The facilitative role of L1 influence in tense-aspect marking: A comparison of hispanophone and anglophone learners of French

Abstract

English learners of French whose first language (L1) does not mark the perfective/imperfective distinction have shown verb semantic influence and an overall preference for perfective over imperfective in their use of second language (L2) tense-aspect markers. This study investigated whether learners whose L1 marks the perfective/imperfective distinction would exhibit similar acquisition profiles. Hispanophones (n = 17) and Anglophones (n = 15) at similar levels of French L2 proficiency completed a 68-item cloze task with equal numbers of perfective and imperfective contexts distributed across 4 semantic categories: stative, activity, accomplishment, and achievements. In a 20-minute retrospective interview, a subsample of the participants (8 Hispanophones, 11 Anglophones) commented on factors influencing their tense-aspect choices. An ANOVA of 1,012 predicates revealed that unlike the Anglophones, the Hispanophones did not prefer perfective over imperfective, and they were also less influenced by verb semantics. The learners' comments suggest that the Hispanophones made effective use of L1-L2 similarities, whereas the Anglophones appealed to verb semantics and partially understood pedagogical rules, which were frequently associated with inappropriate uses of the forms. © 2008 by The Modern Language Journal.