Inherent Aspect and L1 Transfer in the L2 Acquisition of Spanish Grammatical Aspect

• Published in: The Modern language journal (Boulder, Colo.) Colo.), 2018-09, Vol.102 (3), p.611-625
• Main Authors: Gonzalez, Paz, Quintana Hernandez, Lucia
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aktionsart; Binomial distribution; Classification; Difficulty Level; Dutch language; dynamicity; English; English Language Learners; Grammar; Grammatical aspect; Indo European Languages; inherent aspect; Interference (Language); L1 transfer; L2 acquisition; Language acquisition; Language Usage; Learning transfer; Linguistic Theory; Morphemes; Native Language; Prediction; Preferences; Second Language Instruction; Second Language Learning; Spanish; Spanish as a second language learning; Spanish language; Story Telling; Task Analysis; Tense; terminativity; Transfer of Training; Transfers; Video Technology; Written Language
• ISSN: 0026-7902; 1540-4781
• DOI: 10.1111/modl.12502

The aim of this article is to show that the use of Spanish grammatical aspect is biased by inherent aspect depending on the learner's first language (L1). It considers both the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis (LAH; Andersen, 1986, and his followers) and the L1 Transfer Hypothesis (Izquierdo & Collins, 2008; McManus, 2015), and it compares the use of Spanish past tenses by L1 Dutch and L1 English learners at first stages of acquisition. Differences in grammatical aspect in both LI and the second language (L2) predict that learners will have difficulties acquiring grammatical differences such as the contrast between the Preterit and the Imperfect. Recent studies claim that not all learners are biased by the traditional Vendlerian lexical aspect typology (Domínguez et al., 2013; González, 2013), which may mean that refinement of the LAH is necessary. For our study, L1 English and Dutch learners of Spanish performed the same written production task, which involved the retelling of a story after watching a muted video. The results, based on an approximate binomial distribution analysis, show that the use of both the Preterit and the Imperfect by English-speaking learners is biased by dynamicity contrasts. Furthermore, their overuse of Preterit to complete the written task shows L1 transfer from the English past tense, which can be uttered in perfective and imperfective contexts. On the other hand, the results of L1 Dutch speakers show that the use of Spanish grammatical aspect is biased by the terminative-durative classification, and that they prefer the Present Perfect in perfective contexts, also showing L1 transfer.