Interpretation of English tense morphophonology by advanced L2 speakers

Abstract

This study tests the assumption in much of the literature on the second language acquisition of English tense and aspect morphophonology (e.g. bare verbs, V-ing, V-ed) that once speakers are beyond intermediate levels of proficiency, both distribution and interpretation of these forms are represented in a target-like way in their mental grammars. Three groups of advanced non-native speakers (whose L1s were Chinese, Japanese and the verb-raising languages Arabic, French, German and Spanish) were compared with native speakers on an acceptability judgement task requiring informants to judge the appropriateness of sentences involving different verb forms to contexts which privileged specific interpretations. The results suggest an effect of the persistent influence of parametric differences between languages such that where parametrised grammatical properties are not activated in the L1, they are not available for the construction of representations in the L2.

Aspect in L2 English

“…Previous studies have reported that adult Japanese-speaking learners of English have difficulty with certain forms in specific contexts such as accepting -ing in a sentence like The plane is arriving at the airport when the context describes a completed event, i.e., a picture shows that the plane is stationary at the airport (Gabriele, 2009). Other difficulties for Japanese L2 learners relate to an over acceptance of -ing with verbs like know, e.g., *He is knowing him for many years (Al-Hamad et al, 2002;Hawkins et al, 2008). These studies suggest that difficulty results from influence of the -te iru form in Japanese, which superficially resembles the -ing form.…”

“…They suggest that instruction and input are more likely to take precedence over L1 transfer as learners can interpret sentences like (17a) even if they have limited exposure to such sentences. In sum, the studies by Al-Hamad et al (2002), Hawkins et al (2008), and Okuwaki (2005) show that adult Japanese intermediate and advanced learners of English do have problems with achievement and stative verb types when they are asked to make judgments on present simple continuations vs. present progressive continuations of short contexts. Gabriele (2009) and Gabriele and Canales (2011) found that advanced Japanese learners can make correct judgments when such continuations are presented to learners in a short story.…”

“…Studies that have specifically examined Japanese L2 learners of English include Al-Hamad et al (2002), Gabriele (2005), Gabriele (2009), Hawkins et al (2008, Okuwaki (2005), and Yamazaki-Hasegawa (2012). Al-Hamad et al (2002) investigated the acquisition of present simple and present progressive be+V-ing verb forms by advanced adult L2 English learners with various L1 backgrounds, including French, Japanese and Chinese. The task instructed participants to judge the appropriateness of two potential continuations of a short context, as shown in example (9), by rating each continuation on a 5-point Likert scale; -2 represents completely inappropriate and +2 signifies completely appropriate.…”

“…The interpretation acceptability task is similar in its design to the task used by Al-Hamad et al (2002). The overall results from the interpretation task showed that the Japanese L2 speakers had difficulty judging the be+V-ing construction correctly with achievements.…”

“…In other words, advanced adult Japanese learners have persistent difficulty with L2 aspect. Most work has investigated the influence of L1 semantic properties by adopting a syntactic approach (e.g., Al-Hamad et al, 2002;Okuwaki, 2005;YamazakiHasegawa, 2012). However, Gabriele (2009) and Gabriele and McClure (2011) have recently used McClure's (1993) framework on aspectual semantics.…”