The development of tense and aspect in English L2 in Chinese older migrants in Australia

Abstract

This study investigates the development of tense and aspect (TA) in English L2 in Chinese L1 older migrants in Australia within a Processability Theory (PT) (Pienemann, 1998). TA is expressed differently in Chinese and English: it is expressed through morphological and syntactic processes in English while in Chinese tense it is expressed lexically, and aspect via contextual cues and aspect markers, e.g., le (Xiao & McEnery, 2004). These typological contrasts create learning difficulties among Chinese L1 learners in producing English TA (Wiedenhof, 2015). From a morph-syntactic viewpoint, PT hypothesises a universal sequence of L2 development where V-ing and V-ed are acquired at category-procedure stage, followed by verb phrase agreement between auxiliary and lexical verb at phrasal stage and finally marking of third person-singular on verb at S-procedure stage. The Aspect Hypothesis (AH) (Andersen & Shirai, 1994; Shirai, 2002b; Shirai & Andersen, 1995) on the other hand, claims that the acquisition of aspect is related to verb semantics and, for instance, acquisition of progressive V-ing starts with Activity verbs (e.g., walking) then extends to Accomplishment (e.g., completing) and Achievement verbs (e.g., reaching) (Shirai & Andersen, 1995, p. 745). Further, in English L2, TA is acquired in the following order: Present progressive > Simple past > Past progressive > Present perfect > Past perfect. No study, so far, has investigated whether older migrants follow such developmental paths. Seven Chinese migrants in Australia, aged 60-69, participated in this study. They received four-week instruction on TA. Speech production data were collected before and after the instruction. Analyses indicate that the informants' PT developmental stages and grammatical accuracy improved but with significant individual differences. Results also largely support AH. This study suggests that older learners are able to learn English TA through targeted training, and also provides empirical support to PT's development trajectory among older learners.

Date of Award	2018
Original language	English