The Acquisition of Tense and Aspect by Instructed Adult Learners of Italian

The Acquisition of Tense and Aspect by Instructed Adult Learners of Italian PDF Author: Gabriella Notarianni-Burk
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780438290891
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This dissertation examines the extent to which lexical aspect and grounding influence the acquisition of tense and aspect by ninety-four instructed adult learners of Italian in two academic settings in North America. The semantic notions of tense and aspect have been extensively investigated in the domain of second language acquisition. After more than two decades of inquiry, conflicting views and a plethora of hypotheses and theoretical explanations have been proposed to account for the complex phenomenon of tense and aspect acquisition by second language learners. This study on past tense marking in L2 Italian is framed within two hypotheses: the Aspect Hypothesis and the Discourse Hypothesis. The rationale for selecting these two theoretical constructs rests on the assumption that the two categories of tense and aspect may interact in the encoding of temporal expressive devices and narrative functions. Data consisted of a grammaticality judgment task (GJT), a sentence completion task (SCT) and a narrative elicitation task. The ninety-four participants were selected according to three levels of proficiency: beginning, intermediate and advanced. Specific aspectual categories of perfective and imperfective predicates were analyzed by means of a repeated measures ANOVA model. Results from the GJT and SCT showed significant main effects for lexical aspect and interaction effects for level and aspect. In contrast, grounding overrides aspect in the selection of past tense markers in the oral narrative task.

The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, Morphosyntax, and Semantics

The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, Morphosyntax, and Semantics PDF Author: Tania Ionin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003823505
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 586

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Book Description
This handbook provides innovative and comprehensive coverage of research on the second language acquisition (SLA) of morphosyntax, semantics, and the interface between the two. Organized by grammatical topic, the chapters are written by experts from formal and functional perspectives in the SLA of morphosyntax and semantics, providing in-depth yet accessible coverage of these areas. All chapters highlight the theoretical underpinnings of much work in SLA and their links to theoretical syntax and semantics; making comparisons to other populations, including child language acquirers, bilinguals, and heritage speakers (links to first language acquisition and bilingualism); dedicating a portion of each chapter to the research methods used to investigate the linguistic phenomenon in question (links to psycholinguistics and experimental linguistics); and, where relevant, including intervention studies on the phenomenon in question (links to applied linguistics). The volume will be indispensable to SLA researchers and students who work on any aspect of the SLA of morphosyntax or semantics. With its coverage of a variety of methodologies and comparisons to other populations (such as child language acquirers, early bilinguals, heritage speakers, and monolingual adults), the handbook is expected to also be of much interest to linguists who work in psycholinguistics, first language acquisition, and bilingualism.

Tense and Aspect in Romance Languages

Tense and Aspect in Romance Languages PDF Author: Dalila Ayoun
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027294356
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
This volume presents a state-of-the-art descriptive and explanatory analysis of the second language development of Romance tense-aspect systems. It contains new experimental data from adult French, Catalan, Portuguese learners, and Italian children learners. Standing research questions are addressed and pedagogical implications for foreign language classrooms are proposed arguing that there are possible commonalities in the instructional sequences of tense-aspect development in Romance languages. The first chapter presents an overview of current theoretical approaches and a summary of empirical findings. The following four chapters introduce new empirical data from a variety of theoretical perspectives (e.g., the Aspect Hypothesis, the UG/Minimalist framework). Chapter 5 proposes practical pedagogical approaches for the foreign language classroom based on empirical findings. The last chapter summarizes and discusses these findings in order to start elaborating a more comprehensive model of the development of tense-aspect marking in the Romance languages.

The L2 Acquisition of Tense-aspect Morphology

The L2 Acquisition of Tense-aspect Morphology PDF Author: M. Rafael Salaberry
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027224958
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Book Description
The present volume provides a cross-linguistic perspective on the development of tense-aspect in L2 acquisition. Data-based studies included in this volume deal with the analysis of a wide range of target languages: Chinese, English, Italian, French, Japanese, and Spanish. Theoretical frameworks used to evaluate the nature of the empirical evidence range from generative grammar to functional-typological linguistics. Several studies focus on the development of past tense markers, but other issues such as the acquisition of a future marker are also addressed. An introductory chapter outlines some theoretical and methodological issues that serves as relevant preliminary reading for most of the chapters included in this volume. Additionally, a preliminary chapter offers a substantive review of first language acquisition of tense-aspect morphology. The analysis of the various languages included in this volume significantly advances our understanding of this phenomenon, and will serve as an important basis for future research.

The Second Language Acquisition of French Tense, Aspect, Mood and Modality

The Second Language Acquisition of French Tense, Aspect, Mood and Modality PDF Author: Dalila Ayoun
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 902727178X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Temporal-aspectual systems have a great potential of informing our understanding of the developing competence of second language learners. So far, the vast majority of empirical studies investigating L2 acquisition have largely focused on past temporality, neglecting the acquisition of the expression of the present and future temporalities with rare exceptions (aside from ESL learners), leaving unanswered the question of how the investigation of different types of temporality may inform our understanding of the acquisition of temporal, aspectual and mood systems as a whole. This monograph addresses this question by focusing on three main objectives: a) to contribute to the already impressive body of research in the L2 acquisition of tense, aspect and mood/modality from a generative perspective, and in so doing to present a more complete picture of the processes of L2 acquisition in general; b) to bridge the gap between linguistic theory and L2 acquisition; c) to make empirical findings more accessible to language instructors by proposing concrete pedagogical applications.

Tense and Aspect in Italian Interlanguage

Tense and Aspect in Italian Interlanguage PDF Author: Zuzana Toth
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110626497
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
The expression of time is fundamental in communication and languages have developed a variety of means to encode temporal relations. When learning a new language, learners are often faced with the challenging task of discovering a new system of temporal relations. The present study investigates the development of tense and aspect marking in the interlanguage of L3 Italian learners enrolled in university language courses. It examines how the tense-aspect system develops in the interlanguage and how the acquisition process is shaped by factors such as the lexical aspectual value of the predicates and discourse grounding. The data indicate that both lexical aspect and discourse grounding influence the distribution of verbal morphology in the interlanguage. Semantically congruent pairings of lexical aspect, verbal morphology and discourse grounding are used more frequently and appropriately than less prototypical combinations. The acquisition process is also influenced by the learner’s L1, which was mostly German in the context of the present study. The study can be used as a guide for curricular decisions in language teaching, and for projecting further research on the development of tense-aspect marking in multilingual learners.

Tense and Aspect in Learners of Italian

Tense and Aspect in Learners of Italian PDF Author: Donatella Melucci
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Italian language
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description


Second Language Instruction/acquisition Abstracts

Second Language Instruction/acquisition Abstracts PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language and languages
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description


Tense and Aspect in Second Language Acquisition

Tense and Aspect in Second Language Acquisition PDF Author: Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing
ISBN: 9780631221494
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
This volume explores the acquisition of tense and aspect by adult second language learners of nine target languages. The author focuses on the association of form and meaning in leaders' emerging system of temporal expression. The book provides a survey and synthesis of studies from five perspectives: the meaning-oriented approach, acquisitional sentences, the aspect hypothesis, the discourse hypothesis, and the effect of instruction. In addition, original longitudinal and cross-sectional studies on the acquisition of English by the author illustrate each of the perspectives and explore the importance of research design and analysis in acquisition research.

The Acquisition of the Present

The Acquisition of the Present PDF Author: Dalila Ayoun
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 902726807X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
This is the first edited volume that tackles the acquisition of the present (tense, aspect, temporality), an under-researched area, particularly compared to the acquisition of past temporality. The first two chapters focus on the L1 acquisition of English from the perspective of the Aspect hypothesis and the Verb-Island hypothesis Wang & Shirai) and the L1 acquisition of French from the perspective of the zero-tense hypothesis (Demirdache & Lungu). The remaining chapters tackle the L2 acquisition of English (Liszka, Al-Thubaiti, Vraciu), French (Ayoun, Saillard), Spanish (Gabriele et al.), Russian (Martelle) and Japanese (Shirai & Li) by learners of different L1s (French, English, Arabic, Chinese and Korean), testing various semantic and syntactic hypotheses. The last chapter presents a summary of the findings, and offers a few conclusions as well as broad directions for future research.