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Hispanic Contact Linguistics: Theoretical, methodological and empirical perspectives
Edited by Luis A. Ortiz López, Rosa E. Guzzardo Tamargo and Melvin González-Rivera
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 22] 2020
► pp. 215–234

Chapter 9
The distribution and use of present and past progressive forms in Spanish-English and Spanish-Brazilian Portuguese bilinguals

| Rutgers University
| Purdue University

This study examines the distribution and use of simple and progressive forms in two groups: English-speaking heritage speakers of Spanish in the U.S. (n = 9) and Brazilian Portuguese-speaking heritage speakers of Spanish in Brazil (n = 15). We hypothesized that the groups would show different crosslinguistic influence from their dominant languages in their choice of verb forms. We collected semi-spontaneous production data via oral narratives and analyzed group differences in verb form, either simple or progressive, in activity and accomplishment verbs (Vendler, 1967). The results show a main effect for group, confirming that English-Spanish bilinguals favor progressive verb forms in such contexts, while Brazilian Portuguese-Spanish bilinguals opt for simple verb forms. We discuss our findings following previous work by Jiang (2000) and Putnam & Sánchez (2013).

Keywords: heritage language, verb morphology, progressive verb form
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1Tense and aspect
    • 2.2Semantic constraints in the selection of the Spanish present tense
    • 2.3Semantic constraints on the selection of the imperfect progressive in Spanish and BP
  • 3.Previous acquisition research
    • 3.1The Spanish present progressive
    • 3.2The Spanish imperfect progressive
    • 3.3Research question and hypothesis
  • 4.The experiment
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Methods and structures under analysis
  • 5.Results
  • 6.Discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 February 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.22.09lop
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