‘I think mangiò might be passé simple’: exploring multilingual learners’ reflections on past tense verb morphology

Figures & data

Table 1. Realisation of aspect (perfective, imperfective progressive, imperfective habitual) in Italian and Swedish. PP: passato prossimo; PR: passato remoto; IMPF: imperfetto; PROG: progressive periphrasis stare + gerund; PRET: preteritum; HÅLLA: hålla på att; BRUKA: bruka.

	Perfective	Imperfective Progressive	Imperfective Habitual
Italian	Marco ha visitato (PP)/visitò (PR) Berlino l’anno scorso	Luigi leggeva (IMPF)/stava leggendo (PROG) il libro ieri	Mario leggeva (IMPF) il giornale la mattina
Swedish	Marco besökte (PRET) Berlin förra året	Luigi läste (PRET)/höll på att (HÅLLA) läsa boken igår	Mario läste (PRET)/brukade (BRUKA) läsa tidningen på morgonen
English translation	Marco visited Berlin last year	Luigi was reading the book yesterday	Luigi used to read the newspaper in the morning

Figure 1. Example of a task from the IIT.

Table 2. Descriptive statistics (Mean; SD) for the C-tests in Italian and Romance languages.

		Italian		Romance
	N	Mean	SD	Mean	SD
LowIta-LowRom	4	29.75	13.426	31.25	13.937
LowIta-HighRom	7	42.71	5.024	56	4.041
HighIta-LowRom	4	56.50	4.796	38.75	6.898
HighIta-HighRom	7	58.57	2.070	59	3.109

Table 3. Example of Qualitative Content Analysis.

Reflection	CMU	Code	Subcategory	Category
something that happened long ago, but also that repeated itself	long ago	remoteness	tense	explicit rules
	repeated	habitual/iterative	aspect	explicit rules

Table 4. Occurrences of the groups’ reflections for each verb form.

Reflections by verb form	LowIta-LowRom	LowIta-HighRom	HighIta-LowRom	HighIta-HighRom	Tot.
Imperfetto	20	62	36	70	188
Periphrasis	8	32	18	36	94
Passato prossimo	25	60	30	44	159
Passato remoto	3	14	8	20	45
Not imperfetto	1	4	2		7
Not periphrasis	1	4	3		8
Not passato prossimo	2	8	2	5	17
Not passato remoto	1		3	4	8
Other	2	14	3		19
Tot.	63	198	105	179	545

Table 5. Overall number of occurrences and percentage of categories and subcategories.

Category/subcategory	n	%
Explicit rules	450	82.57%
Aspect	254	46.61%
Grounding/sociolinguistic varieties	18	3.30%
Lexical aspect	69	12.66%
Tense	89	16.33%
Triggers	20	3.67%
Intuition	34	6.24%
Other languages	34	6.24%
Direct	10	1.83%
Indirect	24	4.40%
Uncertainty/unknown	27	4.95%
Total	545	100,00%

Table 6. Categories and subcategories for low-proficiency learners and commented verb forms (IMP: imperfetto; PER: periphrasis; PP: passato prossimo; PR: passato remoto).

	LowIta-LowRom					LowIta-HighRom					Total
	IMP	PER	PP	PR	Tot.	IMP	PER	PP	PR	Tot.
Explicit rules	16	7	23	3	49	49	21	47	7	124	173
Aspect	7	5	7		19	32	16	27	5	80	99
Grounding/sociolinguistic varieties							1	1	1	3	3
Lexical aspect		1			1	15	1	2		18	19
Tense	9	1	16	3	29	1		17	1	19	48
Triggers						1	3			4	4
Intuition	2	1	2		5	4		6	3	13	18
Other languages						5	8	4		17	17
Direct						4		4		8	8
Indirect						1	8			9	9
Uncertainty/unknown	2				2	4	3	3	4	14	16
Total	20	8	25	3	56	62	32	60	14	168	224

Table 7. Categories and subcategories for high-proficiency learners and commented verb forms (IMP: imperfetto; PER: periphrasis; PP: passato prossimo; PR: passato remoto).

	HighIta-LowRom					HighIta-HighRom					Total
	IMP	PER	PP	PR	Tot.	IMP	PER	PP	PR	Tot.
Explicit rules	32	14	30	8	84	67	30	44	16	157	241
Aspect	22	10	17	4	53	47	21	15	7	90	143
Grounding/sociolinguistic varieties	1	1	1		3	3	4	1	1	9	12
Lexical aspect	7	1	2	2	12	13	2	12	4	31	43
Tense	2		9	2	13			13	4	17	30
Triggers		2	1		3	4	3	3		10	13
Intuition	1				1		1		1	2	3
Other languages	3	4			7	3	5			8	15
Indirect	3	4			7	3	5			8	15
Uncertainty/unknown									3	3	3
Total	36	18	30	8	92	70	36	44	20	170	262

Table

Category	Subcategory	Code
Explicit rules	Tense	General past
		Present relevance
		Recency
		Remoteness
	Aspect	Completed
		Habitual/iterative
		Interruption
		Ongoing
		Simultaneity
		Single
	Lexical Aspect	Atelic
		Durative
		Punctual
		Stative
		Telic
	Grounding/sociolinguistic varieties	Diastratic/diatopic
		Grounding
		Tones
	Triggers
Other languages	Direct	English French Romanian Swedish
	Indirect
Intuition		Feeling
Uncertainty/unknown		Uncertainty
		Unknown