Search

Purpose: The impact of second language (L2) on first language (L1), known as L2 transfer, has been suggested as a fundamental driving force of L1 attrition. The goal of this study was to test the differential attrition of verb aspect and tense in L1 (Russian) under the influence of L2 (German) grammatical properties. We also investigated whether the age of bilingualism onset and the amount of exposure to L1 modulate this L2 transfer effect. Methodology: We tested sentence processing in 30 adult Russian monolingual participants and 30 L1 attritors - Russian-German bilingual speakers - with early versus late bilingualism onset and with low versus high amounts of exposure to L1. Participants heard grammatically correct sentences, sentences with aspect violations and sentences with tense violations, and were asked to detect errors. Data and Analysis: The accuracy of participants' responses was analysed using generalized linear mixed-effects modelling in R. Findings: The L2 transfer effect was found, but was strongly modulated by the amount of L1 exposure: only bilinguals with little exposure to L1 showed greater attrition of L1 aspect compared to L1 tense. Moreover, the age of bilingualism onset proved to be more critical than the L2 transfer effect: an earlier bilingualism onset resulted in greater attrition of both aspect and tense in L1. Originality: The study provided new evidence about the differential impact of the grammatical similarity between L1 and L2, the age of bilingualism onset and the amount of L1 exposure on aspect and tense processing in L1 attritors. Implications: Our findings suggest that greater L1 use after immigration helps bilingual speakers to be less susceptible to L2 transfer and prevents attrition of L1-specific grammatical categories. Also, a general decline in processing verbal morphology is more likely to occur in speakers with an early rather than a late onset of bilingualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This multifactorial analysis of progressive marking contrasts native English to two Asian Englishes and Dutch English. Specifically, we (i) model writers’ constructional choices (progressive vs. non-progressive) across Englishes based on several linguistic predictors simultaneously, (ii) assess how those factors impact the progressive vs. non-progressive alternation, (iii) how several linguistic factors determine, simultaneously, writers’ constructional choices and (iv) how those choices differ across varieties and genres. Based on 4,661 verb constructions from five comparable multi-genre corpora, we ran a logistic regression analysis to determine which factors cause English-speaking populations to differ in their constructional choices and in which specific contexts. While the model strongly predicts speakers’ choices, within individual genres, tense and modality are found to influence speakers’ choices differently. Overall, our results yield nuanced insights into the (dis)similarities among and within ESL/EFL varieties and contribute to the broader issue of the native-foreign-second language continuum across genres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of tense and aspect (TA) in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). It determines how learners create temporal reference using TA systems in complex languages. It provides evidence that researchers continue to assess the use and acquisition of TA both from a concept- and form-oriented perspective and developmental stages of encoding temporality.

Although cross-linguistic research on second language tense-aspect acquisition has uncovered universal tendencies concerning the association between verbal semantics and tense-aspect markers, it is still unclear what mechanisms underlie this link. This study investigates the acquisition of two imperfective aspect markers (- ko iss- and - a iss-) in Korean by Japanese learners to determine how cognitive universals, first language (L1) transfer, and input frequency interact. The current findings are compared with the results of Lee and Kim (2007), who studied the acquisition of the same aspect markers by L1 English learners. Both groups of learners acquired the progressive - ko iss- earlier than the resultative - a iss-/- ko iss-, while L1 Japanese learners acquired the resultative use of - ko iss- earlier than L1 English learners. Japanese learners' early acquisition of the resultative - ko iss- is likely due to L1 transfer, because Japanese has a similar imperfective marker (- te i-). We argue that cognitive universals (one-to-one principle), L1 transfer, and input frequency all contribute to the acquisition patterns of temporal morphology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the current study is to investigate motion event cognition in second language learners in a higher education context. Based on recent findings that speakers of grammatical aspect languages like English attend less to the endpoint (goal) of events than do speakers of nonaspect languages like Swedish in a nonverbal categorization task involving working memory (Athanasopoulos & Bylund, 2013; Bylund & Athanasopoulos, 2015), the current study asks whether native speakers of an aspect language start paying more attention to event endpoints when learning a nonaspect language. Native English and German (a nonaspect language) speakers, and English learners of L2 German, who were pursuing studies in German language and literature at an English university, were asked to match a target scene with intermediate degree of endpoint orientation with two alternate scenes with low and high degree of endpoint orientation, respectively. Results showed that, compared to the native English speakers, the learners of German were more prone to base their similarity judgements on endpoint saliency, rather than ongoingness, primarily as a function of increasing L2 proficiency and year of university study. Further analyses revealed a nonlinear relationship between length of L2 exposure and categorization patterns, subserved by a progressive strengthening of the relationship between L2 proficiency and categorization as length of exposure increased. These findings present evidence that cognitive restructuring may occur through increasing experience with an L2, but also suggest that this relationship may be complex and unfold over a long period of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are numerous studies that analyze the second language (L2) acquisition of aspect (e.g., see overviews and summaries in Ayoun and Salaberry 2005; Bardovi-Harlig 2000; Labeau 2005; Salaberry, 2008; Salaberry and Shirai 2002). The present study focuses on a specific component of tense-aspect: the iteration of eventualities (iterativity and habituality) conveyed with the use of Spanish Preterite and Imperfect respectively. The analysis is based on data from monolingual Spanish speakers and L1 English speakers with near-native competence in the L2 with the use of contextualized grammaticality judgments. The findings of the study show that near-native speakers of L2 Spanish do not distinguish fine-grained representations of aspectual knowledge (iterativity versus habituality), even though they demonstrate native-like judgments with more prototypical uses of aspect. The discussion of the findings points to possible effects of mapping of meaning and form in the L2, as well as possible instructional effects paired with frequency effects prompted by classroom environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents empirical evidence on the development of aspect by English- and German-speaking university learners of French L2 collected from a spoken narrative task and a sentence interpretation task. Contrary to the Aspect Hypothesis's predictions, this study's results suggest that increased use of prototypical pairings goes in hand with increased L2 proficiency. Following a small but growing number of studies, this study questions the route of L2 development proposed by the Aspect Hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the potential of combining learner corpus research with experimental studies in order to fine-tune the understanding of learner language development. It illustrates the complementarity of the two methodological approaches with data from an ongoing study of the acquisition of the English tense and aspect system by French learners. The first research question relates to the development of accuracy of tense and aspect usage in written production over time; longitudinal learner corpus data is used to answer this question. Its results are then incorporated into an experimental study that addresses the second research question, which seeks to uncover reasons why some tense and aspect features remain difficult to master even for advanced L2 learners. The first part of the article reviews the status of longitudinal research in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and describes the Longitudinal Database of Learner English (Longdale) used for the study. The second half of the article presents the results of the learner corpus analysis. These reveal that over a period of 3 years, learners' tense and aspect errors decrease. However, the English progressive continues to present considerable learning difficulties. Two follow-up experiments investigated which elaborations of the progressive epistemic schema L2 learners continue to find difficult. They showed that advanced learners master the most salient elaboration of the present progressive (i.e., ongoingness, including extended ongoingness). By contrast, their understanding of less core uses (i.e., planned events) is much less precise. The article concludes with suggestions for the teaching of tense and aspect to advanced EFL learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study suggests that Intermediate High and Advanced speakers produce aspectually valid constructions in Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPIs) in large part because they are doing more than assigning aspect to lexical categories (Lexical aspect hypothesis), but because they are assigning lexicalized meaning to discrete verbs, for example govorit' (imperfective)-'to talk,' but skazat' (perfective)-'to say.' Analysis of the data from 55 OPIs conducted with second language (L2) Russian speakers ranging from Intermediate High to Superior confirms three hypotheses: (a) the proportion of aspectual utterances that owe their correctness to lexicalization decreases as proficiency increases; (b) aspectual competence as demonstrated by the greater number of aspectually non-lexicalized verbs in the speech of L2 Russian speakers rises with proficiency level; (c) a decrease in the proportion of lexicalized verbs in an examinee's speech correlates positively with an increase in the variety of verbs used. Other findings include a relative paucity of unprefixed verbs of motion in the corpus and a high ratio of lexicalized forms of skazat''to say,' and their distribution did not correlate with proficiency levels in either direction. The high ratio of aspectually lexicalized items in the corpus and the aspectual inaccuracies to which they lead have implications for teaching students who are approaching Intermediate High and Advanced levels of proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

* JasonRothmanThe University of Iowa (USA)Native-like use of preterit and imperfect morphology in all contexts by English learners of L2 Spanish is the exception rather than the rule, even for successful learners. Nevertheless, recent research has demonstrated that advanced English learners of L2 Spanish attain a native-like morphosyntactic competence for the Preterit/Imperfect contrast, as evidenced by their native-like knowledge of associated semantic entailments (Goodin-Mayeda and Rothman 2007, Montrul and Slabakova 2003, Slabakova and Montrul, 2003, Rothman and Iverson 2007). In addition to an L2 disassociation of morphology and syntax (e.g., Bruhn de Garavito 2003, Lardiere 1998, 2000, 2005, Prévost and White 1999, 2000, Schwartz 2003), I hypothesize that a system of learned pedagogical rules contributes to target-deviant L2 performance in this domain through the most advanced stages of L2 acquisition via its competition with the generative system. I call this hypothesis the Competing Systems Hypothesis. To test its predictions, I compare and contrast the use of the Preterit and Imperfect in two production tasks by native, tutored (classroom), and naturalistic learners of L2 Spanish. aspect English/Spanish morphological performance second language (L2) acquisition [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the acquisition of Korean imperfective markers, the progressive - ko iss- and the resultative - a iss-, with a view to understanding how tense/aspect morphology expands beyond prototype associations with inherent aspects of the verbs. We hypothesized that - a iss- will develop later than - ko iss-, but that the development of -a iss- will precede or coincide with the expansion of - ko iss- marking for result state meaning. Cross-sectional data were collected from 120 learners of second language Korean using a sentence interpretation task and a guided picture description task. The results support our hypothesized acquisition route of imperfective markers, establishing dynamic durativity as the prototypical meaning of the Korean imperfective - ko iss- and suggesting individual variation in expanding the prototype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Aspect Hypothesis (AH) (Andersen 1986, 1991) suggests an eight-stage development of the Spanish tense–aspect system by English learners in which tenses progressively mark verb categories. The current paper, which presents some of the main findings from Labeau (2005), explores the relevance of the AH to an acquisitional setting other than that for which it was developed. Specifically, it tests the four tenets of the AH, as described by Shirai and Kurono (1998) against data from the acquisition of the French tense/aspect system by advanced learners of French in a tutored environment. It compares the use of French verbal morphology by advanced Anglophone learners with a control group of native speakers engaging in a variety of tasks: (1) oral and written narratives (2) a grammar cloze-test and (3) a written editing task. Having shown that the basic hypothesis is unable to account for the development of advanced French, the study tests an expanded version of the AH (Andersen 2002) and suggests further factors to take into account in the description of advanced stages of tense–aspect acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chapter 3 of the second volume of the "Language Learning" monograph series is presented. It focuses on the morphological stage of the acquisition of temporal expression in second language (L2). It surveys literature on acquisition sequences in the acquisition of tense-aspect morphology in six different languages, each of which receives a brief grammatical sketch. It provides a longitudinal investigation of the development of morphology related to how the past is expressed in English.

Chapter 1 of the second volume of the "Language Learning" monograph series is presented. It introduces a study of how time talk is acquired in second language (L2) research. It takes into account the ground-breaking research on tense-aspect morphology, which considers the occurrence of the grammatical morphemes in interlanguage. It also covers succeeding investigations on form-meaning associations within the developing system of temporal expression.

Chapter 5 of the second volume of the "Language Learning" monograph series is presented. It focuses on the interlanguage discourse hypothesis in second language (L2) learning. It takes into account the interlanguage narrative structure and its impact on how tense-aspect morphology is distributed. It surveys studies of L2 narrative, and how its influence along with lexical aspect produces observed patterns of development.

Chapter 4 of the second volume of the "Language Learning" monograph series is presented. It presents a theory-driven exploration of how tense-aspect morphology is acquired. It discusses how the aspect hypothesis for first and second language (L2) acquisition is formed. It outlines scope of research methodology used in L2 studies. It explains the categories of lexical aspect and reviews the verbal morphology associated with grammatical aspect of the target languages.

Tense-Aspect Morphology in European Languages, p.96. Tense-Aspect Morphology Related to Past in English, p.104. The Acquisition of Tense-Aspect Morphology, p.111. Longitudinal Studies of the Acquisition of Tense-Aspect Morphology, p.114. Cross-Sectional Studies of the Acquisition of Tense-Aspect Morphology, p.120. A Study of the Emergence of Tense-Aspect Morphology Related to Past in English, p.126. Method, p.127. Analysis and Results, p.138. Comparing Meaning-Oriented and Form-Oriented Approaches, p.184. Chapter Summary, p.186 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Aspect Hypothesis, p.192. In Primary Language Acquisition, p.193. In Second Language Acquisition, p.195. Grammatical and Lexical Aspect, p.205. Investigations of the Aspect Hypothesis in Second Language Acquisition, p.227. The Spread of Perfective Past, p.228. The Spread of Imperfective Past, p.234. The Spread of Progressive, p.237. Overgeneralization of Progressive in States, p.238. Sample Study: The Distribution of Verbal Morphology in Learner Narratives, p.239. Assessing the Influence of Lexical Aspect, p.251. Challenges to the Aspect Hypothesis, p.265. Chapter Summary, p.272 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]