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Multidisciplinary Approaches to Bilingualism in the Hispanic and Lusophone World
Edited by Kate Bellamy, Michael W. Child, Paz González, Antje Muntendam and M. Carmen Parafita Couto
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 13] 2017
► pp. 9–40

Chapter 2
L1 effects as manifestations of individual differences in the L2 acquisition of the Spanish tense-aspect-system

| Bergische Universität Wuppertal & Universitat de les Illes Balears
| Universitat de les Illes Balears

Several hypotheses about aspect in Spanish SLA focus on postulating patterns a learner will go through. The Lexical Aspect Hypothesis (Andersen, 1986, 1991) and the Default Past Tense Hypothesis (Salaberry, 1999) are two examples discussed in recent studies (see e.g. Comajoan, 2013). This chapter shows that our results obtained via Grammaticality Judgments and a Production Task do not align completely with any of these hypotheses. Instead, individual differences (Dörnyei, 2006) must be considered, which a comparison between 61 German and 70 Romance speakers supports. Findings reveal some general attainment difficulties for all learners, but the emerging structures are not universal. Interestingly, our native control group (n = 15) also shows high variation, strengthening the observation that the selection of a tense-aspect form is heavily dependent on subjectivity.

Keywords: second language acquisition, tense, aspect, spanish past tenses
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Linguistic background
    • 2.1Generalities
    • 2.2Spanish
    • 2.3Other Romance systems
    • 2.4German
  • 3.State of the art and previous studies on tense-aspect acquisition
    • 3.1Overview
    • 3.2Research questions and predictions
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Linguistic tasks
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Grammaticality judgment task
    • 5.2Production tasks
  • 6.Discussion and general conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 31 May 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.13.02dia
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