utterances could be easily decoded on the basis of semantics and default word order. We show that this happens in the input, too, and argue that case marking may not be essential in order to derive meaning. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for language teaching.