Morphosyntactic alignment in L1-L2 task-based teletandem interaction

Telecollaboration meetings allow for interactions among learners at different geographical locations. Any interaction, whether among native speakers or involving an L2 speaker, induces alignment, described as the tendency to reuse linguistic structures that have recently been used (Costa, Pickering & Sorace, 2008). This study aims to examine morphosyntactic alignment in L1-L2 interactions, considering speaker status (L1 vs. L2), within and between pair alignment as well as within and across language alignment with a specific focus on most frequent morphosyntactic structures (e.g., prepositional phrases). Eighteen language learners with a B2 level (CEFR) in their L2, namely English and Spanish, participated in a series of spot-the-difference tasks. The interactions were analyzed in terms of relevant morphosyntactic trigrams. Results yielded a non-significant result for speaker status. An enhanced alignment was revealed for speakers of the same pair, across language as well as in more frequent and less complex morphosyntactic structures. The non-relevance of speaker status and the predominance of within pair alignment may result from the speakers aligning to each other. In addition, cross-language alignment might be the tendency in bilingual interactions. Finally, the use of various morphosyntactic structures may differ across languages. Implications are further discussed.