6. The development of tense-aspect in English as a second language and the variable influence of inherent aspect

This chapter discusses the development of English verb morphology as it emerges from a study of 46 Dutch and French-speaking learners of English as a second language, particular attention being paid to the predictions deriving from the Aspect Model for the functional development of tense–aspect morphology (Andersen 1991; Andersen & Shirai 1994, 1996). The chapter consists of four major parts, each consisting of two sections. The present Wrst part presents the the general research questions (Section 1) and the overall design of the larger study on which this chapter is based (Section 2). The second part outlines stages in respectively the formal development (Section 3) and the functional development (Section 4) of verb morphology as they emerged from a descriptive analysis of the data from the 46 learners of L2 English. The third part is concerned with the Aspect Model. Section 5 discusses the descriptive and explanatory claims of the Aspect Model for the acquisition of English. Section 5 also reviews previous research on the Aspect Model to motivate the methodological choices made in the present study. In Section 6, the descriptive claims of the Aspect Model are checked against the longitudinal data from one L2 learner of English. The fourth and Wnal part proposes theoretical interpretations and explanations for the Wndings reported in parts two and three (Section 7) as well as some concluding remarks (Section 8). For descriptive purposes, the language learner’s task of mastering the tenseaspect (TA) system of his target language (TL) can be broken down into two subtasks which, although linked, need not proceed in tandem (MacWhinney 1978):

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