Tense, Aspect and Mood in First and Second Language Acquisition

230 Pages·2012·1.672 MB·

by  Emmanuelle Labeau, Inés Saddour

Tense, aspect and mood in first and
second language acquisition
ahiers
C
24
hronos
Collection dirigée par Carl Vetters (Université du Littoral – Côte d’Opale)
Directeur adjoint: Patrick Caudal (CNRS – Université Paris 7)
Comité de lecture: Anne-Marie Berthonneau (Université de Lille 3)
Andrée Borillo (Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail)
Anne Carlier (Université de Valenciennes)
Renaat Declerck (KULAK-Courtrai)
Walter De Mulder (Université d’Anvers)
Patrick Dendale (Université d’Anvers)
Ilse Depraetere (KUB - Bruxelles)
Dulcie Engel (University of Swansea)
Laurent Gosselin (Université de Rouen)
Florica Hrubara (Université Ovidius Constanta)
Emmanuelle Labeau (Aston University)
Véronique Lagae (Université de Valenciennes)
Sylvie Mellet (CNRS - Université de Nice)
Jacques Moeschler (Université de Genève)
Arie Molendijk (Université de Groningue)
Louis de Saussure (Université de Neuchâtel)
Catherine Schnedecker (Université de Metz)
Marleen Van Peteghem (Université de Lille 3)
Genoveva Puskas (Université de Genève)
Co Vet (Université de Groningue)
Carl Vetters (Université du Littoral - Côte d’Opale)
Svetlana Vogeleer (Institut Libre Marie Haps - Bruxelles)
Marcel Vuillaume (Université de Nice)
Ce volume est une réalisation de l’équipe de recherche “HLLI” - EA 4030
de l’Université du Littoral - Côte d’Opale.
Tense, aspect and mood in first and
second language acquisition
Edited by
Emmanuelle Labeau and Inès Saddour
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2012
Cover image: morgueFile
Cover design: Inge Baeten
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ISBN: 978-90-420-3430-3
E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-0718-8
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2012
Printed in The Netherlands
Contents

Emmanuelle Labeau Introduction i-iv
Inès Saddour
Aviya Hacohen On the acquisition of compositional 1-25
telicity in Hebrew
Milena Kuehnast Acquisition of negative imperatives in 27-54
Bulgarian – implications for verbal
aspect
Yi-An Lin To spellout or not to spellout? That’s 55-72
the deficit
Olga Gupol The development of L1 Russian tense- 73-106
Susan Rothstein aspect morphology in Russian-Hebrew
Sharon Armon-Lotem sequential bilinguals
M. Rafael Salaberry Theoretical views on the development 107-129
of Spanish L 2 knowledge about
iterativity and habituality
Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig After process, then what? A 131-151
longitudinal investigation of the
progressive prototype in L2 English
Hyun-Jin Kim A case study of tense-aspect marking 153-177
by L2 learners of Korean
Evgeniya Sergeeva The acquisition of French verbal 179-200
Jean-Pierre Chevrot tenses by Russian adult learners: stem
alternation and frequency effect
Martin Howard From tense and aspect to modality: 201-223
The acquisition of future, conditional
and subjunctive morphology in L2
French. A preliminary study
Introduction
Emmanuelle LABEAU
Aston University
Inès SADDOUR
Aston University

Time after time… and aspect and mood
Over the last twenty five years, the study of time, aspect and – to a lesser
extent – mood acquisition has enjoyed increasing popularity and a constant
widening of its scope. In such a teeming field, what can be the contribution of
this book? We believe that it is unique in several respects. First, this volume
encompasses studies from different theoretical frameworks: functionalism vs
generativism or function-based vs form-based approaches. It also brings
together various sub-fields (first and second language acquisition, child and
adult acquisition, bilingualism) that tend to evolve in parallel rather than
learn from each other. A further originality is that it focuses on a wide range
of typologically different languages, and features less studied languages such
as Korean and Bulgarian. Finally, the book gathers some well-established
scholars, young researchers, and even research students, in a rich inter-
generational exchange, that ensures the survival but also the renewal and the
refreshment of the discipline.
The book at a glance
The first part of the volume is devoted to the study of child language
acquisition in monolingual, impaired and bilingual acquisition, while the
second part focuses on adult learners. In this section, we will provide an
overview of each chapter.
The first study by Aviya Hacohen explores the acquisition of composi-
tional telicity in Hebrew L1. Her psycholinguistic approach contributes
valuable data to refine theoretical accounts. Through an innovating
methodology, she gathers information from adults and children on the
influence of definiteness, number, and the mass vs countable distinction on
the constitution of a telic interpretation of the verb phrase. She notices that
the notion of definiteness is mastered by children as young as 10, while the
mass/count distinction does not appear before 10;7. However, this does not
entail an adult-like use of telicity. She therefore concludes that beyond
© Cahiers Chronos 24 (2012): i-iv
ii Emmanuelle Labeau & Inès Saddour
definiteness and noun type, pragmatics may play an important role in the
derivation of Hebrew compositional telicity.
For the second chapter we move from a Semitic language to a Slavic
one. Milena Kuehnast focuses on the acquisition of negative imperatives in
Bulgarian, a form that presents the specificity of being grammatical only with
the imperfective form of the verb. The study examines how 40 Bulgarian
children distributed in two age-groups (15 between 2;11-3;11, and 25
between 4;00 and 5;00) develop with respect to the acquisition of
imperfective viewpoints, and the use of imperfective morphology. It shows
an evolution in the recourse to expression of force in the use of negative
imperatives, as well as the influence of morphological complexity on the
successful production of forms.
With Yi-An Lin’s study, we concentrate both on another type of
informant and of framework. Indeed, he studies the production of children
suffering from Specific Language Impairment (SLI), a developmental
language disorder the causes of which include cognitive impairment, psycho-
emotional disturbance, and motor-articulatory disorders. Using the Leonard
corpus in CLAN, Lin aims to test two competing accounts of SLI (the
Agreement and Tense Omission Model [ATOM] and his own Phonetic Form
Deficit Model [PFDM]) that conflicts on the role attributed to spellout in the
impairment. Spellout is the point at which the Computational System for
Human Language (C ) passes over the most recently derived part of the
HL
derivation to the interface components, Phonetic Form (PF) and Logical
Form (LF). ATOM claims that SLI sufferers have a deficit in their syntactic
representation while PFDM suggests that the problem only occurs at the
spellout level. After studying the corpus from the point of view of tense /
agreement marking, case marking, argument-movement and auxiliary
inversion, Lin finds further support for his model.
Olga Gupol, Susan Rohstein and Sharon Armon-Lotem’s chapter offers
a welcome bridge between child language acquisition and multilingualism.
Their study explores the influence of intensive exposure to L2 Hebrew on the
development of L1 Russian tense and aspect morphology through an elicited
narrative. Their informants are 40 Russian-Hebrew sequential bilingual
children distributed in two age groups 4;0 – 4;11 and 7;0 – 8;0. They come to
the conclusion that bilingual children anchor their narratives in perfective like
monolinguals. However, while aware of grammatical aspect, bilinguals lack
the full form-function mapping and tend to overgeneralize the imperfective
on the principles of simplicity (as imperfective are the least morphologically
marked forms), universality (as it covers more functions) and interference.
Rafael Salaberry opens the second section on foreign language learners.
In his contribution, he reflects on the difficulty L2 learners of Spanish
encounter when it comes to distinguishing between iterativity (conveyed with
the use of the preterite) and habituality (expressed through the imperfect). He
Introduction iii
examines in turn the theoretical views that see, on the one hand, habituality
as part of grammatical knowledge and iterativity as pragmatic knowledge,
and on the other hand both habituality and iterativity as grammatical
knowledge. He comes to the conclusion that the use of preterite as a default
past tense marker may explain the impoverished system of aspectual
distinctions, not only at beginners but also at advanced levels, which may
indicate that the system is differentially represented among L1 and L2
speakers. Acquiring the vast array of functions conveyed by a form is
therefore no mean feat, as confirmed by the next study.
Based on the prototype theory, Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig’s chapter
focuses on the development of the progressive in L2 English. It opens with an
overview of the functions of the progressive in English. Then, a review of
acquisition research on the progressive in English and other languages is
provided. The bulk of the chapter reports on a longitudinal study of 16
learners of L2 English and shows how their use of the progressive expands
from the prototypical uses of process and continuousness to the less
prototypical uses of repetition and future. The study concludes that the
progressive spreads in interlanguage in accordance with prototype accounts.
However, it suggests additional stages, not predicted by the Aspect
Hypothesis, in the development from activities and accomplishments at least
for the meaning of repeatedness.
A similar theoretical framework is adopted in the following chapter, but
it deals with a lesser studied language. Hyun-Jin Kim revisits the claims of
the Aspect Hypothesis in relation to the acquisition of L2 Korean by two L1
English learners. Inspired by studies on L2 Japanese, she focuses on the
emergence and spread of the past / perfective marker –ess- and the
progressive – ko iss- in the interlanguage of her informants throughout their
third and fourth semesters of study. The data collected through six sessions of
conversational interviews and picture description tasks seem to support the
Aspect Hypothesis. Indeed learners show a strong association between past
tense and accomplishments / achievements at the start and a gradual
extension to other types; a limited use of past / perfective marker with states
and an affinity of progressive with activities / accomplishments and later
achievements. In addition, – ko iss– moves from progressive to resultative in
the specific category of Korean verbs meaning wear / carry.
While the previous contributions focus on function, Evgeniya Sergeeva
and Jean-Pierre Chevrot’s is interested in form. The authors explore the
acquisition of verbal morphology in L2 French by 30 instructed native
speakers of Russian distributed in a low and high levels. They use an
elicitation task for verbs with different models of stem alternation and study
how token frequency and base forms influence stem selection. The analysis
shows that frequency affects correct production, especially among learners
with high proficiency. As for substitution errors, it appears that forms with a
iv Emmanuelle Labeau & Inès Saddour
simple structure are systematically more frequent than the target form they
replace. When a complex form serves as a substitute, it is more frequent only
when it is replacing another complex form. As regards the use of base forms,
the 3rd person singular of the present – and to some extent the infinitive –
play this role in the corpus. The authors therefore conclude that the
processing of surface forms can be influenced positively or negatively by the
frequency of the target forms and of other competing stems, and by the
proximity of the target stem to a base form.
Finally, Martin Howard’s contribution takes up the challenge of
focusing on the poorer relation of the TAM system. On the basis of L2
French data obtained through sociolinguistic interviews, he studies the
expression of futurity, conditional and subjunctive in three groups of
university learners with classroom teaching only (two or three years of
university teaching) or with a mixture of classroom teaching and naturalistic
exposure (2 years at University + 1 year abroad). An analysis of relative
frequencies leads him to suggest a continuum of use going from futurate
present to conditional with past hypothetic conditional clauses in si, which
needs to be confirmed by further studies.
Acknowledgements
The present volume was inspired by the conference Acquisition of Tense –
Aspect – Mood in First and Second Language held on 9th and 10th February
2008 at Aston University (Birmingham, UK) where over 40 delegates from
four continents and over a dozen countries met for lively and enjoyable
discussions.
This collection of papers was double peer-reviewed by an international
scientific committee made of Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig (Indiana University),
Christine Bozier (Lund Universitet), Alex Housen (Vrije Universiteit
Brussel), Martin Howard (University College Cork), Florence Myles
(Newcastle University), Urszula Paprocka (Catholic University of Lublin),
†Clive Perdue (Université Paris 8), Michel Pierrard (Vrije Universiteit
Brussel), Rafael Salaberry (University of Texas at Austin), Suzanne Schlyter
(Lund Universitet), Richard Towell (Salford University), and Daniel
Véronique (Université d’Aix-en-Provence). We are very much indebted to
that scientific committee for their insightful input at each step of the project.
We are also thankful for the financial support of the Association for French
Language Studies through its workshop grant, and to the Aston Modern
Languages Research Foundation for funding the proofreading of the
manuscript.