Associating meaning to form in advanced L2 speakers: An investigation into the acquisition of the English present simple and present progressive

Author(s):  
Sarah Ann Liszka
Keyword(s):  
2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 1320-1330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loren Merrill ◽  
Madeleine F. Naylor ◽  
Jennifer L. Grindstaff

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-414
Author(s):  
NAOAKI WADA

This article aims to systematically explain linguistic facts concerning thewill+be -ingconstruction (WBI construction) in terms of a general theory of tense. For this purpose, temporal structures of the WBI construction are constructed based on the tense theory of Wada (2001, 2009, 2011) by combining temporal structures of sentences containingwillwith temporal structures of sentences containing present-progressive forms. It is shown that the temporal structure-based analysis not only addresses problems with previous studies, but also illuminates the characteristics of the WBI construction in a unified way.


2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAURENCE B. LEONARD ◽  
PATRICIA DEEVY

ABSTRACTThe aim of this study was to determine whether children with specific language impairment (SLI) are sensitive to completion cues in their comprehension of tense. In two experiments, children with SLI (ages 4 ; 1 to 6 ; 4) and typically developing (TD) children (ages 3 ; 5 to 6 ; 5) participated in a sentence-to-scene matching task adapted from Wagner (2001). Sentences were in either present or past progressive and used telic predicates. Actions were performed twice in succession; the action was either completed or not completed in the first instance. In both experiments, the children with SLI were less accurate than the TD children, showing more difficulty with past than present progressive, regardless of completion cues. The TD children were less accurate with past than present progressive requests only when the past actions were incomplete. These findings suggest that children with SLI may be relatively insensitive to cues pertaining to event completion in past tense contexts.


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Astrid De Wit ◽  
Adeline Patard

This paper proffers a corpus-based study of the semantics of the French present progressive in comparison with its English equivalent. We describe the temporal and modal uses of ‘be + -ing’ and investigate to what extent they overlap with the uses of être + en train de. The observation that the use of the French present progressive is not obligatory and more restricted than that of the present progressive in English is taken as a sign of a less advanced stage of grammaticalization of the former. On the other hand, the two progressive constructions are alike in that they turn out to share the same basic, modal meaning, which we define as epistemic contingency in current reality. This meaning is, among other things, reflected in the (inter)subjective connotations that are often associated with the progressives.


Author(s):  
Adriana Claudia Martins Fighera
Keyword(s):  

O ensino da língua inglesa precisa levar em conta as etapas pelas quais passam os estudantes na construção da interlíngua, processo este articulado por um professor que individualiza a situação de ensino, atendendo àquilo que o aprendiz produz e é capaz de compreender a partir do input nos diferentes níveis de proficiência. O objetivo principal deste trabalho é verificar como 18 aprendizes de inglês como segunda língua, em três níveis de proficiência (Básico, Intermediário e Avançado), processam a relação entre significado, forma e saliência perceptual dos tempos Present Progressive e Simple Present a partir de um Teste de Preferência envolvendo 32 questões de múltipla escolha. Propõe-se refletir acerca das implicações pedagógicas desses resultados, pois eles revelam que detalhes da forma com pouco valor semântico não são percebidos pelos aprendizes no início da aquisição. Fighera (2007), VanPatten (1990, 1996, 1998, 2002, 2004), Ellis (1993, 1997, 1998) e Schmidt (1990, 1995) dão sustentação teórica a este estudo.


Author(s):  
Martín Fuchs ◽  
María Mercedes Piñango ◽  
Ashwini Deo

AbstractWe present a cognitively grounded analysis of the pattern of variation that underlies the ​use of two aspectual markers in Spanish (the Simple-Present marker, Ana baila ‘Ana dances’, and the Present-Progressive marker, Ana está bailando ‘Ana is dancing’) when they express an event-in-progress reading. This analysis is centered around one fundamental communicative goal, which we term perspectivealignment: the bringing of the hearer’s perspective closer to that of the speaker. Perspective alignment optimizes the tension between two nonlinguistic constraints: Theory of Mind, which gives rise to linguisticexpressivity, and Common Ground, which gives rise to linguisticeconomy. We propose that, linguistically, perspectivealignment capitalizes on lexicalized meanings, such as the progressive meaning, that can bring the hearer to the “here and now”. In Spanish, progressive meaning can be conveyed with the Present-Progressive marker regardless of context. By contrast, if the Simple-Present marker is used for that purpose, it must be in a context of shared perceptual access between speaker and hearer; precisely, a condition that establishes perspectivealignment non-linguistically. Support for this analysis comes from a previously observed yet unexplained pattern of contextually-determined variation for the use of the Simple-Present marker in Iberian and Rioplatense (vs. Mexican) Spanish—in contrast to the preference across all three varieties for the use of the Present-Progressive marker—to express an event-in-progress reading.


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