| First and second language acquisition of the tense-aspect system has yielded rigorous research centered around the Aspect Hypothesis which states that learners will initially associate grammatical aspects with the inherent lexical aspects semantically most prototypical for them and later extend the associations to less typical ones(Andersen&Shirai,1994).Though studies across different L1-L2 combinations and research methods have offered support,there are increasing challenges questioning its cross-linguistic generalizability and exclusion of unneglectable factors including L1 transfer(Thane,201 8;Zhao&Shirai,2018).Besides,the Aspect Hypothesis lacks empirical explorations regarding L2 Chinese,a tenseless language with some language-specific features regarding its tense-aspect system.This study aims to explore the two factors of the lexical aspect and L1 transfer through a corpus-based methodology on the use of the four Chinese aspect markers of vf-le,sf-le,zai and zhe by the English-L1 and the Spanish-L1 learners from the Guangwai-Lancaster Chinese Learner Corpus.Through a detailed analysis of the research results,the study achieves the following findings.The uses of all the four aspect markers by both groups are significantly influenced by the lexical aspects of the verbal predicates and demonstrate clear typical associations of aspect markers with lexical aspects,even though there are exceptional cases which are not predicted by the Association Hypothesis but demonstrate L1 transfer through further analysis.The developmental patterns narrowly confirm the Developmental Hypothesis but rather more conform to the view that the target language also poses a restriction in that except for sf-le with the primary inchoative or resultative state meaning all the other three aspect markers of vf-le,zai and zhe witness a development from looser aspect-marker-lexical-aspect associations to more restricted associations regarding their typicality:the former types of associations are errors of overuse in Chinese but are more aligned with the English and the Spanish tense-aspect systems,and the latter are cases of correct use in Chinese and are more aligned with the Chinese tense-aspect system.And detailed qualitative analysis of individual cases,especially the errors regarding overuse,reveals L1 transfer,though it is not statistically significant.The study explains the research findings from a multi-factor account of tense-aspect second language acquisition that clarifies the Aspect Hypothesis as a hypothesis on the effect of semantics rather than a theory aiming at unifying everything within the domain(Bardovi-Harlig&Comajoan-Colome,2020).Thus,the study takes the discovered influences of the lexical aspect,the target language(L2 proficiency growth from the perspective of approaching the target language),and the L1 as among the multiple factors that pose an influence on tense-aspect second language acquisition.Regarding the reason why the lexical aspect has an effect on the acquisition of tense-aspect markers,the study resorts to a naturalist perspective on human language which claims that the semantic features of telicity,dynamicity and punctuality within language reflects logic of the human mind and the objective world,and it is this logic that enjoys consistency in the acquisition and use of both lexical aspects and grammatical aspects that makes the Association Hypothesis valid.The target language poses a restriction because the learners are gradually approaching their acquisition goal in which process the L2 proficiency level growth manifests its effects in the resembling of the interlanguage’s tense-aspect system of that of the target language.As for the insignificance of L1 transfer,the current study resorts to the recent advances within L1 transfer theoretical studies that emphasize dynamically varying rather than direct effects of similarities and differences between the L1 and the L2,the multi-factor account that claims other factors might intervene with the L1 transfer and the study’s methodological problems that the two L1s of English and Spanish are with inadequate differences regarding aspect-marker-lexical-aspect associations.The current study provides partial support for the Aspect Hypothesis,deepens our understanding of the Chinese tense-aspectual system,and provides some insights on teaching Chinese as a second and a foreign language. |
