Roumyana Slabakova | University of Southampton | The Norwegian University of Science and Technology
This study investigates the acquisition of aspectual contrasts in the English present tense by French and Chinese
learners of English at upper-intermediate to advanced proficiency levels. An oral production task and an interpretation task show
that the expression of the aspectual present tense does not always have to constitute an insurmountable barrier to learners of
English, at least for the upper-intermediate and advanced proficiency levels tested in this study. This successful acquisition is in spite of
the differences in L1/L2 feature expressions and the unexpected variability in the input. Our research highlights that teachers
must be aware of the one-sided variability of the native speaker usage (i.e. that the present simple form can express multiple
meanings, while the present progressive is associated with one meaning only) if they want to improve performance and comprehension
at lower proficiency levels.
(2017) Spanish Imperfect revisited: Exploring L1 influence in the reassembly of imperfective features onto new L2 forms. Second Language Research, 33(4), 431–457.
Flett, S., Branigan, H. P., & Pickering, M. J.
(2013) Are non-native structural preferences affected by native language preferences?Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16(4), 751–760.
Foley, T.
(2009) Biblical translation in Chinese and Greek: Verbal aspect in theory and practice. Leiden: Brill.
Gabriele, A., & Canales, A.
(2011) No time like the present: Examining transfer at the interfaces in second language acquisition. Lingua, 121(4), 670–687.
(2012) The acquisition of interpretable features in L2 Spanish: Personal a. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15(04), 701–720.
Hawkins, R., Casillas, G., Hattori, H., Hawthorne, J., Husted, R., Lozano, C., Yamada, K.
(2008) The semantic effects of verb raising and its consequences in second language grammars. In J. Liceras, H. Zobl, & H. Gooluck (Eds.), The role of formal features in second language acquisition (pp. 328–351). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.
Hwang, S. H., & Lardiere, D.
(2013) Plural-marking in L2 Korean: A feature-based approach. Second Language Research, 29(1), 57–86.
(2012) L2 acquisition of the progressive marker zai in Mandarin Chinese. Chinese as a Second Language Research, 1(2).
Lyons, C.
(1999) Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Montrul, S., & Slabakova, R.
(2003) Competence similarities between native and near-native speakers. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 25(3), 351–398.
Prévost, P., & White, L.
(2000) Missing surface inflection or impairment in second language acquisition? Evidence from tense and agreement. Second Language Research, 16(2), 103–133.
Salaberry, M. R., Comajoan, L., & González, P.
(2013) Integrating the analyses of tense and aspect across research and methodological frameworks. In M. R. Salaberry & L. Comajoan (Eds.), Research design and methodology in studies on L2 tense and aspect (pp. 423–450). Berlin Mouton de Gruyter.
Slabakova, R.
(2003) Semantic evidence for functional categories in interlanguage grammars. Second Language Research, 19(1), 42–75.
Slabakova, R.
(2009) Features or parameters: Which one makes second language acquisition easier, and more interesting to study?Second Language Research, 25(2), 313–324.
Slabakova, R.
(2015) The effect of construction frequency and native transfer on second language knowledge of the syntax–discourse interface. Applied Psycholinguistics, 36(3), 671–699.
Svenonius, P.
(2019) Syntactic Features. In Oxford research encyclopedia of linguistics (pp. 1–37).
Team, R. D. C.
(2014) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Retrieved from [URL]> (1November 2019).
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