Acquisition of Spanish Temporal Adverbials by Multilingual Estonian Learners

Abstract This article focuses on the temporal structures used by multilingual Estonian students when expressing the hour in Spanish. Learning linguistic structures related to time is crucial in the early stages of foreign language acquisition. However, these structures can be complex and vary across languages, as they are highly idiosyncratic in terms of vocabulary and syntax. This study concentrates on the difficulties Estonian students face with Spanish time adverbials, specifically prepositions and articles. The paper aims to answer several research questions related to the repertoire of temporal expressions in the students' interlanguage, the difficulty posed by typological differences between their native language and Spanish, the influence of English, and the impact of English proficiency on Spanish production. The analysis of a corpus of interlanguage texts from Estonian students is conducted to identify idiosyncratic structures and patterns, distinguishing them from standard structures. The findings reveal that the use of articles improves with higher proficiency levels, while the use of prepositions remains challenging. Furthermore, the study explores the influence of English and Estonian on the students' Spanish production and highlights the importance of crosslinguistic reflection and attention to functional words for enhanced accuracy and fluency. The article concludes by emphasizing the significance of language proficiency levels and crosslinguistic influence in third language acquisition and suggesting areas for further research.