Adverb placement in L1 and L2 spoken production

Abstract Most existing research on adverb placement has focused exclusively on writing. This is unfortunate, given that the spoken mode offers limited opportunity for pre-planning and post-editing and may thus more readily reveal patterns of L1 transfer. Further, previous studies rarely consider the impact of the linguistic context surrounding the adverb. This study broadens our understanding of (i) the potential role of L1 transfer, and (ii) the extralinguistic and linguistic factors that influence adverb placement. We look at spoken English produced by students from seven L1 backgrounds: Dutch, English, French, German, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish. The results show that the most influential factors in explaining differences in adverb placement were the presence or absence of auxiliaries and the type of adverb. We find only very limited evidence of L1 transfer, suggesting that upper-intermediate to advanced learners have largely mastered the positional preferences of adverbs in English, even in restrictive production contexts.