The Aspect Hypothesis and the Acquisition of past tense in Dutch as a L2

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The Aspect Hypothesis and the Acquisition of past
tense in Dutch as a L2

• Linsey Bertels

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Introduction

• Lexical aspect Aktionsart
• Grammatical aspect

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Grammatical aspect

• a classification of different (conjugated)
  forms of a single verb
• E.g. perfective vs. imperfective aspect
• E.g. progressive aspect
• e.g. I swim vs. Im swimming

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Lexical aspect / Aktionsart

• a classification of verbs
• part of the way in which a particular verb is
  inherently structured in relation to time
• a purely lexical, not grammatical category
• not overtly marked in most languages
• 3 characteristics

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1 Telic vs. atelic

• TELIC natural inherent endpoint
• e.g. I eat an apple.
• He is singing that song.
• ATELIC no natural inherent endpoint
• e.g. I eat.
• He is singing.

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2 Durative vs. punctual

• PUNCTUAL the action has no duration, the
  start and end point coincide
• e.g. He falls.
• She reaches the finnish.
• DURATIVE the action takes a while
• e.g. She was climbing the mountain

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3 Dynamic vs. stative

• DYNAMIC implies change, needs energy to continue
• e.g. John is running.
• STATIVE implies stagnation, doesnt need any
  energy to go on
• e.g. John loves Kate.
• He knows.

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Aspect Hypothesis

• lt Andersen Shirai (1996)
• acquisition of the tense system
• the inherent (semantic) aspect of the verb in
  question

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(Primacy of) Aspect Hypothesis

• SPREAD perfective past tense
• 1 achievements
• 2 accomplishments
• 3 activities
• 4 states

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VERSUS

• SPREAD imperfective past tense
• 1 states
• 2 activities
• 3 accomplishments
• 4 achievements

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Masters thesis (2005)

• On the acquisition of Dutch past tenses by adult
  L2 learners
• 7 hypotheses, among which AH
• No perfective/imperfective distinction in
  Dutch

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Aspect Hypothesis

• SPREAD perfective past tense
• 1 achievements
• 2 accomplishments
• 3 activities
• 4 states

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Sample

• 30 adult learners Dutch L2
• Language centre KULeuven
• Intermediate advanced (l. 3-5)
• 16 mother tongues from 10 language families

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Data collection

• Questionnaires
• Interviews and digital recordings
• Interview transcription
• CHAT and CLAN (CHILDES, McWhinney)
• Coding
• Manually
• Error classification Lalleman, Van Santen Van
  Heuven

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• MON Ik was bij de ouders van mijn vriend, ja,
  en ik kijk naar Lost.
• err kijkheb gekeken
• com TTVT
• aa ST, ACT
• MON Ja, ik vind het leuk, dus ik volg elke
  aflevering.
• OBS Ja.
• MON En een beetje praten nog met de familie van
  mijn vriend en dan de ouders van mijn vriend
  brengen ons terug naar Leuven, ze rijden samen
  met ons en dan euh ah ja, de enquête invullen.
• err brengenbrachten, rijdenreden,
  invulleningevuld
• com INF, INF, INF
• aa ACT, ACC, ACT, ACC

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Results

• How is the use of the 4 aspectual categories
  distributed in the learners language?

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Aspect use
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• What is the percentage of correctly formed past
  tenses per aspectual category?

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µ correct past tenses per category
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• All levels correct past ST gt ACH
• Level 3 correct past ST gt 50, rest lt 50
• Level 4 5 all gt 50, except ACH level 5

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Discussion

• ST - more frequently used verbs -
  - irregular verbs
• e.g. was, had, wist, dacht
• ACT and ACC same verbs!
• e.g. Ik heb (iets) gegeten.
• Ik heb België maaltijd gegeten.
• ACH less frequent or formulaic
• e.g. Ik ben geboren in Spanje.
• Ik heb met de rechten begonnen.

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Relation correct past tense and aspect
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Conclusion

• The AH is not confirmed.
• According to our data the development proceeds
  from states to achievements.
• Pragmatic factors, natural order
• Irregular forms stored in memory

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• More research and more specific research needed!
• PhD Project

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Aspect hypothesis

• Accuracy
• Appropriateness of use
• Input / frequency effect

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Narrative/ discourse hypothesis

• lt Bardovi-Harlig (1994, 1998)
• Tense/aspect use in interlanguage is influenced
  by narrative structure (foreground / background)

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Method and sample

• Cross-sectional
• Oral and written narratives
• Unidirectional (1 L2)
• 120 adult learners of Dutch
• 60 L1 French
• 60 mixed L1 background
• 30 native speakers of Dutch

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3 elicitation tasks

• Film retell task (Modern Times)
• Oral
• Written
• Personal narrative
• Multi-passage rational cloze test

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Analysis

• Type and token analysis
• Coding
• Verbal morphology
• Grounding
• Appropriateness of use
• Distributional analysis, MANOVA

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• Thank you for your attention

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Contact information

• Linsey Bertels
• Assistant and PhD Student Dutch linguistics
• Université catholique de Louvain (UCL)
• linsey.bertels_at_uclouvain.be