Developmental Differences

In this paper we report on the findings from a Greek and German production task which investigated the expression of constructions involving manner-of-motion verbs with Greek and German adults as well as typically developing and SLI children at the age of 5-6 years. The results showed that the typically developing children, when describing motion events, differed from the adults in the integration of grammatical information into motion predicates. The SLI children on the other hand displayed problems with the use of grammatical aspect (Greek) and case marking (German) as well as with ambiguous constructions (Greek).

In this paper we report on the findings from a Greek and German production task which investigated the expression of constructions involving manner-of-motion verbs with Greek and German adults as well as typically developing and SLI children at the age of 5-6 years. The results showed that the typically developing children, when describing motion events, differed from the adults in the integration of grammatical information into motion predicates. The SLI children on the other hand displayed problems with the use of grammatical aspect (Greek) and case marking (German) as well as with ambiguous constructions (Greek).

The study examines how three undergraduate beginner students of Italian as L3 make sense of Italian tense-aspect morphology based on other languages. All students had knowledge of Swedish, English, and French, in each case acquired in a particular chronological order. The participants completed two C-tests and three interpretation tests of aspectual contrasts in English, French, and Italian. The latter was complemented by written comments. The results of the Italian interpretation test varied depending on tense-aspect configurations. A qualitative analysis of the comments revealed four categories of metalinguistic reflections, referring to: (i) explicit rules, (ii) intuition, (iii) other languages, and (iv) uncertain/unknown, differently distributed among the students. The results suggest that the students relied on their L1(s) as well as their L2(s) depending on type of transfer, whether linguistic or conceptual, which is discussed in light of some recent L3 models.

The aspect as a linguistic category existing in both English and Bulgarian language is of interest not only to linguists, but also to teachers of English in Bulgaria who need to employ some optimal approaches to clarify the semantic peculiarities of this category as they are manifested in a different way in the two languages. Whereas in Bulgarian verb aspect is mostly expressed through morphological means – prefixes and suffixes, in English, verbs are classified in different categories according to their semantic features of the aspect, which are not manifested on a morphological level. This article presents and compares some of the ways of expressing the grammatical and lexical aspect in both languages and points out some of the difficulties Bulgarian students experience while acquiring the English lexical aspect.

This article focuses on some of the findings of the author’s research on the acquisition of English-tense morphology by Bulgarian L2 instructed learners, who have never been exposed to English in naturalistic conditions (English used by native speakers in an English-speaking country). The study has been conducted in the framework of Aspect Hypothesis (Andersen & Shirai, 1994) which makes a distinction between the grammatical aspect, marked by linguistic devices, such as verb morphology and auxiliaries, and the lexical aspect, which refers to the inherent temporal characteristics of verbs and to the temporal conditions of the situation that the verb designates (Sugaya and Shirai, 2007)  and is based on Vendler’s (1967) classification of verb-predicates according to their inherent semantic features: statives, activities, accomplishments and achievements. The empirical data, collected through written narratives elicited by an excerpt of a silent film, showed some unexpected results wit...

In general, research has shown that learners focus first on content words to process meaning and only later learn to attend to inflections (Bardovi-Harlig, 1992; VanPatten, 2004; Lee, 1999). Adverbials are lexical resources that often guide the temporal/aspectual selection of verb morphology. In the acquisition of tense and aspect, it has been shown that learners comprehend the temporal chronology of L2 input more accurately and quickly when adverbials are present in addition to verb morphology (Musumeci 1989; Lee et al. 1997; Boatwright 1999). This study examines to what extent adverbials function to help guide the interpretation and selection of Spanish preterit and imperfect by learners and native speakers (NS) of Spanish. Sixty-two intermediate and advanced English-speaking learners of Spanish and ten NS of Spanish read ten cloze passages, five with temporal adverbials and five without, and were asked to choose either preterit or imperfect. Employing online tasks, results indica...

The aim of this work is to investigate the use of Spanish Preterit and Imperfect by English speaking learners of L2 Spanish following the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis (Andersen & Shirai, 1996; Díaz, Bel, & Bekiou, 2008; Domínguez, Tracy-Ventura, Arche, Mitchell, & Miles, 2013; González, 2003, 2013; Montrul & Slabakova, 2002). The article studies how aspectual features bias Preterit and Imperfect in initial, intermediate and advanced learners. The results, based on an approximate binomial distribution analysis, confirm that Preterit is the preferred past, which supports L1 transfer (Salaberry & Shirai, 2002). The results also verify that Preterit is biased by dynamicity and punctuality at all levels. Telicity effects come into play in intermediate levels, while punctuality effects are reinforced in advanced levels. Stativity influences the use of Imperfect in intermediate level, which reveals that there are differences in the bias effect regarding proficiency level.

Some studies on the L1 acquisition of aspect in various child languages have discovered that imperfective aspect is acquired later than perfective aspect, whereas others find early adult-like performance. A variety of explanations has been advanced, particularly problems (i) with the semantics of imperfective aspect in combination with telic predicates, (ii) inferring the intended temporal antecedent in a discourse, and (iii) reasoning about an agent’s intentions to complete the event when observing a situation of an event in progress. The current study aimed to disentangle which of the purported explanations can best explain the acquisition patterns. Twenty-three Spanish monolingual children (mean age 5;11) and 17 adults were presented with telic sentences with one of two aspectual tenses in Spanish (pretérito indefinido and pretérito imperfecto). Using a picture-selection task and presenting the sentences either in a narrative setting or in a non-narrative setting, participants we...

Patients with gastroparesis and gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) often report decreased enjoyment when eating. Some patients remark that food does not smell or taste the same. To determine if taste and/or smell disturbances are present in patients with gastroparesis and/or GERD and relate these to gastrointestinal symptom severity. Patients with gastroparesis and/or GERD completed questionnaires evaluating taste and smell (Taste and Smell Survey [TSS]), Patient Assessment of Upper Gastrointestinal Symptom Severity Index (PAGI-SYM), and Demographics. TSS questioned the nature of taste/ smell changes and the impact on quality of life. PAGI-SYM was used to calculate Gastroparesis Cardinal Symptom Index (GCSI) and Heartburn and Regurgitation Score (HB/RG). Seventy-six subjects were enrolled: healthy controls (n = 13), gastroparesis alone (n = 30), GERD alone (n = 10), and both gastroparesis and GERD (n = 23). Taste and smell disturbances were higher in patients with gastroparesis, GERD, and both gastroparesis and GERD compared to healthy controls. Taste and smell abnormalities were significantly correlated (r = 0.530, P < 0.001). Taste score was strongly correlated with HB/RG (r = 0.637, P < 0.001) and with GCSI (r = 0.536, P < 0.001). Smell score was also strongly correlated to HB/RG (r = 0.513, P < 0.001) and GCSI (r = 0.495, P < 0.001). Taste and smell abnormalities are prominent in gastroparesis and GERD patients. Abnormalities in taste and smell are significantly correlated with both gastroparesis and GERD symptom severity. Awareness of this high prevalence of taste and smell dysfunction among patients with gastroparesis and GERD may help to better understand the food intolerances these patients often have.

It is debated what exactly Elicited Imitation Tasks (EITs) measure; more specifically, it is not clear to what extent language ability and working memory capacity are involved. Some researchers note that language abilities are more prevalent in those tasks, since participants focus on the meaning of the sentence in order to retrieve it (DeKeyser, 2003; Ellis, 2005; Erlam, 2006). Furthermore, language proficiency affects task performance (Bley-Vroman & Chaudron, 1994; Munnich, Flynn & Martohardjono, 1994). On the other hand, there is a debate regarding the role of memory in EITs. Some studies argue that the contribution of memory, either working memory (WM) or short-term memory (STM) is critical for accurate performance (Alloway & Gathercole, 2005; Alloway, Gathercole, Willis & Adams, 2004). Others point out the involvement of further cognitive abilities, such as episodic buffer (Baddeley & Wilson, 2002) or metalinguistic awareness (Bialystok 1991). Few studies claim that EITs do not...

I would like to thank the children and their parents who participated in the study, and the invincible research assistants and volunteers who were engaged in the testing, transcription, and coding of the data. I gratefully acknowledge the contribution of my supervisors, dr hab. Ewa Haman and dr hab. Agnieszka Otwinowska-Kasztelanic whose commitment and input in this work is inestimable and greatly appreciated. I would like to thank dr hab. Marta Białecka-Pikul for her influence and knowledgeable advice in this study at many stages of its development. Last but not least, I would like to thank the Principal Investigators of Bi-SLI-Poland and WLRB, dr hab. Ewa Haman, dr hab. Zofia Wodniecka and dr hab. Agnieszka Otwinowska-Kasztelanic, for allowing me to be part of the two projects and re-use the data gathered there.

The purpose of this study was to examine jurors’ perceptions of different types of memory errors in the context of a child recalling information about alleged maltreatment. Additionally, this study assessed whether developmental differences in memory errors affect jurors’ perceptions of the child, the external influences that may be affecting the child, and the defendant. Participants (N=372) were randomly assigned to one of eight vignettes that contained three different memory errors (major reconstructive memory error, minor reconstructive memory error, source monitoring error) or a control condition (no memory error), as well as two age groups (4-year-old child and 6-year-old child). After reading the vignettes, participants answered questions that addressed the credibility of the child, the external influences that may be affecting what the child remembers, and the guilt of the defendant. The participants answered dichotomous questions that assessed defendant guilt and child cred...

The concept of temporality is a complex one and this complexity is reflected in how individual languages manipulate the formal and functional resources available in their linguistic inventory in order to encode temporality and all its components. The component elements that languages utilize to

In general, research has shown that learners focus first on content words to process meaning and only later learn to attend to inflections (Bardovi-Harlig, 1992; VanPatten, 2004; Lee, 1999). Adverbials are lexical resources that often guide the temporal/aspectual selection of verb morphology. In the acquisition of tense and aspect, it has been shown that learners comprehend the temporal chronology of L2 input more accurately and quickly when adverbials are present in addition to verb morphology (Musumeci 1989; Lee et al. 1997; Boatwright 1999). This study examines to what extent adverbials function to help guide the interpretation and selection of Spanish preterit and imperfect by learners and native speakers (NS) of Spanish. Sixty-two intermediate and advanced English-speaking learners of Spanish and ten NS of Spanish read ten cloze passages, five with temporal adverbials and five without, and were asked to choose either preterit or imperfect. Employing online tasks, results indica...

This cross-sectional study investigated the use of the simple past tense form by twenty Thai learners of English at two levels of proficiency. A cloze test developed by Ayoun and Salaberry (2008) was adopted. The findings showed that the learners in the high proficiency group used the past tense form more accurately than the learners in the low proficiency group. When verbs were categorized according to lexical aspect, both groups of learners were found to use the simple past tense form most often with telic events as well as with states. This did not correspond to the prediction of the Aspect Hypothesis, which asserts that low-level learners tend to use the simple past tense form with telic events first. The distributional bias in the input could account for the pattern found in this study.

The Aspect Hypothesis (Andersen & Shirai, 1994; 1996) proposes that the inherent lexical aspect of verbs plays a major role in the acquisition of tense-aspect (TA) morphology in both first and second language. This has been attested in most studies on TA morphology conducted with past and present TA markers. The present study examined the acquisition of Present Perfect, a rather insufficiently studied TA form from a Prototype Account, in two of its four functions, Experiential Past and Persistent Situation. The subjects were 85 L1-Spanish English language learners at intermediate and advanced levels. All participants had received formal instruction in English grammar as part of their curriculum. The data was collected through a forced-choice task with 16 situations equally distributed between the two Present Perfect functions and between telic and atelic verbs of four semantic categories: stative, activities, achievements, and accomplishments. Participants had to choose the correct verb form out of three options (Present, Past or Present Perfect) that would best complete the sentences given. The results showed evidence of clear developmental stages in the acquisition of the Present Perfect. The stages were characterized by an important role of proficiency level and lexical aspect as the more proficient participants showed a more accurate use of the target form. In addition, both the intermediate and advanced groups showed a tendency towards employing Persistent Situation with atelic verb types, whereas they used Experiential Past with telic verbs. I would also like to thank the data collector, my friend and colleague from my Argentinian University, Carolina De Piero. Without her predisposition to comply with the requirements from the Human Subjects Committee, I would not have been able to gather the data for this study. I will always appreciate her disinterested and genuine assistance. With her, I would like to thank the participants for providing the data. Finally, I would like to thank my mentors Guadalupe Zamora and Sara Lopez for inspiring me in the learning of English Grammar and pushing me to reach the highest standards. v

Children from multilingual backgrounds have been found to enjoy cognitive flexibility benefits over their monolingual counterparts. However in some contexts of second and foreign language learning such benefits do not seem to be very distinctly found. There could be a host of reasons like low SES, quality of input in instructional contexts, and language policy and prestige associated with learning the second/foreign language to explain the absence of such benefits. We explore the context of India with regard to children who study in challenging contexts with low SES family background and very little exposure to school skills outside of the classroom. We examine the multilingual resources of such children in L1 and L2 as expressed through their narrative abilities and attendant cognitive skills to make connections between the elements of story grammar or the macro structure of narratives.

The presentation will focus on cross-linguistic narrative abilities and macro structure knowledge of 270 children aged between 8 years and 11 years in any one of the three languages - English, Hindi or Telugu - based on an oral retelling task of two stories from the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives manual (2012). Narrative abilities need to deploy both linguistic and cognitive skills and are acquired early on owing to the oral tradition of using narration as a life experience. The cross-linguistic comparisons of children’s performances will help us answer the following research questions:
(i) Are narrative abilities as macro structure knowledge and (lexical knowledge related to accessing the theory of mind) comparable across L1 and L2 of young ESL learners?
(ii) What role does individual multilinguality play in narration?
(iii) Can SES and quality of instructional input explain the levels of linguistic and cognitive abilities as employed in narrative retelling in L1 and L2 of these multilingual learners?

The purpose of this study is to examine how lexical aspect and learners' L1 temporal system interact in the learning process of L2 English temporal distinction. This study focus on second language (L2) learners' semantic knowledge of two imperfective in English, the Simple Present tense vs. the Present Progressive distinction, based on the L2 experimental data from two different first language (L1) backgrounds of L2 learners: L1 Chinese and L1 Mexican Spanish. Specifically, following two research issues are addressed: (1) the role of learners' L1 tense/aspect system in the process of acquisition of L2 English perfective and imperfective, and (2) a distributional analysis of the extent to which the learners' use of imperfective support the propositions found in the Aspect Hypothesis (AH) (Andersen and Shirai 1994, 1996). The results of a grammatical judgment task showed that although both L1 Chinese and Spanish groups can distinguish habitual and progressive reading, L1 Chinese learners are significantly less accurate in accepting appropriate progressive and rejecting inappropriate habitual readings compared with native speakers. Both groups were significantly less accurate to accept achievement predicates with progressive and this tendency was stronger with L1 Chinese learners.

The present study investigates the comprehension of perfective and imperfective aspect in Greek-English bilingual children. Previous work on L2 acquisition of aspect indicates that imperfective aspect appears later than perfective aspect in the marking of past events across various languages (Andersen & Shirai 1996; Bardovi-Harlig 2000) and that the [+ habitual] feature of imperfective aspect, appears later than the [+ continuous] feature (Bardovi-Harlig & Reynolds 1995; Shirai 2002); the same pattern also holds for adult learners of L2 Greek (Mattheoudakis et al. 2011; Papadopoulou 2005). Sixty children, thirty Greek-English bilinguals and thirty Greek monolinguals, completed a forced choice oral task, in which they had to select between the perfective and imperfective aspect of a specific verb. The task consisted of short stories which tested three experimental conditions: perfective, [+ continuous] imperfective and [+ habitual] imperfective; for each condition individual stories with and without temporal conjunctions were provided. The results revealed that the perfective aspect was successfully acquired, while problems with the imperfective aspect are evident, especially when the imperfective sentences denote habituality. The participants' performance suggests no association between the presence of conjunctions and the decoding of aspect. Interestingly, a significant correlation was found between children's vocabulary level and their performance on aspect.

This study examined age-group differences in students' motivation, self-perceptions, task and ego orientations and perception of motivational climate in Greek physical education lessons. Six hundred and seventy-four students aged 10–17 years responded on self-reports which, in this study, had acceptable internal consistencies. The results showed that senior high school students scored lower on the scales assessing intrinsic motivation, perceived learning orientation in the lesson, task orientation and perceived athletic ability than junior high school and elementary school students. High school students had lower scores on the Perceived Physical Appearance scale and higher scores on the measure assessing perceptions of students' worries about mistakes than elementary school students. The results suggest that learning orientation should be strengthened in Greek physical education.

The first and second language acquisition of tense and aspect has probably been the most prolific topic of research in the field of applied linguistics. The body of literature on, say, acquisition of questions, negation, null subjects, etc., even of inflectional morphology, pales in comparison.