A new outlook on Tense-Aspect morphology in an L2 - the Aspectual Semantic Transfer Hypothesis

This paper reports on a study conducted in the framework of the Aspect Hypothesis (Andersen & Shirai, 1996; Bardovi-Harlig, 2000; Salaberry& Comajoan, 2013), which holds that the use and development of tense-aspect morphology in second language acquisition is steered by the inherent lexical aspectual semantics of verbs . After a survey of interacting factors and methodological challenges in research on the Aspect Hypothesis, we present another factor that impinges on the acquisition and use of tense-aspect morphology in L2, namely the projection of the lexical semantics of the learner’s L1 on to the verb lexemes in the L2. The Aspectual Semantics Transfer Hypothesis holds that L2 learners are also guided by the specific aspectual semantics of verb predicates in their L1. We will show that different studies on the Aspect Hypothesis have different accounts of the inherent aspects of specific predicates depending on the L1 of both the L2 Learners and the analyst. Finally, we compare two procedures of coding for the inherent aspect against the predictions of Aspect Hypothesis.