L2 development of -ing clauses

Abstract

Although -ing clauses are frequent in English, their acquisition has not received much attention, and there is a lack of longitudinal studies and detailed explorations of crosslinguistic influence. This longitudinal case study of five young Norwegian students reveals a developmental sequence for the syntactic roles of -ing clauses: complements of aspectual verbs > complements of other verbs and prepositions > bare adjuncts and postmodifiers of nouns > subjects. The sequence may arise from a combination of frequencies in the input and grammatical selection. Syntactic restrictions on Norwegian present participle clauses are not mirrored in the acquisition of -ing clauses, indicating that the students do not make an interlingual identification. Cross-linguistic influence is evident mainly in late acquisition and infrequent use of -ing clauses.