There is no prime for time: the missing link between form and concept of progressive aspect in L2 production

Abstract

The acquisition of linguistic structures that require perspective-taking at the level of message generation is challenging. We investigate use of progressive aspect in L2 event encoding, using a sentence priming paradigm. We focus on Dutch, in which use of progressive aspect is optional. The progressive consists of a prepositional phrase (‘aan het,’ at-the), plus a verbal infinitive. We ask, to what extent L2 speakers, in comparison to native speakers, show priming effects in relation to form (prepositional phrase) or conceptual (progressive aspect) prime sentences. In native Dutch speakers we find a priming effect for the ‘progressive prime,’ compared to a ‘neutral prime’ (aspectually neutral event description). In L2 speakers this effect was absent. For the form prime, no priming effects were obtained in native speakers, rather, we find evidence for a partial blocking effect in L2 speakers. Results suggest that the strength of the link between concept and form of progressive aspect differs in native and L2 speakers. Specific factors contributed to the L2 findings, e.g., level of L2 proficiency and degree of L2 exposure. We conclude that (1) the conceptual basis of grammatical aspect can be primed in native speakers, and (2) in L2 speakers, access to conceptual information is less automatized.

Keywords:

• structural priming
• perspective-taking
• L2 acquisition
• message generation
• grammatical aspect
• syntactic encoding

Notes

1. These terms will be used interchangeably to refer to late learners of a second language (onset of acquisition during or after puberty), unless explicitly specified otherwise.

2. To distinguish between lemma nodes associated with the different languages, each lemma is linked to a language node.

3. Other constructions that express progressive aspect in Dutch (posture verb constructions) were disregarded in these analyses. Use of posture verb constructions was very infrequent in the target descriptions.

4. Due to partial data loss, we do not have language background information on a subset of the L2 speakers (N = 12). We do not consider this a problem, because all L2 participants came from a fairly homogeneous population: native German students studying Psychology in Nijmegen, all in their 2nd year of studies and from the same social group (i.e., Psychology students, including German L2 Dutch-speaking peers, as well as native Dutch peers), with similar socioeconomic backgrounds.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) [grant number 275-89-011] (Veni-scheme).