L2 Acquisition of Focus Constructions in European Portuguese and the L2 Status of the Syntax-Discourse Interface

A growing body of research has been dedicated to characterizing the interlanguage of near-native speakers, L2 learners who have reached the “best attainable final state ” (Sorace, 2003, p.130), and solving a query we can state informally as, “What causes a near-native to persistently be non-native?” or “In which area(s) of the grammar does the near-native speaker behave differently from the native?