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Genericity and Aspect in L2
Acquisition
Roumyana Slabakova & Silvina Montrul
Published online: 16 Nov 2009.
To cite this article: Roumyana Slabakova & Silvina Montrul (2003) Genericity and
Aspect in L2 Acquisition, Language Acquisition, 11:3, 165-196, DOI: 10.1207/
s15327817la1103_2
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327817la1103_2
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LANGUAGE ACQUISITION, 11(3), 165–196
Copyright © 2003, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Genericity and Aspect in
L2 Acquisition
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Roumyana Slabakova
University of Iowa
Silvina Montrul
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
In this experimental study, we focus on the following semantic universal: if a habitual
clause reading, then generic pronominal subject; if an episodic clause reading, then
specific pronominal subject. We argue that although this set of two conditionals is a
universal property of all natural languages, English-speaking second-language (L2)
learners of Spanish must access it through the mediation of aspectual morphology.
Because habitual and episodic readings are encoded by different functional morphemes in English and Spanish, the L2 acquisition of this semantic universal necessitates a significant restructuring of the native form-to-meaning mappings. Even more
problematic from a learnability point of view is the negative constraint on generic pronominal subjects in sentences with the Preterite. We compare the acquisition of the
universal computational mechanism and the negative constraint with acquisition of
the prototypical habitual and episodic meanings of the Spanish Imperfect and Preterite
with dynamic predicates. Our findings indicate that advanced and even intermediate
English-speaking learners of Spanish are significantly more accurate on the generic
and specific subject interpretation purportedly regulated by a semantic universal and
on the negative constraint requiring specialized syntactic computation than the prototypical habitual and episodic meanings usually taught in language classrooms. We argue that L2 learners have access to semantic universals and how these interact with
movement at the syntax–semantics interface even before full acquisition of target
form-to-meaning mappings. Our conclusion is that L2 acquisition of aspectual syntax
and semantics is regulated by domain-specific constraints.
1.
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, the issue of form-to-meaning mapping has taken center stage in
the second language (L2) acquisition of functional categories (FCs) debate. It is
Requests for reprints should be sent to Roumyana Slabakova, Department of Linguistics, 557 English Philosophy Building, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242. E-mail: roumyana-slabakova@
uiowa.edu
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SLABAKOVA AND MONTRUL
widely assumed that parameter values make part of lexical entries of FCs and are
encoded in the strength of associated features (Borer (1984), Chomsky (1995),
Wexler and Manzini (1988)). During the course of language acquisition, children
select from a universal inventory of categories and features those relevant to their
language and learn to associate these sets of features with morphemes and certain
meanings. Thus, the acquisition of an FC comprises at least three different types
of knowledge:
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(i)
Morphological reflexes: Target-like usage of inflectional morphology (if
any).
(ii) Syntactic reflexes: Knowledge of feature strength, which would result in
movement prior to or after Spell-Out, case marking, and so forth.
(iii) Semantic reflexes: Knowledge of the semantic properties of the FC or
what meanings are computed when the particular FC is checked.
Researchers who claim that full acquisition of L2 FCs is feasible (e.g.,
Lardiere (1998a; 1998b), Prévost and White (2000), among many others) and
those who consider access to FCs to be severely restricted (Hawkins and Chan
(1997), N. Smith and Tsimpli (1995), Tsimpli and Roussou (1991)) have investigated the syntactic reflexes of functional morphology in interlanguage production. Another type of evidence for presence or absence of FC knowledge may
come from directly investigating the semantic reflexes of FCs as revealed in L2
comprehension. For example, if on hearing a past-tense form a learner understands that a past-time event or state is encoded, this would also constitute evidence that the learner has engaged the FC of TP in her interlanguage grammar.
Recently, generative research in L2 acquisition is turning to investigating this area
of linguistic competence: the computation of interpretations at the syntax–semantics interface including the semantic reflexes of FCs (Dekydtspotter (2001),
Dekydtspotter and Sprouse (2001), Dekydtspotter, Sprouse, and Anderson (1997),
Dekydtspotter, Sprouse, and Thyre (2000), Montrul and Slabakova (2002), Slabakova (2003), Slabakova and Montrul (2002)).
In this article, we focus on aspectual semantics instantiated in an FC AspP, an
area of significant morphological variation across languages (Giorgi and Pianesi
(1997)). Previous research on the L2 acquisition of aspect has concentrated primarily on the prototypical associations of tense-aspect morphology with the different
lexical classes of predicates (see Bardovi-Harlig (1999) for a recent overview of the
literature). It is generally argued that these prototypical associations (e.g., telic
predicates and perfective marking, atelic predicates and imperfective marking) aid
the learner in acquiring the tense-aspect morphology. In this article, we focus on
nonprototypical interpretations English-native L2 learners attribute to the Spanish
past aspectual tenses Imperfect and Preterite. In particular, we look at the interpretation of generic or specific pronominal subjects that depend on whether the verb is in
the Preterite or the Imperfect. These interpretations are arguably regulated by a se-
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GENERICITY AND ASPECT IN L2 ACQUISITION
167
mantic universal, roughly taking the following form: if a habitual sentence interpretation, then a generic pronominal subject; if episodic sentence interpretations (be
they progressive or perfective), then a specific pronominal subject. Although this is
a universal semantic entailment taking the form of two conditional statements, it is
triggered, or effected, by different pieces of inflectional morphology in the two languages under investigation. In Spanish, the Imperfect form alternates freely between a progressive and a habitual reading, leading to pronominal subject
ambiguity. By contrast, in English, it is the simple past tense that gives rise to subject ambiguity because it is aspectually neutral and preserves the aspectual reading
inherited from the Aktionsart of the predicate. Thus, we argue that to access the
computational mechanism under consideration, L2 learners cannot rely on inductive learning or direct transfer of the native form-to-meaning mappings. We believe
it is available through universal syntax–semantics computational principles (see
Kanno (1996; 1998) for an investigation of a universal principle manifested in different properties of the L1 and L2 but still fully accessible to L2 learners). In this
sense, the cognitive situation we investigate can be seen as presenting a poverty of
the stimulus to the learners.
An important issue that we address in this article is whether knowledge of the
particular semantic entailments we look at can result from general constraints on
human mental constitution or whether Universal Grammar (UG)-specific relationships have to obtain before the entailments can reliably arise in L2 grammars.
The bigger question here has to do with whether such type of knowledge can arise
without UG, based on general mental structures not specific to language. Both
proponents of linguistic domain-specificity and of linguistic domain-generality
agree that the innate language faculty, UG, together with meaningful input, is responsible for child language acquisition (O’Grady (1999, 622)). However, they
differ in assuming whether the language acquisition device includes actual syntactic categories and principles or just general cognitive principles.
Fodor (1983; 2000), together with Chomsky one of the main proponents of the
domain-specificity of language, has argued that the principles of UG are solely
relevant to language learning. They are modular in the sense that they are
informationally encapsulated. Its informational resources are restricted only to
what its database contains. Wide-ranging examination of what is possible and especially of what is not possible in human language has convinced generative linguists that language is special in the sense that (some) rules that regulate language
are not operative in other cognitive domains such as, for example, arithmetic. It
follows that domain-general or cognitive principles guiding general learning are
not sufficient for language learning purposes.
O’Grady (1996; 1997; 1999) has offered the most highly articulated proposal
representative of the general nativist position. O’Grady argued that generative
cognitive principles like binarity, iterativity, structure dependence, and so forth
are sufficient to explain the computational aspects of child language syntactic architecture. According to O’Grady (1999), the symbolic representations made up
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SLABAKOVA AND MONTRUL
of categories in hierarchical relations are the product of a general nativist acquisition device—the categories because they can be reduced to purely semantic relationships (“the semantic base,” O’Grady (1999, 628)) and the hierarchical
architecture because it can be reduced to the principle of binarity, shared with
other cognitive faculties such as arithmetic. “Within this perspective, terms such
as direct object and subject are simply mnemonic labels for the verbs’ inner and
outer arguments” (O’Grady (1999, 628). They are acquired based on the child’s
observation of an extralinguistic event and its (usual) main participants: agent and
theme. In other words, the syntax of verbs and their extended projections is acquired by simply acquiring their lexical conceptual structure. The main idea is
that general semantic and syntactic cognitive mechanisms are sufficient to explain
child language acquisition.
This debate is even more interesting when approached from the perspective of
adult L2 acquisition in which presumably all general cognitive mechanisms are
fully developed and established firmly within the individual learner. At issue is
whether general learning principles are the only principles and mechanisms implicated in L2 acquisition or whether domain-specific principles are active in it as
well.1 Research arguing that L2 acquisition is governed by principles and mechanisms not particular to language learning but pertaining to general cognition can
be unified under the label domain-general L2 (Bley-Vroman (1989), Eckman
(1996), O’Grady (1996; 1997; 1999), Schachter (1989)).
Research demonstrating that L2 knowledge is not wholly explained on the basis of L1 transfer and general cognitive mechanisms could be termed domainspecific L2. With the notable exception of Dekydtspotter (2001), Dekydtspotter,
Sprouse, and Thyre (2000), and Schwartz (1999),2 few studies in L2 acquisition
have addressed the concrete predictions of domain-specific versus domaingeneral L2 acquisition. To argue against general nativism, studies must demonstrate that L2 learners are capable of acquiring properties of the second language
that are not directly transferred from the native grammar and that are not reducible
to acquiring binarity and the lexical conceptual structure of individual verbs.
In this article, we argue for the domain-specific nativist position and offer experimental support for it from L2 acquisition of aspectual semantics. We believe
1
1We
reiterate that both the position arguing for language acquisition as a domain-general process
and the position claiming that language acquisition is domain-specific assume that the principles of
language acquisition are innate. “The domain-specificity and encapsulation of a cognitive mechanism
on the one hand, and its innateness on the other, are orthogonal properties” (Fodor (2000, 68–69)).
2
Dekydtspotter, Sprouse, and Thyre (2000) studied quantification at a distance and event sensitiv-2
ity in French–English interlanguage and argued that the knowledge their learners display cannot be accounted for by domain-general but only by domain-specific constraints. Dekydtspotter (2001)
considered constraints on the interpretation of French and English cardinality interrogatives (combien
‘how many’ questions) and argued that L2 comprehension requires a modular and informationally encapsulated Universal Parser as well as UG-compatible interlanguage parameter settings. Schwartz
(1999, 637–639) gave concrete examples of systematic properties of language (both symbols and
computations) that do not feature in other cognitive domains.
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GENERICITY AND ASPECT IN L2 ACQUISITION
169
our experimental results are in a position to address a concrete general-nativist
prediction. Our investigation concentrates on a possible ambiguity of subject interpretation with one aspectual tense (the Imperfect) but lack of such ambiguity
with the other (the Preterite). Generative grammatical theory accounts for meaning ambiguity of a certain utterance by proposing that the sentence has two logical
forms attained by movement of constituents for scope taking after Spell-Out. In our
case, such movement is allowed with the Imperfect but disallowed with the Preterite. The elegance and explanatory power of this account cannot be achieved by the
principle of binarity. The latter cannot give a principled account of what drives
movement on one case but fails to do so in the other. In addition, no positive evidence exists in the input addressed to learners because the property represents a
negative constraint. In the absence of negative evidence, there must be some other
source of knowledge constraining syntactic and semantic interpretations in language acquisition. We conclude that learners are making use of language-specific
mechanisms such as movement to calculate meaning and that semantic entailments
cannot reliably arise unless certain UG-specific relationships obtain.
2.
ASPECT IN SPANISH AND ENGLISH
The term aspect refers to the internal temporal structure of events as described by
verbs and phrases (Chung and Timberlake (1985), Comrie (1976), C. Smith
(1991/1997)). It is the property that makes it possible for a sentence to denote a
complete or an incomplete event. The concept of aspect is defined on two different levels: grammatical and lexical. Lexical aspect or Aktionsart (also termed situation aspect by C. Smith (1991/1997) refers to aspectual classes of verbs. All the
verbal phrases in human languages can be viewed as reflecting either a state or an
event. The most widely accepted cognitively based classification is that of
Vendler (1967) who, following Aristotle, proposed a quadripartition of situation
types into states, activities (unbounded processes), accomplishments (bounded
processes), and achievements (point events). Vendler’s four classes can be presented as a combination of the following two underlying ontological features:
[±Process] and [±Change of State].
(1)
[–Change of State]
[+Change of State]
[–Process]
State
Achievement
[+Process]
Activity
Accomplishment
Philosophers have argued that such an ontological partition of eventualities
reflects the basic situation types observable in the world (Kenny (1963). The classification is nonlinguistic, as it concerns situational categories, but linguistic criteria are used to distinguish the classes from one another. Some examples of
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TABLE 1
Examples of Verbal Phrases’ Lexical Classes
States
Activities
Accomplishments
Achievements
know the answer
be sick
love Mary
be tall
swim laps
travel
burn
eat sushi
swim 10 laps
travel from X to Y
burn down
eat a plate of sushi
die
arrive
find a wallet
recognize
English verbal phrases falling into the different classes are given in Table 1.3 A
state is defined as a stable condition of some entity for a period of time in which
no change appears from Time 1 to Time 2. To take an example from Table 1, the
sentence in (2) is true if at any instant between those times, John loves Mary. An
important test for states in English involves the progressive tense: states are usually ungrammatical or awkward in the progressive, as (3) indicates:
(2) John loves Mary.
(3) *Lea is knowing Bistra’s new telephone number.
Events, on the other hand, are dynamic situations in which some change or
changes obtain from Time 1 to Time 2. They can be counted and quantified over.
The first type of event is an activity. To take an example from Table 1, the verb
run in the sentence in (4) denotes an homogeneous process going on in time with
no inherent goal.
(4) John ran in the park.
A second type of event is an accomplishment, a situation that involves a process
going on in time and an inherent culmination point, after which the event can no
longer continue, as in (5).
(5) John ran a mile.
Finally, an achievement is similar to an accomplishment in that it also has an inherent endpoint, but in this class, the process that leads to the culmination is instantaneous. Such a momentary event is represented by the sentence in (6).
(6) John found a wallet.
3
3Sometimes
it is hard to tell whether a semantic feature is an inherent part of the verb meaning or is
instead a compositionally derived feature that is based on the morphosyntactic context. That is why it
is accepted in the literature that it is not verbs but verbal phrases that are divided into aspectual classes.
Thus, for example in English, property of the verb and a property of the direct object compositionally
contribute to the interpretation: swim or swim laps is an activity predicate, whereas swim 10 laps is an
accomplishment predicate (Verkuyl (1972; 1993)).
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GENERICITY AND ASPECT IN L2 ACQUISITION
171
Another useful term to describe lexical classes is telicity. An event that has an
inherent endpoint, after which the same event cannot continue to unfold, is labeled a telic event. In the previous classification, accomplishments and achievements are telic, whereas states and activities are atelic.
On the other hand, grammatical aspect (also known as viewpoint aspect (C.
Smith (1991/1997)) or sentential aspect) is indicated by perfective and imperfective aspectual tense morphemes. Comrie (1976) argued that they represent “different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation” (p. 3).
The perfective viewpoint (C. Smith (1991/1997), represented by the past simple tense in (7), looks at the situation from outside and disregards its internal
structure. On the other hand, the imperfective viewpoint, as represented by the
progressive tense (cf. 8)), looks at the situation from inside and is concerned with
the internal structure without specifying beginning or end of the situation.
(7) Paul painted a portrait.
PERFECTlVE
(8) Paul was painting a portrait.
IMPERFECTIVE
In Spanish, the [±perfective] distinction is manifested with overt tense morphology. In the example in (9), the Preterite tense exemplifies the perfective value of
the viewpoint distinction, whereas in (10), the Imperfect tense exemplifies the
imperfective value.
(9) Pablo pintó
un retrato.
Pablo paint-PRET a portrait
‘Paul painted a portrait.’
PERFECTIVE
(10) Pablo pintaba
un retrato.
IMPERFECTlVE
Pablo paint-IMPF a portrait
‘Paul painted/was painting a portrait.’
According to Comrie (1976, 25), the imperfective value of the [±perfective]
opposition subsumes at least one more opposition: that between the ongoing, progressive interpretation and the habitual interpretation. Both view the situation
from within, omitting to specify initial and final point. In addition, an ongoing
event is by definition a dynamic event, as the infelicity of states in the progressive
tense suggests (see examples in (3)). The ongoing action meaning of Spanish
eventive verb phrases in the Imperfect can be translated with the past progressive
in English (see (10)). Spanish also has progressive tenses,4 of which the progressive Imperfect is parallel in meaning to the English progressive (see (11)).
(11) Mientras Maria estaba planchando sonó el teléfono.
While Maria was-IMP ironing
rang the telephone
‘While Maria was ironing, the telephone rang.’
4
4There
are two past progressive tenses in Spanish, one with the auxiliary in the Imperfect as in (i)
and the other with a Preterite auxiliary as in (ii):
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SLABAKOVA AND MONTRUL
The habitual, on the other hand, is usually a series of finished events and can be
expressed in English by the combination of activities and past tense as in (12) or
by adding the modal verbs would, used to as in (13). States are imperfective in the
simple tenses, either present, past, or future (cf. (14)).
(12) Colin wrote travel books (for a living).
(13) Maria would/used to visit her mother at least once every month.
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(14) The room is/was/will be yellow.
The grammatical or viewpoint aspect meanings in Spanish and English and
their expression by inflectional morphology can be summarized as in (15) (see
also King and Suñer (1980)). As suggested by an anonymous reviewer, the diagram also includes the Spanish progressive tense to show the whole complexity of
the form-to-meaning mapping task of the learner.5
(15)
5(i)
A las 5 de la tardre Maria estaba planchando.
at 5pm
Maria was-IMP ironing
‘Maria was ironing at 5pm.’
(ii) Ayer
Maria estuvo
planchando toda la tarde.
yesterday Maria was-PRET ironing
all afternoon
‘Yesterday Maria ironed all afternoon.’
5
An anonymous reviewer suggested that the Spanish Preterite can also have a habitual meaning.
We concur that the Preterite can be coerced into a habitual meaning by overt adverbials of frequency,
for example, for many years as in (i) below.
(i) Durante muchos años el tren del mediodía llegó tarde.
for
many years the train of 12 o’clock arrived late
‘For many years the 12 o’clock train arrived late.’
However, this habitual meaning is a result of aspectual coercion by pragmatic (and not grammatical)
means (de Swart (1998)) brought forward to resolve the aspectual conflict between the basic meaning
of the Preterite and the adverbial. We represent only grammatical aspectual meanings in the diagram
in (15).
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GENERICITY AND ASPECT IN L2 ACQUISITION
173
It is important to note that the imperfective viewpoint value is not represented by
a single tense in English, whereas it is represented by the Imperfect tense in Spanish. This fact, which we discuss when we present the experimental hypotheses,
crucially affects the learning task of English native speakers acquiring Spanish.
The following two semantic properties were selected for testing in the experimental study. First, in the absence of adverbials, the Preterite and Imperfect have
different implications for the nature of the eventuality. Note that both (16a) and
(16b) have activity predicates but still are interpreted differently. The Preterite
brings forward a one-time, completed event interpretation (the nonprototypical
use because the predicate is an activity), whereas the Imperfect a habitual interpretation (the prototypical use). Compare this to the English perfective or
imperfective interpretation: It depends on whether the verb phrase is an activity or
an accomplishment (see (17)).
(16) a. Guillermo robaba en la calle.
HABITUAL
Guillermo rob-IMP in the street
‘Guillermo habitually robbed (people) in the street.’
b. Guillermo robó
en la calle.
ONE-TIME EVENT
Guillermo rob-PRET in the street
‘Guillermo robbed (someone) in the street.’
(17) a. Monty robbed (people) in the street.
b. Monty robbed a person in the street.
HABITUAL
ONE-TIME EVENT
Because the English equivalent of (16a), namely (17a), combines an activity
VP (an eventive verb with a bare plural, unspecified object or altogether without
an object) in the past tense, in the absence of adverbials, its interpretation is of a
habitual action. On the other hand, (17b) has an accomplishment predicate (an
eventive verb with a specified object) and its interpretation is one of a single finished event in the past. These meanings of the Spanish aspectual tenses are explicitly taught in language classrooms.
Second, Preterite and Imperfect also affect the interpretation of the subject
with generic pronouns (Casielles (1994), de Miguel (1990), Schmitt (1996); see
also the next section for semantic treatments). Both the sentences in (18a) and
(18b) are impersonal. When the verb is in the Imperfect tense, two interpretations
of the subject pronoun are available: the generic interpretation “people in general”
and the specific or existential interpretation “we.” When the verb is in the Preterite tense, the generic interpretation is not available.
(18) a. Se comía bien en casa de la abuela.
Se eat-IMP well in house of the grandmother
‘One/We would eat well at grandma’s.’
Se = la gente en general ‘people in general’
Se = nosotros ‘we’
GENERIC
SPECIFIC
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SLABAKOVA AND MONTRUL
b. Se comió
bien en casa de la abuela.
Se eat-PRET well in house of the grandmother
‘We ate well at grandma’s.’
Se = #la gente en general ‘people’
Se = nosostros ‘we’
#GENERIC
SPECIFIC
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The generic/specific meanings of the Preterite and Imperfect are not taught and
are not very frequent in the input.6 Because very scant positive evidence exists for
them in the primary linguistic input, they arguably present a poverty of the stimulus situation for language learners.
3.
GENERICITY AND ASPECT IN
NATURAL LANGUAGES
The particular focus of this experiment, namely, the possible generic interpretation of pronominal subjects depending on the grammatical aspect of the predicate,
deserves special attention. The linguistic description of genericity has been a topic
of discussion in the semantic literature for more than 50 years now. The discussion of generic nominal phrases and sentences directly interacts with many other
related semantic issues and is still very much open ended (see Krifka et al.
(1995)). An important first distinction in the study of genericity is between kindreferring DPs as in (19) and generic propositions as in (20).
(19) Dogs have yellow-brown eyes.
(20) John smokes.
The underlined subject in (19) does not denote a specific group of animals but
rather all creatures of the genus Dog (Canis). In contrast, the subject of (20) is an
R-expression denoting a concrete person. The whole sentence, however, does not
report a particular event but a series of regular events, a habit that the subject engages in. Following Krifka et al. (1995), we call these sentences characterizing or
habitual sentences.
In the literature on genericity, a very influential assumption (cf. Carlson and
Pelletier (1995), Chierchia (1995a; 1995b)) is that generic sentences, as in (19)
and (20), are concealed conditionals.7 Their interpretation depends on the pres6
6This
was determined after numerous interviews with teachers and teaching assistants of Spanish
and a careful examination of the Spanish language textbooks used in the institutions where participants were tested (see also the Discussion section).
7
More recently, Delfitto (2002) argued against the quantificational
7
analysis of generic sentences
and for a revival of Carlson’s (cf., e.g., (1977; 1980)) original insight that genericity is amenable to a
predicational analysis.
GENERICITY AND ASPECT IN L2 ACQUISITION
175
ence of an implicit (often null) adverb of quantification with modal force. More
formally, this implicit adverb is represented as a generic operator Gen. In other
words, generic sentences have a modal interpretation along the lines of “if something is a dog, it has yellow-brown eyes.”
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(19′) Gen x [x is a dog] [∃y (y is yellow-brown eyes and x has y)]
In the logical form associated with (20), the basic insight is that the modal force of
Gen imposes the satisfaction of a specific set of felicity conditions to the situations in which we check the smoking habits of John. The sentence will be true if
and only if a pragmatically constrained set of situations involving John overlaps
with the situations in which John actually smokes.
(20′) Gen s [C(f,s)] [smoke (f,s)]
In general, conditionals give rise to a clause-splitting algorithm producing a
tripartite quantificational format. The restrictive clause specifies the property
identifying a set of objects or events, and the matrix clause specifies the property
attributed to these objects or events if the conditions are met (cf. especially Partee
(1995)). To take an example from Chierchia ((1995b, 115), his example (19)), the
conditional in (21a) is amenable to a tripartite structure at the syntax-semantics interface as in (21b):
(21) a. If a poeti is inspired, shei usually writes a poem.
b.
For correct interpretation, the adverb has adjoined to IP. The scope of the adverb is its c-command domain (the matrix clause), whereas material in the restriction must not be c-commanded by the adverb to avoid a Principle C violation.
This tripartite structure at the syntax–semantics interface extends naturally to generic sentences as in (22) in which the quantificational adverb is the phonologically null generic operator Gen.
(22) a. A man with taste and money drives a Porsche.
(Chierchia’s (1995a) (21))
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SLABAKOVA AND MONTRUL
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(b)
The Davidsonian event argument e ranging over events and situations can be
bound both by the overt quantificational adverb in (21b) and by the covert Gen in
(22b).
Yet how is genericity related to aspect? Chierchia (1995a) asserted that
“genericity manifests itself overtly in the aspectual system of a language” (p. 197).
Chierchia (1995a) assumed that all languages have a distinct habitual morpheme
Hab, which can take different overt realizations and which heads an aspectual projection, a functional category above VP. This morpheme carries a functional feature
that requires the presence of the Gen operator in its specifier. In Chierchia’s
(1995a; 1995b) quantificational analysis, the intrinsic ambiguity of imperfective
sentence subjects is attributed to the presence versus absence of Gen. To be more
concrete, we take another example from Chierchia (1995b, 120):
(23) Si canta
si sing-PRES
‘People sing/People are singing.’
The sentence is ambiguous between a generic and an episodic interpretation.
When Gen is absent, the logical form of (23) is as in (24′) in which xarb is a variable ranging over groups of humans.
(24′) ∃xarb [sing (xarb)]
An appropriate context for (24′) could be the following: There is a celebration of
some sort in the village market place, and (some of the) people present are engaged in singing, among other things. Note that the set of people denoted by the
subject is pragmatically specified by the context of the occasion, a specific group
of people.
On the other hand, when Gen is present, it takes scope over the impersonal subject (see Chierchia (1995b, 121–125) for the argumentation of this claim), and we
get an interpretation of the following kind:
(24″) Gen s[C(s) [∃xarb [sing (s, xarb)]
The formula in (24′′) says that in every contextually relevant situation, there is
singing going on. For example, every time when they are in the market square for
GENERICITY AND ASPECT IN L2 ACQUISITION
177
a celebration, people would engage in singing. Hence, the group of individuals
denoted by the subject cannot be episodically constrained but will range over all
humans implicated in all the contextually specified situations. The subject interpretation follows from the episodic versus generic reading of the sentence. The
precise details of the movement analysis at the syntax–semantics interface are orthogonal to our research question. One such movement analysis is proposed in
(25) and (26).
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(25)
(26)
Example (25) presents a phrase marker allowing for the logical forms given in
(24′) and (24″) to obtain. Following Etxepare and Grohmann’s (1999) analysis of
root infinitives in Spanish, we assume that the Spanish Imperfect morphology introduces a universal quantifier (∀P) positioned above the TP. In other words, the
universal quantificational force of the Imperfect is determined by the presence of
a phonetically empty quantifier whose syntactic manifestation is the imperfective
morphology. When the subject pronoun of a verb in the Imperfect rises to the
Spec of the ∀P, the generic interpretation obtains (24″). When the subject pronoun is in the scope of deictic tense, the specific interpretation obtains (24′). The
subject pronoun in Preterite tense sentences cannot rise to a ∀P Spec simply because ∀P does not exist as in (26). The Preterite morphology does not introduce a
null universal quantifier.
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Crucially, the readings we investigated are a natural consequence of syntactic
movement and scope effects. This suggests that these interpretations are grammatically calculated and triggered, and exemplify Fodorian (1983) computational
modularity. We assume that the syntax–semantics calculus involved between aspect and subject interpretations is causally linked.
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4.
LEARNING TASKS AND HYPOTHESES
As we saw in the preceding section, quantificational analyses of characterizing
sentences assume a causal relationship between episodic versus generic readings of sentences and subject interpretation. We assume that this relationship involves a universal computational mechanism that crucially relies on syntactic
means to be properly implemented and compositionally interpreted. Because inductive learning cannot guarantee that these grammatical properties will arise in
general, if these grammatically induced interpretations arise in the appropriate
contexts, then this would be consistent with the assumption that they arise as an
expression of specific mental organization derived from UG. Thus, it is straightforward to accept that L2 acquirers come to the learning task equipped with this
kind of knowledge.
What is the particular challenge for native speakers of English in acquiring the
Spanish semantic entailments? The difficulty resides in the morphological encoding of the generic and episodic readings. As discussed in section 2, Spanish aspectual morphology carves the semantic space differently from English aspectual
morphology (see the diagram in (15)). The English simple past has a natural generic interpretation but only in the case of activities and states or atelic predicates
as illustrated in (12) and (14) and repeated here in (27) and (28) for ease of reference.
(27) Colin wrote travel books (for a living).
(28) The room was yellow.
On the other hand, accomplishments and achievements in the past simple cannot
have a generic but only an episodic interpretation:
(29) John ran a mile.
(30) John found a wallet.
In other words, the English simple past tense is aspectually neutral (H. de Swart,
personal communication (November 2001)) and preserves the aspectual values it
inherits from the Aktionsart (lexical aspectual class) of the predicate. The progres-
GENERICITY AND ASPECT IN L2 ACQUISITION
179
sive marker -ing (encoding a subset of the imperfective aspectual values) only occurs in episodic sentences denoting ongoing situations:
(31) John was ironing his shirts when the telephone rang.
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Spanish, of course, has a habitual marker in the imperfective morphology whose
functioning does not depend on the Aktionsart of the predicate. Thus, the native
speaker of English learning Spanish will have to restructure his or her grammar
(more concretely, the lexical entries of the inflectional morphology) from (32a) to
(32b).
(32) a. Viewpoint aspect meaning in English
b. Viewpoint aspect meaing in Spanish
In the diagrams in (32), circles enclose meanings that are encoded by the same
piece of inflectional morphology. In restructuring her grammar, the learner has to
acquire the fact that it is the imperfect morphology that encodes habituality (the
quantifier Gen) in Spanish and not the perfective Preterite morphology. Another
acquisition task is noticing that the Imperfective ending is ambiguous between
two interpretations, habitual and ongoing, whereas the Preterite ending only encodes the perfective meaning of a one-time finished event. In this sense, the habitual meaning is now paired with another imperfective meaning (the ongoing one)
and crucially does not depend on the lexical class of the predicate. These two
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tasks amount to quite a significant reshuffle in the native form-to-meaning
mappings and can certainly be predicted to present a difficulty for beginning to intermediate learners no matter how much instruction is available to them. Thus, it
is important to note that the universal computational mechanism for the subject
interpretation is not related in the target language to the same pieces of morphology that trigger it in the native language. In other words, pronominal subject interpretation cannot be transferred from the L1 directly because it is mediated by
different morphological means in the two languages.
To recapitulate, our hypotheses are as follows: If L2 acquisition is regulated by
domain-specific grammatical constraints, then we expect L2 learners to be more
accurate on the generic/specific subject interpretation of Preterite and Imperfect
sentences than on the correct choice of habitual/episodic contexts. The former are
regulated by a universal computational mechanism, are infrequent in the input,
and are not subject to instruction, whereas the latter is subject to instruction. At
the individual level, we expect to find participants who have acquired habituals
and generics or only generics but not habituals. Crucially, we do not expect to find
individuals who know how habitual meaning is encoded but who do not know that
a generic subject reading results.
By contrast, if L2 learners learn inductively and by analogy from one situation
for which they receive instruction to another for which they do not receive instruction, we expect to find exactly the opposite pattern. Because the habitual
meaning of the Imperfect is taught and generic subject readings frequently arise in
habitual contexts (although not always; see footnote 8), then we should see more
accuracy on habituals than generics. At the individual level, we expect to find that
only those participants that have learned habituals know about generics but crucially not that participants know generics without habituals.
Finally, only if L2 learners are constrained by universals we expect to find that
they will know the restrictions on the Preterite (that subjects cannot be generic in
the Preterite). If L2 learners only learn what they are taught and what they encounter in the input, they should not know about the generic restriction on Preterite simply because it does not occur in the input and is not taught.
5.
5.1.
THE STUDY
The Participants
Sixty-nine English-speaking learners of Spanish took part in the experiment. At
the time of testing, they were either studying or teaching at two research universities in the United States. Their mean age was 24.7 (SD = 3.6), and the mean age of
first exposure to Spanish as a second language was 13.4 (SD = 2.3). Participants
were divided into two proficiency groups: 40 intermediate and 29 advanced (see
GENERICITY AND ASPECT IN L2 ACQUISITION
181
the following). Eighteen native speakers from different Spanish-speaking countries (M age = 36.5) served as controls.
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5.2.
Test Instruments
To independently assess the participants’ knowledge of Spanish, we administered
a Proficiency Test adapted from Diploma de Español como Lengua Extranjera
(DELE; Embassy of Spain, Washington, DC) and comprising two multiplechoice tests: a passage-based test in which participants had to supply 20 missing
words selecting from three choices, and a sentence-based test in which participants had to select a missing phrase or word in 30 sentences. The maximum score
in the proficiency test was 50. Second, we administered an inflectional morphology recognition test adapted from Salaberry (1997). The objective was to check
whether learners had acquired the Imperfect and Preterite inflectional morphology with different lexical classes of verbs. The participants had to choose which
of the two supplied forms went well in the context of the sentence. Only one form
was acceptable in each case.
(33) El jefe le (1) daba/dio el dinero a la empleada para depositarlo en el
banco. La empleada (2) trabajó/trabajaba para la compañía pero no (3)
estuvo/estaba contenta con su trabajo y (4) quiso/quería otro trabajo. . . .
‘The boss gave the money to the employee to be deposited in the bank.
The employee worked for the company but was not happy with her job
and wanted another job. . . .’
The main test instrument was a Truth-Value Judgment Task (Crain and Thornton (1998), Grimshaw and Rosen (1990)). This task has been used successfully in
SLA by Bruhn-Garavito (1995), White (1995), White, Hirakawa, and Kawasaki
(1996), and White, Bruhn, Garavito, Kawasaki, Pater, and Prévost (1997). The
task is especially well suited to studying knowledge of sentence-meaning pairs
because it presents participants with a fully described context and asks them to relate the context to a grammatical sentence. In some cases, the context and the
grammatical sentences do not match in meaning. The participants had to choose
whether the sentence following each story is true or false. The task included three
main conditions, but we only present the results of two here. See the Appendix for
an example of stories and sentences for Condition 1, habitual versus one-time
event stories, and Condition 2, generic versus specific subject interpretation. Quadruples were based on a single verb phrase. In each quadruple of story–sentence
combinations, Preterite and Imperfect test sentences were crossed with habitual/
one-time or generic/specific context stories depending on the condition. Each
story appeared twice: with a Preterite sentence and with an Imperfect sentence underneath. Depending on the context, only the Imperfect sentence was true, or only
the Preterite sentence was true. There were 80 story–sentence combinations—40
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stories with a sentence in the Preterite and the same 40 stories with a sentence in
the Imperfect. Twelve of the story–sentence combinations were distractors. All
distractors were designed to get the answer “False” to counterbalance Condition 2
in which three out of four story–sentence combinations in a quadruple were
“True.” Thus, half the story–sentence combinations were “True,” and the other
half were “False.”
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5.3.
Results
Based on their scores on the proficiency test, learners were distributed into two
levels: intermediate and advanced. Table 2 gives the mean score and standard deviation of the participants. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), F(1, 67) =
168.92, p < .0001, shows that the two groups’ means were statistically different.
Table 3 gives the mean score of the learners’ groups on the inflectional morphology recognition task. Again, a one-way ANOVA, F(1, 67) = 38.937, p <
.0001, suggests that the two groups’ knowledge of Preterite/Imperfect morphology was significantly different.
The participants’ scores on the Truth-Value Judgment Task were submitted to
a factorial ANOVA with Group as between factor (control, advanced, intermediate) and Sentence Types (1, 2, 3, and 4 for distractors), Tense (Preterite vs. Imperfect), and Response (true vs. false) as within factors. The overall results show that
there was a main effect for Group, F(2, 84) = 56.75, p < .0001; for Sentence Type,
F(3, 84) = 23.803, p < .0001; and for Tense, F(1, 84) = 16.704, p < .0001; but crucially, there was no main effect for Response, F(1, 84) = 1.96, p < .164. It was important to establish that the participants had no response bias to either true or false
TABLE 2
Means and Standard Deviations on Proficiency Test
M
SD
Intermediatea
Advancedb
25.90
3.88
33.88
3.06
Note. Maximum score = 50.
an = 40. bn = 29.
TABLE 3
Means and Standard Deviations on Morphology Recognition Test
M
SD
Note. Maximum score = 30.
an = 40. bn = 29.
Intermediatea
Advancedb
22.67
6.36
27.44
3.8
183
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GENERICITY AND ASPECT IN L2 ACQUISITION
answers before looking at their aspectual interpretation choices. Differences
among groups were investigated through Tukey procedures, and the alpha level
was set at .05.
Another potential issue to check is whether participants were capable of choosing true or false answers in connection to stories provided in the test. Learners’ accuracy on distractors is therefore indicative of any such problem. Distractor
sentences in the test were all false for the stories provided, as mentioned previously. The reason for their falseness was factual discrepancy between story and
sentence and nothing to do with the actual tense. Advanced and intermediate
learners’ accuracy on distractors utilizing Preterite and Imperfect tenses was quite
high (see Table 4). Thus, we can be certain that any incorrect performance on the
part of the learners was not due to a positive answer bias or to a failure to judge the
truth value of a sentence in relation to a story but only to their interpretation of
Preterite and Imperfect tense meanings.
We now look at the results of the two conditions, presented in combination in
Table 5. Condition 1 utilized stories describing habitual context and stories describing a one-time finished event in the past. The Imperfect is true for the habitual story, whereas the Preterite is true for the one-time-event story. Note that these
are the default meanings of the two tenses irrespective of the verb class they appear with. On both types of stories, the advanced and intermediate learners were
significantly more accurate on Preterite than on Imperfect test sentences. On haTABLE 4
Percentage Accuracy on Distractors
Tenses
Controlsa
Intermediateb
Advancedc
97
96
88
85
100
97
Imperfect
Preterite
an
= 18. bn = 40. cn = 29.
TABLE 5
Percentage Accuracy on Tense × Story Type on Condition 1
(Habitual vs. One-Time Event) and Condition 2 (Subject Interpretation)
Condition
1
Type of Story
Habitual event
One-time event
2
Generic subject
Specific subject
Tense (Key)
Imp
Pret
Imp
Pret
Imp
Pret
Imp
Pret
(T)
(F)
(F)
(T)
(T)
(F)
(T)
(T)
Controla
Advancedb
Intermediatec
88
98
89
96
92
88
81
90
70
93
74
97
86
85
64
85
47
81
41
81
82
66
46
74
Note. Imp = Imperfect; Pret = Preterite; T = true; F = false. All values are percentages.
an = 18. bn = 29. cn = 40.
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SLABAKOVA AND MONTRUL
bitual stories, both the advanced and the intermediate learners displayed higher
mean accuracy with the Preterite (advanced group M = 93%, intermediate group
M = 81%) than with the Imperfect (advanced group M = 70%, intermediate group
M = 47%). In other words, learners were more accurate in their knowledge that
the Preterite did not go well with habitual stories than in their knowledge that the
Imperfect did go well with these stories. On one-time-event stories, again the advanced and the intermediate learners had higher accuracy scores with the Preterite
(advanced group M = 97%, intermediate group M = 81%) than with the Imperfect
(advanced group M = 74%, intermediate group M = 41%). That is, they knew that
the Preterite was compatible with a one-time-event story but were not so sure that
the Imperfect was not compatible with the same story. These results suggest
that the participants had acquired the fact that the Preterite can describe a onetime event in the past and cannot describe a habitual activity. The knowledge of
the Imperfect semantics, however, develops later.
Condition 2 tested pronominal subject pronoun interpretation (see Table 5). It
is precisely on the one-time-event reading stories that learners had to demonstrate
whether they are aware of the negative semantic constraint. The choice of Preterite is wrong in this condition because the generic interpretation of the subject is
unavailable, and the advanced participants were well aware of this fact, with a
mean accuracy of 85%. The intermediate learners were less accurate (M = 66%),
showing that they were somewhat hesitant on the blocked interpretation. Furthermore, the advanced as well as the intermediate learners were highly accurate in realizing that the subject can be generic in Imperfect tense sentences (advanced
group M = 87%, intermediate group M = 82%), therefore demonstrating adherence to the semantic universal: if a habitual clause reading, then generic subject.
This is also an important finding of our experimental study.
On the specific stories, both the advanced and the intermediate were more accurate with the Preterite (advanced group M = 85%, intermediate group M = 74%)
than with the Imperfect (advanced group M = 64%, intermediate group M = 46%),
although both test sentences with this story type are actually true. This may of
course be due to the salience of the Preterite-specific subject combination. In
other words, learners have acquired the fact that the subject in a Preterite sentence
can be interpreted as specific but are not so accurate in their knowledge that the
subject in an Imperfect sentence can be specific too. (In fact, the intermediate
learners performed at chance.)
We zoom in now on learners’ accuracy on the habitual (characterizing) reading
and the causally related generic subject reading of the Spanish Imperfect in comparing accuracy in the two conditions. These are the two interpretations that have
to shift formal expression in the target language. Recall that the habitual meaning
is mapped in English onto the simple past tense combined with states or activities.
The same meaning is expressed with the Imperfect aspectual tense in Spanish for
all aspectual classes. The shift, or reshuffle of lexical entries, calls for parameterized grammar restructuring. The subject interpretation, on the other hand, is ar-
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GENERICITY AND ASPECT IN L2 ACQUISITION
185
guably subject to universal semantic operations and will follow for free once the
parametric shift has been accomplished or even started. As we argued previously,
subject interpretation is not explicitly taught, although it is present in the native
grammar (otherwise it would not have been subject to universal operations). Negative evidence on the aspectual tenses meanings, of course, is widely provided to
learners.
Figure 1 shows participants’ knowledge of the characterizing reading attributed to the Imperfect Spanish morphology, tested as Condition 1. Advanced
learners were 75% accurate and intermediate learners were only 47% accurate,
which is less than chance performance. A one-way ANOVA comparing group
differences was significant, F(2, 84) = 22.1, p < .00001. Compare this performance to the learners’ accuracy on the generic subject reading, tested as Condition
2. Advanced learners were 87% accurate and intermediate learners were 82.5%
accurate. A one-way ANOVA indicates that the performance of the three participant groups was not statistically different, F(2, 84) = 2.12, p = .126. In other
words, intermediate and advanced learners were indistinguishable from native
speakers in attributing a generic subject interpretation to characterizing sentences.
We turn to individual results now. They were calculated in the following way.
Because some controls had judged correctly four out of six story–sentence combinations, or achieved 66% accuracy, we accepted that percentage as the cutoff
point for successful acquisition for the learners. The individual results by group
and story type are in Table 6.
The individual results for the intermediate and especially the advanced learners seem to support the group findings of relative accuracy. The majority of
advanced learners have successfully acquired all the properties under investigation, with accuracy ranging between 66% on the Imperfective uses to 100% on
the prototypical Preterite use. Accuracy among intermediate level individuals
ranged much more widely, between 8% and 90%. Twenty-seven (93%) advanced learners and 27 (68%) intermediate learners were accurate on the negative constraint.
FIGURE 1
ries).
Percentage accuracy on Imperfect tense interpretations (true for respective sto-
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SLABAKOVA AND MONTRUL
TABLE 6
Individual Number and Percentage of Accurate
Participants per Condition and Group
Controla
Type of
Story
Condition
1
Habitual
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One time
2
Generic
Specific
Tense
(Key)
Imp
Pret
Imp
Pret
Imp
Pret
Imp
Pret
(T)
(F)
(F)
(T)
(T)
(F)
(T)
(T)
Advancedb
Intermediatec
No.
%
No.
%
No.
%
17
18
18
18
18
16
15
18
94
100
100
100
100
88
83
100
20
27
19
29
27
27
19
28
69
93
66
100
93
93
66
96
8
28
3
28
36
27
12
29
20
70
8
70
90
68
30
73
Note. Imp = Imperfect; Pret = Preterite; T = true; F = false.
an = 18. bn = 29. cn = 40.
TABLE 7
Number of Individual Participants Who Acquired Habituals and Generics,
Only Generics, Only Habituals, or None of the Properties
Group
n
Hab + Gen
Only Hab
Only Gen
None
Controls
Advanced
Intermediate
18
29
40
17
19
8
0
1
1
1
7
28
0
2
3
Note.
Hab = habituals; Gen = generics.
It was our prediction that if L2 learners were constrained by a linguistic universal that is not taught, L2 learners should know either that the Imperfect can be habitual and its impersonal subjects are generic or only that impersonal subjects in
Imperfect sentences can be generic. Crucially, we predicted that we should not
find learners who know that the Imperfect can be habitual but not the causally related generic subject interpretation. The opposite pattern would obtain if L2 learners acquired by analogy: that is, they learn about Imperfect in habituals first and
then extend this knowledge to the generic subject interpretation. As it turns out,
the distribution of successful learners for each property under discussion, shown
in Table 7, strongly supports the hypothesis that L2 acquisition is constrained by a
language universal (see also section 4). In particular, there was only one individual per group who had learned only the habitual meaning of the Imperfect but had
not acquired the generic subject interpretation. In contrast, there were 7 advanced
(24%) and 28 intermediate learners (70%) who demonstrated knowledge of the
generic subject reading but no reliable knowledge of the habitual meaning of the
Imperfect.
GENERICITY AND ASPECT IN L2 ACQUISITION
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6.
187
DISCUSSION
We start this section by reiterating the types of semantic knowledge that we expected our learners to demonstrate. First, the prototypical meanings of the Imperfect and Preterite tenses have to be acquired. However, the fact that these are
prototypical meanings of the tenses does not make the acquisition task easy because a major reshuffle of the form-meaning mapping is required (see section 4).
Next, knowledge of two related conditional statements is expected to obtain: if
habitual reading of a sentence → then a generic pronominal subject interpretation,
and if an episodic reading → then specific pronominal subject interpretation.
These are referred to in this section as “the universal computational mechanism.”8
Finally, knowledge of the negative constraint on generic subject in episodic sentences with the Preterite should be attained.
Keeping in mind these types of semantic knowledge, let us summarize the experimental results here. The overall results of the advanced group showed that L2
learners were able to acquire successfully the semantic properties of Spanish aspectual tenses (Condition 1). They were consistently accurate on the prototypical
tense meanings (Imperfect-habitual, Preterite-episodic), with means well above
70%. Although highly accurate, advanced learners were often overall more accurate on Preterite than on Imperfect sentences, thereby confirming developmental
patterns attested in the acquisition of Spanish as L2 literature (Liskin-Gasparro
(2000), Salaberry (1999; 2000)). Notice, however, that even the control group
was about 7 to 10% less accurate in judging Imperfect than Preterite sentences.
Thus, the performance of the advanced learners may be partly attributable to the
actual test items and partly to later development of the grammatical knowledge.
Advanced learners were also highly accurate on the universal semantic conditionals tested in Condition 2: that if a habitual clause reading, then a generic pronominal subject, and if episodic clause reading, then a specific pronominal
subject (above 85%). Finally, they demonstrated consistent knowledge of the negative constraint on the generic interpretation of the Preterite (85% accuracy).
Aspectual tense contrasts started to emerge in the intermediate group, although
the grammatical knowledge of this group was clearly in a state of flux, with accuracy between 41% and 82%. The results of the intermediate and advanced groups,
taken together, reveal a steady developmental trend in the acquisition of semantic
interpretations of the Preterite/Imperfect contrast in all three types of knowledge.
The most important finding is that 86% of the advanced group answers (93% of
individuals) and an incredible 82% of the intermediate group answers (68% of individuals) revealed adherence to the underrepresented semantic constraint (more
8
8Note that at least one conditional is not true of referential subjects. It is not the case that every
characterizing sentence has a generic subject. For example, John smokes describes a series of particular episodes of smoking that amount to a habit, but the property of smoking is still predicated of the
specific individual “John” (Krifka et al. (1995, 2)).
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SLABAKOVA AND MONTRUL
on this next). We discuss the implications of these findings for the issue of access
to semantic universals in nonnative language acquisition.
We argue that the universal computational mechanism regulating Spanish pronominal subject interpretation is underdetermined by classroom (and possibly
naturalistic) input. As in child language acquisition, it is highly unlikely that L2
learners are exposed to explicit instruction about the restriction on generic subject
meaning in Preterite sentences. In fact, we interviewed several instructors teaching
Spanish in the two universities where our participants were studying in an attempt
to ascertain that this property of the grammar is not taught. Not surprisingly, Spanish instructors proved not to be consciously aware that this semantic restriction existed, let alone trying to teach it. Thus, we can safely assume that the universal
computational mechanism of generic and specific subjects and the negative constraint on the generic reading of subjects in Preterite sentences we tested in this experiment are not subject to explicit negative evidence in the classroom.
We next attempt to demonstrate that the knowledge acquired by the learners
does not come from a direct form-to-meaning mapping with their native grammar.
As discussed in sections 2 and 3, English does not have Imperfect and Preterite
tenses; therefore, the meaning restrictions on overt and null subject interpretations
cannot transfer directly from the L1. However, what if the participants in our
study had utilized analogy with their native language or some other inductive
learning strategy to arrive at the universal knowledge and the negative constraint?
This learning scenario is not entirely implausible, especially if we consider that
the past simple and progressive tenses in English have similar meanings to Spanish Preterite and Imperfect tenses when dynamic (nonstative) predicates are involved. We consider our examples in (18), repeated here for ease of reference, and
their English equivalents.
(18) a. Se comía bien en casa de la abuela.
Se eat-IMP well in house of the grandmother
‘One/We would eat well at grandma’s.’
b. Se comió
bien en casa de la abuela.
Se eat-PRET well in house of the grandmother
‘We ate well at grandma’s.’
It is possible for English-speaking learners of Spanish, based on analogy of viewpoint aspect meaning, to map the Imperfect tense on their native progressive tense
and the Preterite on their native past simple. This mapping is quite plausible as a
working hypothesis; see, for example, C. Smith (1991/1997) who argued that the
past simple represents the perfective viewpoint aspect, whereas the progressive
represents the Imperfective viewpoint in English.9 The English equivalents of
(18) then would be as in (34):
9
9Smith’s
(1991) analysis contradicts the one we assume in this article, following de Swart (1998),
that the simple past tense in English is neutral as to perfectivity and simply preserves the aspectual
eventuality inherited from the Aktionsart of the predicate. We are suggesting that Smith’s proposal is
one possible working hypothesis that the learner might unconsciously entertain, among others.
GENERICITY AND ASPECT IN L2 ACQUISITION
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(34) a. ?You were eating well at grandma’s.
b. *One was eating well at grandma’s.
c. One/you ate well grandma’s.
The sentence in (34c), the equivalent of the Spanish Preterite, has two interpretations available in English: The subject can be the generic one (you is preferred
in the American dialects of English); the subject can also be a specific person implicated in the discourse. On the other hand, the sentence in (34a), although
mildly odd, can be interpreted with a specific subject only. The sentence in (34b)
is judged to be ungrammatical. No generic subject interpretation of these progressive sentences is available. Thus, if an English native speaker learning Spanish
had relied on viewpoint aspect analogy with her native grammar to mimic the
competence of Spanish native speakers, she would have been totally misled. Recall the diagrams in (32a) and (32b) visualizing the complex restructuring of the
form-to-meaning mapping necessary for English native speakers to acquire the
Spanish mapping.
We reiterate here the series of changes called for. Generally speaking, in both
languages, two pieces of inflectional morphology encode three aspectual meanings. First, learners have to notice that the nearest equivalent to the past simple
form (the Preterite) is not ambiguous between two interpretations. The form that
is ambiguous is the nearest equivalent to the English past progressive (the Spanish
Imperfect).10 Thus, there is a mismatch between the ambiguous and the nonambiguous forms in the two languages. Second, it is the characterizing or habitual
interpretation that shifts from one form to another. In English, it is conflated
together with the one-time completed or terminated event interpretation and is
crucially dependent on the Aktionsart of the predicate. In Spanish, it is conflated
with the progressive reading and is completely free, that is, not dependent on
Aktionsart. In our learning situation, then, the lexical entries of the inflectional
morphemes encoding and checking the grammatical aspect meanings in the FC
AspP have to be completely restructured. In this sense, if a learner utilizes
straightforward transfer of the inflectional morphology lexical entry—based on
the logic that in English, the habitual is encoded by the simple past tense, and in
Spanish, it is encoded by the Preterite—he or she is going to be misled. In other
words, one cannot directly apply the universal computational mechanism (arguably available to the participants in the experiment) without the go-between of the
viewpoint aspect morphemes.
If the (positive) semantic conditionals are universal and arguably come either
from the native grammar or from UG, the negative semantic constraint on generic
subjects in nonhabitual, episodic sentences relies on a different type of domain10
10If
we take into account the fact that learners have the past imperfective and perfective progressive forms to consider, which only have episodic readings, we see that the learning task becomes ever
more complex. Our point here is that even without considering the progressive, the learning task is
complex enough.
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specific knowledge. Recall that the phrase marker in (25) involves a universal
quantifier projection ∀P to whose Spec the subject can optionally raise to check
its generic meaning. Note that the two meanings (hence, the two logical forms)
are attested and confirmed by native speaker judgments in this experiment; therefore, some sort of movement analysis must be brought forward to explain this
fact. In the case of (26), however, this projection is absent, and the only possible
meaning for the pronominal subject is the existential one. This is the type of
highly specialized, idiosyncratic knowledge that our advanced learners demonstrated with 85% accuracy and even our intermediate learners with better-thanchance 66% accuracy.
A very important question arises: What if the negative constraint on generic
subject interpretation follows not from a language specific universal combined
with specialized syntactic knowledge but from a general cognitive mechanism of
some sort? One argument against deriving the learners’ knowledge from domaingeneral operations comes from the ambiguity of the inflectional morphology encoding the characterizing meaning. As argued previously, it is well accepted in
the linguistic literature that the computation of semantic ambiguity is related to a
sentence having two logical forms associated with two different syntactic structures. Note that the type of ambiguity we are discussing is not due to vagueness or
underspecification of the logical form. It is very hard to see how syntactic operations adhering to general cognitive properties like binarity, iterativity, and inheritability (O’Grady (1996, 379)) will lead to the right computation. None of
these cognitive properties can produce optional movement at LF. It is even less
clear how the same general cognitive properties will single out one structure as
permitting ambiguity and the other as not permitting it. Thus, neither knowledge
of the universal semantic conditions nor knowledge of the negative constraint can
be achieved without a highly specialized inherent mechanism solely devoted to
linguistic meaning computation. We must conclude that in child language as well
as in L2 acquisition, learners have to have access to domain-specific, modular
knowledge that has developed well beyond domain-general operations.
One curious discrepancy remains to be addressed. Our findings point to an
important contrast between the two types of knowledge: the semantic reflex of
the AspP FC and the related pronominal subject interpretation. As we indicated
in the Results section (see Figure 1 and surrounding discussion), advanced
learners were 75% accurate and intermediate learners only 47% accurate on the
habitual reading of the Imperfect. Furthermore, 69% of advanced and only 20%
of intermediate individual learners successfully acquired the characterizing
reading of the Imperfect. In contrast, advanced learners were 86% accurate and
intermediate learners were 82% accurate on the generic subject reading. The individual results again replicate the group findings: The success rate was above
90% for all learners. Most participants had acquired generics but not necessarily
habituals.
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How is this possible if we argued previously that the generic subject reading and
the related negative constraint have to be mediated by the knowledge of the Imperfect form ambiguity? The answer to this question is suggested by the learners’ superior accuracy on Preterite meaning than on Imperfect meanings at both levels of
proficiency (cf. Table 5). Once the meaning of the Preterite is fixed in the learners’
grammars on denoting a one-time episode but crucially not a habitual series of
events, the pronominal subject interpretation follows from the syntactic structure in
(26) and universal principles. In other words, narrowing down the native perfective
aspect meanings through discovering the nonambiguity of the Preterite automatically maps the Preterite to specific pronominal subjects and the Imperfect to generic
pronominal subjects. Thus, the semantic conditionals causally related to the aspectual readings become an active part of interlanguage grammar much before the restructuring of the form-to-meaning mapping has been completed.
There is one form–meaning association that clearly lags behind all others. Both
group and individual results indicate that the advanced but especially the intermediate learners are far from consistently accurate with specific subjects in Imperfect sentences. We showed in sections 2 and 3 that Spanish Imperfect has both a
habitual and an episodic (progressive) reading in which pronominal subjects are
interpreted as generic and specific, respectively. When faced with a one-time past
event story with a specific subject, 81% of native speaker answers, 64% of advanced learner answers, and only 46% of intermediate learner answers identified
the progressive interpretation as possible. At the same time, all groups were
highly accurate in mapping the same story to a Preterite sentence (cf. Table 5). It
is possible that we are faced with a preference choice due to a prototypical association in this condition, at least on the part of the native speakers and some advanced speakers. However, it seems more likely that the intermediate learners
were simply hesitant about the availability of this interpretation. Because only 12
(30%) of individuals in this group chose it reliably, this form-to-meaning mapping is clearly still developing in our learners’ interlanguage grammars. This finding seems a bit surprising when one takes into account the fact that the English
past progressive, the closest equivalent to the Spanish Imperfect with dynamic
predicates, always produces a specific subject reading (e.g., John was eating fish
and chips). However, we are looking here at past progressive sentences with impersonal subjects. We speculate that Imperfect sentences with pronominal impersonal subjects are rare in the input, which is corroborated by the native speakers’
preferences. The progressive is certainly the marked option when relating a onetime past event without the additional benefit of a point in time clause or phrase in
the immediate context. The example in (35a) is not entirely natural, as pointed out
previously, and improves considerably when we add a clause as in (35b).
(35) a. ?You were eating well at grandma’s.
b. You were eating well at grandma’s when I came in.
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Constrained by the quadruple story–sentence design, we could not provide the
most natural context for the progressive reading. This fact alone may explain the
native speaker and learner preferences discussed previously. Nevertheless, pronominal subject ambiguity in Imperfect sentences is not impossible to acquire because one third of intermediate and two thirds of advanced speakers have already
done so.
To conclude, the results of this study suggest that adult learners of a second
language reveal unconscious knowledge of abstract properties of the grammar
that are unlikely to be derived from observation of the primary linguistic data,
from their native grammar directly, or on the basis of straightforward analogy
with their native grammar or with what they are taught. Faced with a complex
form-to-meaning mapping and restructuring of the grammar, participants in our
experimental study demonstrated that a universal computational mechanism for
pronominal subject interpretation and a negative constraint on generic pronominal subjects in specific sentences are active in their intermediate and advanced
Spanish–English interlanguage grammar, even before the restructuring process
has been completed.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
During revisions of this article, Roumyana Slabakova was hosted by the Utrecht
institute of Linguistics OTS. Both the UiL OTS hospitality and the Netherlands
Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) visiting grant are gratefully acknowledged. We are grateful to everyone who participated in our experiment, to
our colleagues at SUNY Albany, the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign,
and at the University of Iowa for help with the testing and discussion, and to the
University of Iowa VP of Research office for financial support. In addition, the
authors thank Karlos Arregi, Denis Delfitto, Giuseppe Longobardi, and Bill
Philip for extremely helpful and exciting discussions. We also acknowledge the
helpful comments of three anonymous Language Acquisition reviewers. All errors remain our responsibility.
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APPENDIX
Example of Stories From the Truth Value Judgment Task
Condition 1: One-time event versus Habitual
Context: One-Time Event
Panchito era muy tímido y no tenía muchos amiguitos con quien jugar.
Panchito pasaba todo el tiempo en su casa con su mamá. Ayer Panchito se
reunió por primera vez con sus vecinitos para jugar y pasaron un rato muy
agradable. Hoy Panchito se quedó nuevamente con su mamá.
Panchito jugaba (imperf) con sus vecinos.
F
Panchito jugó (pret)
con sus vecinos.
T
‘Panchito was (imperf) very shy and he did not have (imperf) friends to play
with. Panchito would spend (imperf) time at home with his mother. Yesterday,
for the first time, he got together (pret) with his neighbors to play and they had
(pret) a very pleasant time. Today Panchito stayed (pret) with his mother
again.’
Panchito played (imperf) with his neighbors.
F
Panchito played (pret)
with his neighbors.
T
Context: Habitual
Laurita tenía muchos amiguitos y después de la escuela pasabà el tiempo en la
casa de sus vecinos. Ayer se quedó en casa con su mamá y pasó un rato muy
agradable.
Laurita jugaba (imperf) con sus vecinos.
T
Laurita jugó (pret)
con sus vecinos.
F
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‘Laurita had (imperf) many friends and after school she would spend (imperf)
time at his neighbors’ house. Yesterday Laurita stayed (pret) at home with her
mother and had (pret) a very good time.’
Laurita played (imperf) with his neighbors.
T
Laurita played (pret)
with his neighbors.
F
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Condition 2: Generic versus Specific Subject interpretation
Context: Generic
Según el periódico, el restaurante de la calle Jefferson era muy bueno y el
servicio era exelente. Lamentablemente el restaurante cerró el verano pasado y
nunca tuvimos la oportunidad de ir.
Se comía bien ese restaurante.
T
Se comió bien en ese restaurante.
F
‘According to the newspaper the restaurant on Jefferson Street was (imperf)
very good and the service was (imperf) excellent. Unfortunately the restaurant
closed (pret) last summer and we never got to go (pret).’
One ate (imperf) well at that restaurant.
T
We ate (pret)
well at that restaurant.
F
Context: Specific
Según la mayoría de la gente, el restaurante de la calle Jefferson era muy bueno
y el servicio era exelente. Fuimos a celebrar el cumpleaños de Carlos y a todos
nos gustó mucho.¡Qué lástima que lo cerraron!
Se comía bien en ese restaurante.
T
Se comió bien en ese restaurante.
T
‘According to most people’s opinion, the restaurant on Jefferson Street was
(imperf) very good and the service was (imperf) excellent. We went (pret)
there to celebrate Carlos’s birthday and we all liked (pret) it a lot. It’s a pity
that it closed!’
One ate (imperf) well at that restaurant.
T
We ate (pret)
well at that restaurant.
T