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Agnieszka Błaszczyk-Szabat (Wrocław) |
The paper describes the
results of an empirical study concerning the acquisition of tense-aspect morphology
in Polish learnt as a second language at the background of the so called Aspect
Hypothesis developed by Andersen (1984, 1991). Andersen advocates a strong
relationship between lexical aspect and past tense. Accordingly, beginner
learners of English and other languages as L1 or L2 typically associate telic
verbs with past tense inflections, while atelic verbs obtain much lower
percentages of correct use of past tense morphology. In view of the current
popularity of this framework I would like to verify its relevance for a Slavic
language such as Polish, where the distinction between lexical aspect and
grammatical aspect is not so obvious as in Germanic languages. I will
demonstrate that despite the existing controversy lexical (or in other words, inherent)
aspect exists in Polish and that the Aspect Hypothesis can well be verified
against Polish acquired as L2, which, to my knowledge, has not been done yet.
Traditionally verb
phrases in Polish are discussed with respect to the perfective versus imperfective
distinction (called viewpoint aspect by Smith 1997). Although linguists
interested in Slavic languages have predominantly studied grammatical aspect,
drawing on works of e.g. Vendler (1957), Dahl (1981), Smith (1997), and
Grzegorczykowa (1997), I claim that both grammatical aspect and lexical aspect
can be discussed with reference to Polish. Assuming the above, I will attempt
to account for the distribution of past tense inflections on the onset of
acquisition of L2 Polish. Next I will compare the findings with the results I
obtained in a cross-sectional study of intermediate learners of Polish as L2.
Finally I will analyse the data in comparison to crosslinguistic results of
studies in the framework of the Aspect Hypothesis. The results of the preliminary
research I carried out on a group of foreigners acquiring Polish as L2 can be
summarised as follows:
(a) Early past tense
marking appears on achievements and accomplishments (71% and 73% accuracy
respectively).
(b) States and
activities receive a considerably lower rate of correct past tense marking
(approximately 50%).
(c) The studied past
tense marking appears irrespective from the viewpoint aspect.
In my paper I show that
the intermediate group does not fully conform to the findings listed above,
though the crucial role of inherent aspect categories mapped into past tense
does influence the performance of the learners. The acquisition of aspect,
especially in learning foreign languages with complex aspectual systems will
pose a problem also on higher levels of acquisition.
Selected references:
Andersen, R.
(1984). The one to one principle of interlanguage construction. Language
Learning 34: 77-95.
Andersen, R. W. (1991).
Developmental sequences: the emergence of aspect marking in second language
acquisition. Crosscurrents in SLA and linguistic theories. Heubner, T, and A. Ferguson,
305- 24. Amsterdam:
J. Benjamins.
Comrie, B. (1976).
Aspect. Cambridge: CUP.
Dahl, O. (1981).
On the definition of the telic-atelic (bounded- unbounded) distinction.
Syntax and Semantics 14: 79-90.
Grzegorczykowa, R. (1997). Nowe spojrzenie na kategorię
aspektu w perspektywie semantyki kognitywnej. Grzegorczykowa, R. and Zaron, z.
(eds.) Semantyczna struktura słownictwa i wypowiedzi. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa
Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.
Smith, C. S. (1997). The
parameter of aspect. Second edition. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Vendler, Z. (1967). Linguistic in
philosophy. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.