Marking Past Tense in Second Language Acquisition: A Theoretical Model

304 Pages·2008·15.22 MB·English

by  Rafael Salaberry

Marking Past Tense
in Second Language Acquisition
This page intentionally left blank
Marking Past Tense in Second
Language Aquisition
A Theoretical Model
Rafael Salaberry
continuum
Continuum International Publishing Group
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© Rafael Salaberry 2008
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-84706-238-3 (hardback)
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Table of Contents
list of Figures and Tables ix
Foreword xii
Foreword xiv
DalUa Ayoun
Chapter 1: Learning Spanish Past Tense Aspect 1
1. Introduction 1
2. The Learning Challenge 3
3. Tense-Aspect in Context 8
3.1 Discourse effects 8
3.2 Lexical and grammatical aspect 11
4. Acquisition Hypotheses 13
5. Contextualized Meanings: A Lexico-discursive Framework 15
6. Conclusion 18
Chapter 2: Delimiting Lexical and Grammatical Aspect 20
1. Introduction 20
2. Definitions of Aspect 20
2.1 Is aspectual representation subjective? 22
2.2 Is aspect deictic or non-deictic? 25
3. Lexical Aspect 28
3.1 Lexical aspectual classes 28
3.1.1 Dynamicity and telicity 31
3.1.2 Durativity 34
3.1.3 Expanding the list of aspectual classes 35
3.2 Compositionality of lexical aspect 37
3.2.1 Internal arguments 38
3.2.2 External arguments 40
3.2.3 Adjuncts 42
3.2.4 Aspectual particles 43
4. Grammatical Aspect 44
4.1 Perfective and imperfective 45
vi Table of Contents
4.2 Spanish Preterite and Imperfect 46
4.2.1 Boundedness 46
4.2.2 More than boundedness 48
5. The Interface of Lexical Aspect and Grammatical Aspect 50
5.1 Operational tests of inherent lexical semantics 50
5.2 Semantic multivalence of verbs 54
5.3 Lexical aspectual shifts 56
5.3.1 Smith: Basic and derived situation types 57
5.3.2 Shifts as viewpoint aspect 60
5.3.3 de Swart: coercion 62
5.3.4 The timing of the coercion mechanism 63
5.4 Two categories or one? Lexical versus grammatical aspect 64
5.4.1 No shifts of lexical aspectual class 64
5.4.2 Privative semantic features 67
6. Aspect as a Contextual Phenomenon 70
6. 1 Scope of analysis of tense-aspectual knowledge 70
6.2 Syntactic constructions 71
6.3 Discourse 72
6.3.1 Grounding 73
6.3.2 Text structure 74
6.3.3 Sentence sequencing 76
6.4 Default lexical aspectual classes 78
7. Invariant and Contextualized Meanings 80
7.1 Iterativity and habituality 81
7.2 Iterativity as opposed to habituality 81
7.3 Principled distinction 84
8. Theoretical Frameworks of Reference 85
8.1 Minimalism 86
8.2 Cognitive linguistics 89
9. Conclusion 92
Chapter 3: Hypotheses about the L2 Development
of Tense-Aspect Knowledge 95
1. Introduction 95
2. The Independent Variables 98
2.1 The effect of lexical aspect 98
2.1.1 LI acquisition studies 99
2.1.2 The lexical aspect hypothesis 103
2.2 The effect of discourse structure 105
2.2.1 Narrative type 106
2.2.2 Conflating the LAH and the DH? 108
2.3 The effect of perceptual saliency 112
2.3.1 Rule-based versus exemplar-based approaches 112
Table of Contents vii
2.3.2 The distributional bias hypothesis 118
2.4 The effect of LI transfer 120
2.4.1 Complementary hypotheses 121
2.4.2 Timing 122
2.4.3 Spreading 123
2.5 The effect of syntactic structure 125
2.5.1 Main theoretical concepts 126
2.5.2 Distinctions among generative proposals 128
3. Review of Findings from Selected Studies 130
3. 1 A default marker of past tense 130
3.1.1 Data from LI English-L2 Spanish 131
3.1.1.1 Data from classroom learners 131
3.1.1.2 Data from advanced learners 140
3.1.1.3 Data from study-abroad students 143
3.1.2 Data from other languages 151
3.1.2.1 Data from LI Dutch and Danish speakers 151
3.1.2.2 Data from other Romance languages 155
3.2 Syntactic approaches 162
3.2.1 (Selective) effects of pragmatic coercion 163
3.2.2 Iterativity 169
3.2.3 Genericity 175
3.2.4 Constructionism 182
4. Conclusion 185
Chapter 4: The L2 Acquisition of Invariant-Contextualized
Meanings of Tense-Aspect 189
1. Introduction 189
2. Contextualized Meanings 190
2.1 Context relevant for all theoretical accounts 191
2.2 Grammatical knowledge is contextual knowledge 193
2.3 Computational costs of processing aspectual knowledge 195
3. Invariant Meanings and Default Values 198
3.1 Boundedness as a grammatical concept 200
3.2 Iterativity as a grammatical concept 202
3.3 Genericity as a grammatical concept 206
4. Mapping Aspectual Knowledge onto Grammatical Form 207
4.1 Thinking-for-speaking 207
4.2 Mapping concepts to forms 209
4.3 Summary: Mapping aspectual knowledge
onto grammatical form 212
5. The Effect of the LI 213
5.1 English Simple Past 214
5.2 English marks tense only: Are states special? 216
viii Table of Contents
5.3 The hypothesis about a default past tense 218
5.3.1 Main theoretical tenets 218
5.3.2 Reconciling competing hypotheses 221
5.3.3 Expanding the DPTH 222
6. Modular Versus General Learning Processes 224
6.1 Modular learning in L2 acquisition 224
6.2 General learning processes 225
6.3 Summary: Modular versus general learning processes 227
7. Instructional Effects 228
7.1 Pedagogical rules 228
7.2 Mapping concepts to form 231
7.3 Acquiring target rules 233
8. Conclusion 234
Chaper 5: Final Thoughts 235
1. Introduction 235
2. Theoretical Issues 236
2.1 Temporal versus extensional meanings 236
2.2 A broad contextual definition of temporal aspectual meanings 237
2.3 Theoretical frameworks 239
2.4 Form precedes meaning 241
2.5 Competence versus performance 242
2.6 Developmental stages 244
2.7 Default tense markers 246
3. Methodological Issues 247
3.1 Interpretation and production data 247
3.2 The analysis of data 249
4. Conclusion 252
Notes 254
References 261
Index 275
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
Figure 2.1 Lexical aspectual classes according to semantic features 29
Figure 3.1 Sequential development of past tense morphology
according to lexical aspectual classes 104
Figure 3.2 Syntactic representation of Inner and Outer aspect 126
Figure 3.3 Distribution of means for foreground by level of
proficiency 140
Figure 4.1 Continuum of invariant to contextualized meanings 200
Tables
Table 1.1 Selection of past tense marker for the verb pasar
(item22, Task 2) 10
Table 2.1 Classification of verb types according to Aristotle
and Vendler 28
Table 2.2 Lexical aspectual classes according to semantic features 31
Table 2.3 Classification of lexical aspectual classes
according to Michaelis (2004) 36
Table 2.4 Privative semantic features of lexical aspectual classes 68
Table 3.1 L2 Spanish studies on tense-aspect acquisition
for the period 1999-2007 96
Table 3.2 Distribution of tokens of perfective and imperfective
markers across some studies 108
Table 3.3 Past tense marking discriminated by grounding and
dynamicity 109
Table 3.4 Distribution of morphological marking of verbs
according to telicity in the foreground in percentages 110
Table 3.5 Distribution of morphological marking
of verbs according to lexical aspect and
grounding in percentages 111