The strength of L1 effects on tense and aspect: How German learners of L2 Spanish deal with acquisitional problems

Imperfect Spanish Meanings Acquisition by Advanced Russian Learners. Evidence from Acceptability Judgements Data

“…As contexts of aspectual coercion entail a high processing load in comparison to contexts of aspectual congruency on the part of native speakers (Todorova et al, 2000;Piñago et al, 2006), the ADV and PROF groups' performance is interpreted as an indication of native-like attainment in the domain of the grammatical category of aspect. The challenge that aspectual coercion predicates pose to non-native speakers of Spanish has been well documented both in production studies (Cadierno, 2000;Bardovi-Harlig, 2005) and in interpretation and comprehension studies (Cuza, 2010;Diaubalick & Guijarro-Fuentes, 2019;Shell, 2001). This difficulty did not surface in any of the groups' responses to habitual context sentences, where no further differences in accuracy scores among groups were noted.…”

“…This suggests that L2 speakers can reset the way aspectual meanings are mapped from one language onto another. Despite this, other studies reported on differences on the accuracy levels of L2 advanced learners and native speakers that are usually attributed either to the influence of the L1 (Amenós et al, 2017;Diaubalick & Guijarro-Fuentes, 2019;Díaz, Bel & Bekiou, 2008) or to the effect of explicit instruction (Rothman, 2008). Furthermore, when the study focused exclusively on the acquisition of Spanish imperfect meanings, differences among native and non-native groups emerged steadily (Domínguez, Arche & Myles, 2018;Salaberry, 2013;Salaberry & Martins, 2015).…”

“…Conversely, lower accuracy levels are expected in the rejection of Preterite forms, especially, in continuous readings in Imperfect. We assume that if Aspect is grammaticalized in the L1, this may, to some extent, facilitate the acquisition of aspect marking in the L2 (Diaubalick & Guijarro-Fuentes, 2019;Díaz, Bel & Bekiou, 2008).…”

Transfer in L3 acquisition

“…Future studies, however, should assess habituality and stative predicates in more detail (e.g., integration of specific items into the L2 aspectual knowledge test). Additionally, different items looking at non-prototypical contexts as well as coercion contexts (e.g., Diaubalick & Guijarro-Fuentes, 2019) should be investigated in more detail. Finally, the investigation of mirror image groups (i.e., L1 English/L2 German/L3 Spanish vs. L1 German/L2 English/L3 Spanish) or German-speaking L2 learners of Spanish with no English knowledge would also ameliorate our understanding of the L3 acquisition of Spanish.…”

“…In the initial developmental stages, the learners "transfer whatever inflectional or periphrastic markers of aspectual meaning they have" (Salaberry, 2008, p. 213). In fact, several studies have shown that tempo-aspectual representations of the L1 influence the acquisition of aspectual distinctions in an L2 (e.g., Diaubalick & Guijarro-Fuentes, 2019). However, there is still little research on the influence of an L2 on the acquisition of an L3 in the realms of tense and aspect in L3 Spanish (Salaberry, in preparation) and the question arises to what extent the tempo-aspectual system of an L2 influences the acquisition of (im-)perfective aspect in L3 Spanish.…”