Understanding Interfaces -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC data -- Table of contents -- List of figures -- List of tables -- Abbreviations -- Abstract -- Acknowledgements -- 1. Linguistic interfaces and the architecture of the language faculty -- 1.1 Theoretical background -- 1.2 The architecture of the faculty of language -- 1.2.1 Economy conditions of linguistic convergence -- 1.2.1.1 Interface strategies -- 1.2.2 The 'Tripartite Parallel Model' (Jackendoff 1997, 2002) -- 1.3 The empirical studies -- 1.4 Broader significance of the study -- 1.5 Organization -- 2. Clause structure, subject positions and word order variation in Spanish -- 2.1 Subject positions and the EPP -- 2.1.1 Null and overt preverbal subjects -- 2.1.2 Postverbal subjects in intransitive clauses -- 2.1.3 Postverbal subjects in transitive clauses (VSO and VOS) -- 2.2 Word order variation -- 2.2.1 Word order variation as a result of feature movement -- 2.2.2 Word order variation as the result of interface conditions -- 2.2.2.1 Prominence -- 2.2.2.2 Scrambling -- 2.2.2.3 Fragment answers -- 2.2.2.4 Dislocations -- 2.2.2.5 Summary -- 2.3 Emphatic/contrastive focus -- 2.4 Summary and conclusions -- 3. Linguistic interfaces in second language acquisition research -- 3.1 Syntax vs. the periphery -- 3.2 Interface vulnerability in second language acquisition -- 3.3 Assessing the validity of the 'Interface Hypothesis' -- 3.3.1 A representational account of interface vulnerability -- 3.3.2 A computational account of interface vulnerability -- 3.4 Moving forward in (interface-based) SLA research -- 3.4.1 A new analysis of 'interface phenomena' for SLA research -- 3.4.2 Syntactic impairment is compatible with an interface-based approach to language acquisition an -- 4. Subject realization and word order variation in non-native Spanish.

4.1 Determining syntactic and pragmatic constraints -- 4.2 Null and postverbal subjects in L2 Spanish -- 4.2.1 Null subjects: Focus on syntactic constraints -- 4.2.2 Null subjects: Focus on pragmatic constraints -- 4.2.3 Word order variation -- 4.3 Summary -- 4.4 The empirical studies -- 4.4.1 The production study -- 4.4.1.1 Methodology -- 4.4.1.2 Participants -- 4.4.1.3 Task design -- 4.4.1.4 Data analysis -- 4.4.1.5 Hypotheses -- 4.4.1.6 Results -- 4.4.1.7 Summary of results -- 4.4.2 The comprehension study -- 4.4.2.1 Hypotheses -- 4.4.2.2 Experimental design -- 4.4.2.3 Data analysis -- 4.4.2.4 Results -- 4.4.3 Discussion of results and conclusions -- 5. Subject realization and word order variation in adult bilingual grammars under attrition -- 5.1 Syntactic native attrition -- 5.1.1 Age effects -- 5.1.2 Examining the cause of attrition: L2 influence and the role of changes in L1 input -- 5.2 Inherent L1 vulnerability: The role of the interfaces -- 5.3 The empirical studies -- 5.3.1 The production study -- 5.3.1.1 Rationale -- 5.3.1.2 Participants -- 5.3.1.3 Data analysis -- 5.3.1.4 Hypotheses -- 5.3.1.5 Results -- 5.3.2 The comprehension study -- 5.3.2.1 Hypotheses -- 5.3.2.2 Methodology -- 5.3.2.3 Results -- 5.4 Discussion of results and conclusion -- 6. Summary of findings and implications -- 6.1 Reanalyzing the role of interfaces in acquisition research -- 6.2 Syntactic vulnerability in an interface-based approach to language acquisition and attrition -- 6.3 Additional sources of divergence in the acquisition of Spanish word order -- 6.4 Implications for further research -- References -- Name index -- Subject index.