The aspect hypothesis and the emergence of tense distinctions in naturalistic L2 acquisition

Abstract

It is generally assumed that verbal inflections in early 12 acquisition primarily mark lexical aspect inherent in the verb or predicate with tense distinctions being neglected (=the aspect hypothesis). 1 This paper gives a brief account of the L2 acquisition of verbal inflections by two German children learning English without formal instruction. The results of the study are discussed in connection with the aspect hypothesis. They support the affiliation of verbal inflections with lexical aspect; however, contrary to the predictions, it is shown that the -ING inflection is not associated mainly with activity verbs but also with a relatively high proportion of achievement verbs. This is accounted for by the fact that the children use the progressive form with future reference. It is argued that although lexical aspect seems to grant the learnability of verbal inflections in early L2 acquisition, tense is not defective, as implied in the aspect hypothesis.

More evidence concerning the Aspect Hypothesis: The acquisition of English progressive aspect by Catalan-Spanish instructed learners

“…A series of studies have reported similar findings on the acquisition of the English tense and aspect system by children (Rhode 1996;Gavruseva 2002) uninstructed adult learners in an ESL context (Robison 1990;Bardovi-Harlig and Bergström 1996), and instructed EFL and ESL learners (Bardovi-Harlig 1992;Robison 1995;Bardovi-Harlig and Reynolds 1995;Housen 2002;Collins 2002Collins , 2004Ayoun and Salaberry 2008).…”

“…Most studies in the area of the AH (Robison 1990;Bardovi-Harlig 1992;Huang 1993Huang , 1999Robison 1995;Shirai & Andersen 1995;Bardovi-Harlig & Reynolds 1995;Bardovi-Harlig & Bergström 1996;Rhode 1996Rhode , 2002Bardovi-Harlig 1998;Lee 2001;Housen 1995Housen , 2002Collins 2002Collins , 2004Gravuseva 2002;Clachar 2004;Ayoun & Salaberri 2008;Rhode 2009) have shown that verbal aspectual morphology is strongly associated with lexical aspect. By way of example, Robison (1990) carried out a study with 1 Spanish speaker learning English in the US.…”

“…They also concluded that the primacy of aspect prevails in both their English and French learners, and that in both instructed and uninstructed contexts there is early use of the progressive with activities. One exception of -ing also being associated with achievements at early stages was found by Rhode (1996). In a cross-sectional study with two German children learning English without formal instruction, Rhode used naturalistic data from a series of recordings of spontaneous speech over a period of six months.…”

“…However, the effect on the progressive is unclear. Shirai (2004) argues that while Rhode's (1996) finding of an early association of the progressive with achievements could be interpreted as related to the lack of progressive marker in the learner's L1 (German), other studies do not confirm this interpretation. These are studies involving L1s that do not have progressive markers and yet confirm the AH as well as studies involving L1s that have progressive markers but do not support the developmental prediction of the AH (see Shirai 2004 for a review).…”

“…Many of these studies, however, have shown no clear agreement as to which theoretical explanations should be given to the predictable patterns of acquisition of tense and aspect. Hence, reasons such as the distribution of input (Ayoun and Salaberry 2008;Rhode 1996;Robison 1995;Andersen and Shirai 1994) to which learners are exposed, the influence of the teaching environment (Bardovi-Harlig 1992), L1 influence (Collins 2002(Collins , 2004Sugaya and Shirai 2007) or alternative universal mechanisms (Slabakova 1999;Gavruseva 2002;and Haznedar 2007 for a counterargument) among others, have been advanced in order to provide an explanation for certain robust patterns of the acquisition of tense and aspect morphology. Within the framework of the AH, the goal of this paper is to provide further evidence from cross-sectional data with regard to the acquisition of progressive aspect by learners of English who are bilingual Catalan-Spanish, a language constellation that has not previously been studied in this domain.…”