Abstract
This research project is a cross-sectional study of the acquisition of tense and aspect by 210 Persian learners of English as the experimental group and 15 advanced students as the control group. This study specifically investigates the hypothesis of Primacy of Aspect (POA) that claims there is: (1) a strong association of past/perfective morpheme with achievement and accomplishment verbs, (2) a strong association of progressive morpheme with activity verbs, (3) no overextension of progressive inflection to stative verbs, and (4) strong association of the present morpheme ‘-s’ with stative verbs. The study also argues for the semantic implications of the present data for the Distributional Bias Hypothesis (Andersen, 1991), that the distinction of verb type in the input is skewed so as to create the acquisitional pattern found in studies of the POA in language acquisition, and for the Language Bioprogram (Bickerton, 1981), that aspectual values are the knowledge a child is born with as the sources of the POA in SLA. The study also examines the syntactic implications of the data for the ‘initial state’ hypotheses in SLA: The Minimal Trees Hypothesis (Vainikka & Young-Scholten, 1994, 1996a, 1996b), The Full Transfer/Full Access hypothesis (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996) and The Weak Parametric Transfer (Valueless Features) Hypothesis (Eubank, 1993/94, 1996). The results supported the findings of the POA and the Minimal Trees Hypothesis.
Keywords
Full Text:
References
Andersen, R.W. (1984). The One to One Principle of interlanguage construction.
Language Learning, 34, 77-95.
Andersen, R. W. (1989). The acquisition of verb morphology. Unpublished
manuscript, University of California, Los Angeles.
Andersen, R. W. (1991). Developmental sequences: The emerge of aspect marking
In second language acquisition. In T. Huebner & C. A. Ferguson (Eds.),
Crosscurrents in Second Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theories (pp.305-324). AMSTERDAM: JOHN BENJAMINS.
Andersen, R. W., & Shirai, Y. (1994). Discourse motivations for some cognitive
acquisition principles. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 16, 133-15.
Bickerton, D. (1981). Roots of language. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma.
Comrie, B. (1976). Aspect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cushing, S. T. (1987). Use of verb morphology in the English interlanguage of a
native speaker of Serahuli. Unpublished paper, Applied Linguistics, University of California Los Angeles.
Dowty, D. (1979). Word meaning and montague grammar. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Economides, P. J. (1985). The expression of tense and aspect in the English
interlanguage of a Vietnamese child. Unpublished master’s thesis, University
of California, Los Angeles.
Eubank, L. (1993/94). On the transfer of parametric values in L2 development.
Language Acquisition 3, 183-208.
Eubank, L. (1996). Negation in early German-English Interlanguage: More Valueless
FEATURES IN THE L2 INITIAL STATE. Second language research 12, 73-106.
Flashner, V. (1982). The English interlanguage of three native speakers of Russian:
Two perspectives. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of California, Los Angeles.
Ghomeshi, J., & Massan, D. (1994). Lexical/Syntactic relations without projection.
Linguistic Analysis 24, 175-217.
McClure, W. (1995). Syntactic projections of the semantics of aspect. Tokyo:
Hituzi Syobo.
Robison, R. (1990). The primacy of aspect: Aspectual marking in English
interlanguage. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 12, 315-330.
Robison, R. (1995). The aspect hypothesis revisited: A cross-sectional study of tense
and aspect marking in interlanguage. Applied Linguistics 3, 344-396.
Schwartz, B.D. & Sprouse, R. (1996). L2 cognitive states and the Full Transfer/Full
Access model. Second Language Research 12, 40-72.
Shirai, Y. (1991). Primacy of aspect in language acquisition: Simplified input and
prototype. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.
Vainikka, A., & Young-Scholten, M. (1994). Direct access to X-bar theory: Evidence
from Korean and Turkish adults learning German. In T. Hoekstra & B.D. Schwartz (Eds.), Language Acquisition Studies in Generative Grammar (pp.265-316). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Vainikka, A., & Young-Scholten, M. (1996a). Gradual development of L2 phrase
structure. Second Language Research 12, 7-39.
Vainikka, A., & M.Young-Scholten. (1996b). The early stages in adult L2 syntax:
Additional evidence from Romance speakers. Second Language Research 12, 140-76.
Vendler, Z. (1967). Verbs and times. In Z. Vendler (Ed.), Linguistics in Philosophy.
Ithaca, NY: Cornel University Press.
Verkuyl, H. J. (1993). A theory of aspectuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University.
van Hout, A. (1996). Event semantics of verb frame alternations: A case study of
Dutch and its acquisition. PhD thesis, Tilburg University
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.