L2 learnability of viewpoint aspect at the initial stages of feature reassembly: a bidirectional study with learners of Chinese and Spanish

Abstract

The thesis examines the L2 learnability of features at the syntax-semantics interface. In the present thesis, L2 learnability problems are approached by following the predictions of the Feature Reassembly (FR) (Lardiere, 2007, 2008, 2009a, b), which assumes that L2 learning tasks lie in mapping existing features onto new L2 lexical items with different configurations. Previous studies testing the predictions of the FR reveal that the FR provides testable hypotheses for the learning task faced by the learners. However, what remains less known is which type of feature reassembly is more difficult for acquisition. The thesis provides novel insight into the nature of the L2 learning task and explores what factors affect the extent of L1 transfer and the complexity of the learning task at the initial stages of feature reassembly by exploring the L2 acquisition of viewpoint aspect.
Viewpoint aspect is a semantic category that has syntactic representations (Arche, 2006, 2014; Comrie, 1976, Demirdache and Uribe-Exebarria, 2000; Klein, 2009; Smith, 1991). The way aspectual meanings are realized is prone to cross-linguistic variation. L2 learnability of viewpoint aspect has been widely tested (e.g. Domínguez et al., 2013, 2017; Duff and Li, 2002; Jin, 2009; McManus, 2015; Montrul and Slabakova, 2002, 2003; Roberts and Liszka, 2013; Slabakova and Montrul, 2002,2003). However, what remains unclear is what are strong predictors of the acquisition problems faced by the learners: for instance, whether the grammaticalization of aspectual distinctions or the transparency of form-meaning mapping of the aspectual features determines the complexity of the learning task. The current thesis contributes to the knowledge of the nature of the L2 learnability of viewpoint aspect by investigating the Chinese—Spanish language combination. These two languages are typologically different, but both of them grammaticalize perfective/imperfective aspectual distinctions. A bidirectional study was conducted among 75 instructed L1 Spanish-L2 Chinese learners and 81 instructed L1 Chinese-L2 Spanish learners. A Sentence-Context-Preference-Matching task test whether learners have assigned correct semantic contrast to aspectual forms, and a Fill-in-the-blanks task test learners’ use of the aspectual forms.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Kefan Yang: orcid.org/0000-0003-2215-0504

ORCID for Laura Dominguez: orcid.org/0000-0003-2701-2469

ORCID for Glyn Hicks: orcid.org/0000-0003-4126-8655

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