Conference proceeding
Aspect Parameter in the Guise of Optional Infinitives in Child L2 English
Proceedings of the Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Vol.24(1), pp.319-330
01/01/2000
Abstract
A case study is presented of an 8-year-old native-Russian-speaking child's verbal inflection development in English as a second language (L2). The child's early L2 grammar contains an overabundance of nonfinite verb forms in contexts where tense markings are required in English. An underspecification approach is shown to be inadequate for explaining the child's alternate use of finite & nonfinite verb forms. Evidence that the child's L2 grammar is fully specified for syntactic tense is found in the early acquisition of nominative case markings & the use of tensed auxiliaries, modals, copula, & do-support. In contexts where the child does use verbal inflection, it is found to correlate with the verb's lexical aspectual class: The child uses the past marker -ed to express achievements & accomplishments (ie, perfective aspect); all imperfective meanings are conveyed through the use of nonfinite verb forms. This phenomenon is explained in terms of transfer from Russian, where verb stems are marked for perfective or imperfective aspect. 6 Tables, 6 References. C. Brennan
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Aspect Parameter in the Guise of Optional Infinitives in Child L2 English
- Creators
- Elena Gavruseva
- Resource Type
- Conference proceeding
- Publication Details
- Proceedings of the Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Vol.24(1), pp.319-330
- ISSN
- 1080-692X
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 01/01/2000
- Academic Unit
- Linguistics
- Record Identifier
- 9984222749202771
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