Tense or Aspect?: A Review of Initial Past Tense Marking and Task Conditions for Beginning Classroom Learners of Spanish

Abstract

This essay contributes to the research on the emergence of tense/aspect morphology by reviewing the results and task conditions of studies supporting either the Aspect Hypothesis (AH) or the Default Past Tense Hypothesis (DPTH) for second language (L2) learners of Spanish. The AH has found that past marking emerges based on inherent aspectual categories (Andersen 1991; Andersen and Shirai 1994), and the DPTH proposes (Salaberry 1999, 2002, 2003, 2008; Salaberry and Ayoun 2005) that beginning learners of Spanish with first language (L1) English initially use perfective past marking as a default tense marker. The present study reviewed the results and task conditions of studies of beginning classroom learners of Spanish with L1 English that support either hypothesis. The review shows that many learners go through a stage of marking preterite regardless of lexical aspect particularly in tasks requiring an explicit focus on forms or in impersonal narratives. On the other hand, beginning learners show prototypical associations of preterite marking with telic predicates in open-ended tasks or personal narratives, and stronger associations of imperfect marking with state verbs especially in personal narratives.

A ‘mixed methods’ approach for investigating aspect in a second language

“…Reviews of existing studies (see e.g. Bonilla, 2013;Comajoan, 2005;Shirai, 2004) show that a high number of studies, in particular those investigating the acquisition of lexical aspect, have relied on oral, (semi-)spontaneous data elicited mainly through one task, typically an impersonal narrative. Domínguez et al (2009) and Tracy-Ventura and show that the types of oral tasks most commonly used in studies testing leading hypotheses are personal narratives, impersonal narratives based on pictures or short video clips, role-plays, interviews and free conversations.…”

The importance of task variability in the design of learner corpora for SLA research

“…In fact, some authors (e.g., Bonilla 2013, Shirai 2004 found that support for the AH was linked to the tasks used. In Bonilla's (2013) survey of studies on L2 Spanish, she found that open-ended tasks better supported the AH, whereas Shirai's (2004) survey of L2 English studies demonstrated that studies which used paper and pencil tests, such as cloze-tests or fill-in-the-blank, supported the AH more consistently. The following section will look at this issue in more detail.…”

“…Although several researchers (e.g., Bonilla 2013, Shirai 2004, Sugaya & Shirai 2007 have made reference to the role of task type in explaining differential outcomes in research testing the AH, few studies have empirically tested this claim. In a study comparing accuracy rates across tasks in L2 Spanish, Salaberry & Lopez-Ortega (1998) found that only the lower proficiency group's use of past tense morphology varied between a written narrative and a grammar test (either fill-in-the-blank or multiple choice depending on the group), with more mistakes occurring in the grammar test; the more advanced group scored consistently across tasks.…”

Corpus-based study of L3 acquisition on Spanish past tense: evidence from learners’ oral production

“…It is known that second language learners of Spanish at the early stages of development have difficulty mastering the preterit and imperfect morphology. The acquisition of past tense and aspect has been studied extensively in research on second language acquisition (cf., Salaberry, 2000;Bardovi-Harlig, 2002;Ayoun & Salaberry, 2005;Bonilla, 2013). This topic is also especially interesting in cross-linguistic studies with learners of various language backgrounds when the learners' native language and target language share different systems in terms of marking tense and aspect.…”

“…Previous research on the acquisition of the Spanish past tense and aspect has examined different task conditions, including L2 learners' oral and written texts, personal or impersonal narratives, and open-or closedended tasks (see also Bonilla, 2013). However, little research has been conducted to investigate the acquisition of target forms from a corpus-based approach, which is an emerging area of inquiry in Spanish second language acquisition research (Mendikoetxea, 2014).…”