Previous studies indicate that even advanced learners of English as a Foreign Language and speakers of English as a Second Language extend the progressive to stative verbs, contrary to the predictions of the Aspect Hypothesis (AH). We test this claim based on a corpus of beginning and lower intermediate learner writing produced by speakers of three languages with and three without a progressive. In contrast to previous studies, we measure the frequency of stative progressives using the variable context method, which is frequently used in research on dialectal variation. Results reveal that stative progressives are very rare at the beginning/lower intermediate level, regardless of the presence of a progressive in the learners’ L1, confirming the claim of the AH for beginning and lower intermediate learners. Moreover, stative progressives mostly occur in contexts that are grammatical in native usage, especially in the interlanguage of learners with a progressive in their L1.
Aaron, J. E. (2010). Pushing the envelope: Looking beyond the variable context, Language Variation and Change, 22(1), 1–36.
Aarts, B., Close, J., & Wallis, S. (2010). Recent changes in the use of the progressive construction in English. In B. Cappelle & N. Wada (Eds.), Distinctions in English grammar (pp. 148–167). Tokyo: Kaitakusha.
Ahmadi, N. (2016). The effects and effectiveness of contrastive form-focused instruction on mastering tense-aspect. Vigo International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 131, 9–30.
Andersen, R. & Shirai, Y. (1994). Discourse motivations for some cognitive acquisition principles. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 16(2), 133–156.
Anderwald, L. (2016). I’m loving it: Marketing ploy or language change in progress?Studia Neophilologica, 13(1), 1–21.
Anthony, L. (2014). AntConc (3.4.1). Tokyo: Waseda University.
Axelsson, M. & Hahn, A. (2001). The use of the progressive in Swedish and German advanced learner English – a corpus-based study. ICAME Journal, 251, 5–30.
Ayoun, D. & Salaberry, M. R. (2008). Acquisition of English tense-aspect morphology by advanced French instructed learners. Language Learning, 58(3), 555–595.
Bailey, N., Madden, C., & Krashen, S. D. (1974). Is there a ‘natural sequence’ in adult second language learning?Language Learning, 24(2), 235–243.
Bardovi-Harlig, K. (1998). Narrative structure and lexical aspect: Conspiring factors in second language acquisition of tense-aspect morphology. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 20(4), 471–508.
Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2000). Tense and aspect in Second Language Acquisition. Form, meaning and use. Oxford: Blackwell.
Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2012). After process, then what? A longitudinal investigation of the progressive prototype in L2 English. In I. Saddour & E. Labeau (Eds.), Tense, aspect and mood in First and Second Language Acquisition (pp. 131–151). New York: Rodopi.
Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Bergström, A. (1996). Acquisition of tense and aspect in second language and foreign language learning: Learner narratives in ESL and EFL. Canadian Modern Language Review, 52(2), 308–330.
Bardovi-Harlig, K. & Reynolds, D. W. (1995). The role of lexical aspect in the acquisition of tense and aspect. TESOL Quarterly, 29(1), 107–131.
Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2014). lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using Eigen and S4. R package version 11.1–7. Retrieved from [URL]
Bayley, R. (2013). Data analysis: Quantitative approaches. In M. R. Salaberry & L. Comajoan (Eds.), Research design and methodology in studies on L2 tense and aspect (pp. 357–389). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow: Longman.
Boneh, N. (2013). Aspect: Modern Hebrew. In G. Khan (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Hebrew language and linguistics (pp. 205–218). Leiden: Brill.
Brisard, F. & De Wit, A. (2013). Modal uses of the English present progressive. In J. I. Marin-Arrese, M. Carretero, J. Arús Hita, & J. van der Auwera (Eds.), English modality. Core, periphery and evidentiality (pp. 201–220). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Chan, H. L. (2012). Tense-aspect processing in second language learners. PhD thesis. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh.
Dose-Heidelmayer, S. & Götz, S. (2016). The progressive in spoken learner language: A corpus-based analysis of use and misuse. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 54(3), 229–256.
Dowty, D. R. (1975). The stative in the progressive and other essence/accident contrasts. Linguistic Inquiry, 6(4), 579–588.
Dryer, M. S. & Haspelmath, M. (Eds.). (2013). The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Retrieved from [URL]
Dulay, H. C. & Burt, M. K. (1974). Natural sequences in child second language acquisition. Language Learning, 24(1), 37–53.
Edwards, A. (2014). The progressive aspect in the Netherlands and the ESL/EFL continuum. World Englishes, 33(2), 173–194.
Ellis, N. C. (2008). Usage-based and form-focused language acquisition: The associative learning of constructions, learned attention, and the limited L2 endstate. In P. J. Robinson & N. C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition. New York: Routledge, 372–405.
Ellis, R. (2008). The study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ellis, R. (2015). Researching acquisition sequences: Idealization and de-idealization in SLA, Language Learning, 65(1), 181–209.
Ellis, R. & Barkhuizen, G. P. (2005). Analysing learner language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fuchs, R., Götz, S., & Werner, V. (2016). The present perfect in learner Englishes: A corpus-based case study on L1 German intermediate and advanced speech and writing. In V. Werner, E. Seoane, & C. Suárez-Gómez (Eds.), Re-Assessing the present perfect (pp. 297–338). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Fuchs, R. & Gut, U. (2015). An apparent time study of the progressive in Nigerian English. In P. Collins (Ed.), Grammatical change in English world-wide (pp. 373–387). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Gablasova, D. & Brezina, V. (2015). Does speaker role affect the choice of epistemic adverbials in L2 speech? Evidence from the Trinity Lancaster Corpus. In J. Romero-Trillo (Ed.), Yearbook of corpus linguistics and pragmatics 2015. Current approaches to discourse and translation studies (pp.117–136). Heidelberg: Springer.
Garside, R. & Smith, N. (1997). A hybrid grammatical tagger: CLAWS4. In R. Garside, G. Leech, & T. McEnery (Eds.), Corpus annotation. Linguistic information from computer text corpora (pp. 102–121). London: Longman.
Gilquin, G. (2015). From design to collection of learner corpora. In S. Granger, G. Gilquin & F. Meunier (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of Learner Corpus Research (pp. 9–34). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goldschneider, J. M. & DeKeyser, R. M. (2001). Explaining the ‘natural order of L2 morpheme acquisition’ in English: A meta-analysis of multiple determinants. Language Learning, 51(1), 1–50.
Granath, S. & Wherrity, M. (2013). ‘I’m loving you – and knowing it too’: Aspect and so-called stative verbs. Rhesis. International Journal of Linguistics, Philology, and Literature, 4(1), 6–22.
Gut, U. & Fuchs, R. (2013). Progressive aspect in Nigerian English. Journal of English Linguistics, 41(3), 243–267.
Gut, U., Fuchs, R., & Wunder, E. -M. (Eds.) (2015). Universal or diverse paths to English phonology? Bridging the gap between research on phonological acquisition of English as a Second, Third or Foreign Language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
Hahn, A. (2007). Learning and teaching processes. Teachers’ learning and teaching strategies for tense and aspect. Berlin: Langenscheidt.
Hulstijn, J. H., Ellis, R., & Eskildsen, S. W. (2015). Orders and sequence in the acquisition of L2 morphosyntax, 40 years on. Language Learning, 65(1), 1–5.
Jarvis, S. & Pavlenko, A. (2008). Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition. London: Routledge.
Kim, H. -J. (2012). A case study of tense-aspect marking by L2 learners of Korean. In E. Labeau & I. Saddour (Eds.), Tense, apect and mood in First and Second Language Acquisition (pp. 153–177). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Klein, W. (1995). The acquisition of English. In R. Dietrich, W. Klein, & C. Noyau (Eds.), The acquisition of temporality in a second language (pp. 31–70). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
König, E. & Gast, V. (2012). Understanding English-German contrasts. Berlin: Erich Schmidt.
Kortmann, B. & Lunkenheimer, K. (Eds.). (2013). The Electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available at [URL]
Kranich, S. (2010). The progressive in modern English. A corpus-based study of grammaticalization and related changes. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Kruger, H. & Van Rooy, B. (2017). Editorial practice and the progressive in Black South African English. World Englishes, 36(1), 20–41.
Lee, S. -A. (2015). Aktionsart, progressive aspect and underspecification. Linguistic Research, 32(1), 151–193.
Leńko-Szymańska, A. (2007). Past progressive or simple past? The acquisition of progressive aspect by Polish advanced learners of English. In E. Hidalgo, L. Quereda, & J. Santana (Eds.), Corpora in the foreign language classroom (pp. 253–266). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Lenth, R. V. & Hervé, M. (2015). lsmeans: Least-Squares Means. R package version 2.17. Retrieved from [URL].
Levin, M. (2013). The progressive verb in modern American English. In B. Aarts, J. Close, G. Leech, & S. Wallis (Eds.), The verb phrase in English. Investigating recent language change with corpora (pp. 187–216). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mair, C. (2012). Progressive and continuous aspect. In R. Binnick (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Tense and Aspect (pp. 803–827). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McClure, W. (1993). A semantic parameter: The progressive in Japanese and English. In S. Choi (Ed.), Japanese/Korean linguistics (pp. 254–270). Stanford: Stanford Linguistics Association.
McLaughlin, B. (1990). Restructuring. Applied Linguistics, 11(2), 113–128.
Meriläinen, L., Paulasto, H., & Rautionaho, P. (2017). Extended uses of the progressive form in inner, outer and expanding circle Englishes. In M. Filppula, J. Klemola, A. Mauranen, & S. Vetchinnikova (Eds.), Changing English. Global and local perspectives (pp. 191–216). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Mufwene, S. S. (1984). Stativity and the progressive. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.
Mukherjee, J. & Rohrbach, J. -M. (2006). Rethinking applied corpus linguistics from a language-pedagogical perspective: New departures in learner corpus research. In B. Kettemann & G. Marko (Eds.), Planing, gluing and painting corpora. Inside the applied corpus linguist’s workshop (pp. 205–232). Frankfurt: Lang.
Ortega, L. (2009). Understanding Second Language Acquisition. London: Hodder Arnold.
Pashler, H. & Harris, C. R. (2012). Is the replicability crisis overblown? Three arguments examined. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(6), 531–536.
Petré, P. (2017). The extravagant progressive: An experimental corpus study on the history of emphatic [BE Ving]. English Language and Linguistics, 21(2), 227–250.
Platt, J., Weber, H., & Ho, M. L. (1984). The New Englishes. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
R Core Team. (2013). R. A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Retrieved from [URL]
Ranta, E. (2006). The ‘attractive’ progressive: Why use the -ing form in English as a Lingua Franca?Nordic Journal of English Studies, 5(2), 95–116.
Rautionaho, P. (2014). Variation in the progressive. A corpus-based study into world Englishes. Tampere: Acta Universitatis Tamperensis.
Robison, R. E. (1990). The primacy of aspect: Aspectual marking in English interlanguage. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 12(3), 315–330.
Robison, R. E. (1995). The Aspect Hypothesis revisited: A cross-sectional study of tense and aspect marking in interlanguage. Applied Linguistics, 16(3), 344–370.
Rogatcheva, S. (2014). Aspect in learner writing. A corpus-Based comparison of advanced Bulgarian and German learners’ written English. PhD thesis. Giessen: University of Giessen.
Rohde, A. (1996). The aspect hypothesis and the emergence of tense distinctions in naturalistic L2 acquisition. Linguistics, 34(5), 1115–1137.
Römer, U. (2009). The inseparability of lexis and grammar: Corpus linguistic perspectives. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 7(1), 141–163.
Rüdiger, S. (2016.) Cuppa coffee? Challenges and opportunities of compiling a conversational English corpus in an Expanding Circle setting. In H. Christ, D. Klenovšak, L. Sönning, & V. Werner (Eds.), A blend of MaLT. Selected contributions from the Methods and Linguistic Theories Symposium 2015 (pp. 49–72). Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press.
Ruwayshid, A. (2014). Second language acquisition of aspect and tense by Saudi-Arabic learners of English. PhD thesis. York: University of York.
Salaberry, M. R. (1998). The development of aspectual distinctions in classroom L2 French. Canadian Modern Language Review, 54(4), 504–542.
Salaberry, M. R. (2008). Marking past tense in Second Language Acquisition. London: Continuum.
Salaberry, M. R. & Shirai, Y. (2002). L2 acquisition of tense-aspect morphology. In M. R. Salaberry & Y. Shirai (Eds.), The L2 acquisition of tense-aspect morphology (pp. 1–20). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Schilk, M., & Hammel, M. (2014). The progressive in South Asian and Southeast Asian varieties of English: Mapping areal homogeneity and heterogeneity. Language and Computers, 78(1), 147–171.
Schneider, E. W. (2007). Postcolonial English. Varieties around the world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shirai, Y. (1994). On the overgeneralization of progressive marking on stative verbs: Bioprogram or input?First Language, 14(40), 67–82.
Shirai, Y. (2009). Temporality in first and second language acquisition. In W. Klein & P. Li (Eds.), The expression of time (pp. 167–194). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Shirai, Y. (2014). The acquisition of tense-aspect in Asian languages. In H. Winskel & P. Padakanna (Eds.), South and Southeast Asian psycholinguistics (pp. 60–70). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shirai, Y. & Kurono, A. (1998). The acquisition of tense-aspect marking in Japanese as a second language. Language Learning, 48(2), 279–244.
Śmiecińska, J. (2003). Stative verbs and the progressive aspect in English. Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, 381, 187–195.
Smith, C. S. (1983). A theory of aspectual choice. Language, 59(3), 479–501.
Ssempuuma, J., Isingoma, B., & Meierkord, C. (2016). The use of the progressive in Ugandan English. In C. Meierkord, B. Isingoma, & S. Namyalo (Eds.), Ugandan English. Its sociolinguistics, structure and uses in a globalizing post-protectorate (pp. 173–199). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Tagliamonte, S. & Roberts, C. (2005). So weird; so cool; so innovative: The use of intensifiers in the television series Friends. American Speech, 80(3), 280–300.
Thewissen, J.2013. Capturing L2 accuracy developmental patterns: Insights from an error-tagged EFL learner corpus. The Modern Language Journal, 97(s1), 77–101.
Van Rooy, B. & Piotrowska, C. (2015). The development of an extended time period meaning of the progressive in Black South African English. In P. Collins (Ed.), Grammatical change in English world-wide (pp. 465–483). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Van Rooy, B. & Schäfer, L. (2002). The effect of learner errors on POS tag errors during automatic POS tagging. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 20(4), 325–335.
Wulff, S. & Römer, U. (2009). Becoming a proficient academic writer: Shifting lexical preferences in the use of the progressive. Corpora, 4(2), 115–133.
Wulff, S., Ellis, N. C., Römer, U., Bardovi-Harlig, K., & LeBlanc, C. (2009). The acquisition of tense–aspect: Converging evidence from corpora and telicity ratings. The Modern Language Journal, 93(3), 354–369.
Yip, P. -C. & Rimmington, D. (2004). Chinese. A comprehensive grammar. London: Routledge.
Yue, A. (2003). Chinese dialects: Grammar. In G. Thurgood & R. LaPolla (Eds.). The Sino-Tibetan languages (pp. 84–125). London: Routledge.
Zagona, K. (2002). The syntax of Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zhao, Y. & MacWhinney, B. (2010). Competing cues: A corpus-based study of the English tense-aspect in second language acquisition. In K. Franich, K. M. Iserman, & L. L. Keil (Eds.), Proceedings of the 34rd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp.503–514). Somerville: Cascadilla Press.
Cited by (7)
Cited by seven other publications
Zeng, Xiaoyan, Yasuhiro Shirai & Xiaoxiang Chen
2023. A corpus-based study of the acquisition of the English progressive by L1 Chinese learners: from prototypical activities to marked statives. Linguistics 61:3 ► pp. 749 ff.
2022. Revisiting the myth of stative progressives in world Englishes. World Englishes 41:2 ► pp. 183 ff.
Díez-Bedmar, María Belén
2021. The Use of the Progressive in Light of the AH in Monolingual EFL-Instructed Spanish Learners at University Level: A Longitudinal Learner Corpus-Based SLA Study. Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación 87 ► pp. 53 ff.
RAUTIONAHO, PAULA & ROBERT FUCHS
2021. Recent change in stative progressives: a collostructional investigation of British English in 1994 and 2014. English Language and Linguistics 25:1 ► pp. 35 ff.
Zeng, Xiaoyan, Xiaoxiang Chen & Yasuhiro Shirai
2021. Lexical and Grammatical Aspect in On-line Processing of English Past Tense and Progressive Aspect by Mandarin Speakers. Frontiers in Psychology 12
2020. THE ASPECT HYPOTHESIS AND THE ACQUISITION OF L2 PAST MORPHOLOGY IN THE LAST 20 YEARS. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 42:5 ► pp. 1137 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.