Marking Past Tense in Second Language Acquisition

Book excerpt: This book presents an analysis of the difficulties faced by native speakers of English in the learning of Romance languages and in so doing proposes a comprehensive model of the acquisition of tense-aspect marking. While L1 speakers of English may quickly learn to identify and, to some extent, use the Spanish perfective and imperfective verb endings, the L2 representation of tense-aspect distinctions among both beginning and advanced learners requires a comprehensive multidimensional analysis. Through a detailed examination of new and existing empirical data, this monograph proposes a new model for examining tense-aspect marking in second language acquisition, which reconciles competing, alternative hypotheses. This comprehensive account will be of interest to academics researching second language acquisition and applied linguistics.