Table Of ContentTHE DEVELOPMENT OF PAST TENSE MORPHOLOGY IN L2 SPANISH
STUDIES IN BILINGUALISM (SiBil)
EDITORS
Kees de Bot Thom Huebner
University of Nijmegen San José State University
EDITORIAL BOARD
Michael Clyne (Monash University)
Kathryn Davis (University of Hawaii at Manoa)
Joshua Fishman (Yeshiva University)
François Grosjean (Université de Neuchâtel)
Wolfgang Klein (Max Planck Institut für Psycholinguistik)
Georges Lüdi (University of Basel)
Christina Bratt Paulston (University of Pittsburgh)
Suzanne Romaine (Merton College, Oxford)
Merrill Swain (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education)
Richard Tucker (Carnegie Mellon University)
Volume 22
M. Rafael Salaberry
The Development of Past Tense Morphology in L2 Spanish
THE DEVELOPMENT OF
PAST TENSE MORPHOLOGY
IN L2 SPANISH
M. RAFAEL SALABERRY
Rice University
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of Ameri-
8 can National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Salaberry, M. Rafael.
The development of past tense morphology in L2 Spanish / M. Rafael Salaberry.
p. cm. -- (Studies in Bilingualism, ISSN 0928-1533 ; v. 22)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Language acquisition. 2. Grammar, Comparative and general--Aspect. 3. Grammar,
Comparative and general--Tense. 4. Spanish language--Acquisition I. Title. II. Series.
P118.S17 2000
401’.93--dc21 00-042898
ISBN 90 272 4132 5 (Eur.) / 1 55619 954 6 (US) (Hb)
© 2000 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA
A quienes me inspiraron a culminar este trabajo
desde cerca, María José
desde lejos, Mamy y Papy
desde siempre, Tata y Sor Olga
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
C 1
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 English-Spanish contrasts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2 Conflicting theoretical claims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3 Focus of the study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
C 2
Aspect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.1 Definition of aspect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2 Covert and overt categories of aspect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.2.1 Lexical aspect and viewpoint aspect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.2.2 Components of lexical aspectual values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.2.3 The semantic multivalence of verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.3 Operational tests of inherent lexical semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.3.1 The shifting nature of lexical aspectual classes . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.3.2 Criteria to classify lexical semantics of verb phrases . . . . . . . 26
2.3.3 Operational tests in English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.3.4 Operational tests in Spanish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.4 Lexical, grammatical and situation aspect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
C 3
ThedevelopmentofaspectinL1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.1 The development of temporality in a first language:
Piagetian proposals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.2 Theoretical explanations and debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.2.1 The lexical aspect hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
viii TABLEOFCONTENTS
3.2.2 The influence of the input: distributional biases . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.2.3 Inherent lexical aspect and viewpoint aspect . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.3 Learning capacities and cognitive development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
C 4
ThedevelopmentofaspectinL2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.1 The pragmatic marking of aspect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.2 The morphosyntactic marking of aspect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4.2.1 The lexical aspect hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
4.2.2 The discourse hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
4.2.3 Distributional biases: The role of conventional aspect . . . . . . 67
4.2.4 A prototype account: a default marker of past tense . . . . . . . 72
4.2.5 Perceptual saliency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
4.3 Selected previous studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
4.3.1 Schmidt and Frota 1986 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
4.3.2 Kaplan 1987 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
4.3.3 Robison 1990, 1995 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
4.3.4 Ramsay 1990 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.3.5 Bardovi-Harlig and Bergström 1996 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.3.6 Hasbún 1995 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
4.3.7 Lafford 1996 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
4.3.8 Liskin-Gasparro 1997 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
4.3.9 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
4.4 The role of instruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
4.4.1 Pedagogy of past tense verbal morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
4.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
C 5
Researchmethodologyintheanalysisofpasttensemorphology . . . . . . 107
5.1 Pilot study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
5.1.1 Subjects, materials and procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
5.1.2 Analysis of results and discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
5.2 Summary and projection of results for main study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
5.3 Main study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
5.3.1 Hypotheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
5.3.2 Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
5.3.3 Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
5.3.3.1 Movie narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
TABLEOFCONTENTS ix
5.3.3.2 Written tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
5.3.3.3 On-line processing of cloze test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
5.3.4 Procedure of data collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
5.3.5 Classification of verbs: operational tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
5.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
C 6
Analysisofdatasets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
6.1 Results from movie narrative task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
6.2 Results from cloze and editing task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
6.2.1 Cloze test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
6.2.2 Editing task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
6.2.3 Differential scores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
6.3 Results from joint writing task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
6.3.1 Individual task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
6.3.2 Joint task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
6.3.3 Processing of joint problem solving task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
C 7
DevelopmentalstagesintheacquisitionofSpanishpasttense
morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
7.1 Summary of findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
7.1.1 Oral movie narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
7.1.1.1 A default marker of past tense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
7.1.1.2 Developmental patterns: Underapplication,
overgeneralization and regression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
7.1.1.3 Present versus past tense marking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
7.1.2 Cloze and editing written tasks: confirmatory data . . . . . . . . 177
7.1.3 Speak-aloud task: metalinguistic rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
7.2 Significance of the present findings in the context of previous studies 180
7.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
NameIndex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
SubjectIndex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
