Bardovi-Harlig and Reynolds on the role of lexical aspect in the acquisition of tense and aspect

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Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)

The Role of Lexical Aspect in the Acquisition of Tense and AspectAuthor(s): Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig and Dudley W. ReynoldsSource: TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Spring, 1995), pp. 107-131Published by: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3587807

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TESOLQUARTERLYVol.29, No. 1, Spring1995

TheRole of LexicalAspectin theAcquisitionof TenseandAspectKATHLEEN BARDOVI-HARLIGDUDLEY W. REYNOLDSIndianaUniversity

This articlepresents the resultsof a studyinvestigatingthe acquisitionof the simple past tense, identifies areas of difficulty, and presentsan acquisitionallybased approach to instruction for the problematicareas.The study, a cross-sectionalinvestigationof 182 adult learnersof English as a second language at six levels of proficiency, showedthat the acquisition of the past tense in English is not a unitaryphenomenon, but that it proceeds in stages. These stages are deter-mined by the meaning of verbs as they relate to the expression ofaction and time, what we will term lexicalaspect.These findings showthat the acquisitionof tense by classroom language learners followsthe same sequences of development (withinstruction)that have beenobserved in the acquisitionof adult learners and in children withoutinstruction. In early stages, learners often do not use the past tensewhere it is preferred by native speakers, indicatingan undergeneral-ization of the meaning of the past in the learner grammar. Wepresent an approach to instruction aimed at increasing the use ofthe past to balance contextualized examples through the use of au-thentic text and focused noticing exercises to encourage the learnerstoward a more targetlike association of form and meaning.

This article examines the role of lexical aspect in determining thepattern of acquisition of the past tense by adult learners of Englishas a second language. Lexical aspect, one facet of verbal semantics,refers to the inherent temporal makeup of verbs and predicates. Tem-poral characteristics, such as whether a verb or verb phrase describesan action with inherent duration like talk and sleep, or is punctual likerecognizeand notice, or has elements of both duration and culminationlike build a house and paint a picture, have been found to influence theacquisition of tense. To date, however, most studies have been largelyanecdotal, relying on the spontaneous production of very few learners.This article presents a large cross-sectional study confirming that lexical107


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aspect influences acquisition even in classroom language learners andconcludes with pedagogical suggestions basing classroom practice onacquisitional evidence.

BACKGROUNDBefore presenting the theoretical framework for the study, a briefoverview of the English tense/aspect system is in order. English marksboth tense, the location of an event in time (Comrie, 1985), and aspect,"waysof viewing the temporal constituency of a situation"(Comrie,1976, p. 3). In Example 1, John sings (present) and John sang (past)show a difference in tense. In Example 2,Johnsang (simple past) and

John was singing (past progressive) show a contrast in grammaticalaspect, although both are in the past tense.1. Tensea. John sings.b. John sang.2. GrammaticalAspecta.John sang.b.John wassinging.

Grammaticalaspect is also sometimes called viewpointaspect(Smith,1983, p. 480) because the choice between progressive and simple, forexample, often reflects the speaker's view of the action.A single verb may show contrasting grammaticalaspect as in Exam-ple 2, but its inherent lexicalaspectdoes not change. In these sentences,sing has intrinsic duration whether in simple past or past progressive.A different predicate sing a songhas both duration, the singing of thesong, and a specific endpoint, the completion of the song (i.e., whenthere is no more song to sing). These differences are captured inthe Vendler (1967) classificationof lexical aspect which is based on aclassificationsystem traced backto Aristotle. The classificationwas firstemployed for second language acquisition(SLA)researchby Andersen(1991), and we follow him in adopting it as the framework for thisstudy.In the Vendler framework, there are four lexical aspectual classes:states, activities,accomplishments, and achievements. They can be dis-tinguished by three features (Table 1): punctual,which distinguishespredicates that can be thought of as instantaneous or as a single point(begintosing) from those with duration (singa song);telic,which distin-guishes predicates with endpoints (sing a song) from those without(sing);and dynamic,which distinguishes dynamic verbs (e.g., play,reada book,wakeup) from stative verbs (e.g., seemand know).

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TABLE 1Semantic Features of Aspectual Categories

Lexical Aspectual CategoriesFeatures States Activities Accomplishments Achievementspunctual - - - +telic - - + +dynamic - + + +Note. From Anderson, R. W. (1991). Developmental sequences: The emergence of aspectmarking in second langauge acquisition. In T. Heubner & C. A. Ferguson (Eds.),Secondlanguageacquisitionand linguistictheories(p. 311). Amsterdam, Netherlands: JohnBenjamins. Adapted by permission.

The most familiar division falls between the stative verbs and thenonstative, or dynamic verbs (activities,accomplishments,and achieve-ments). This is represented by the feature [dynamic]in Table 1. Statespersist over time without change. Examples of state verbs include seem,know, need, want, and be (as in be tall).1 Activity verbs have inherentduration in that they involve a span of time, like sleepand snow.Theyhave no specific endpoint, as in I studiedall week,and as such areatelic. Examples of activity verbs include rain, play, walk, and talk.Achievements are distinguished from the other dynamic verbs by thefeature [punctual]. Achievement verbs capture the beginning or theend of an action (Mourelatos, 1981) as in Theracebeganor Thegameended,and can be thought of as reduced to a point (Andersen, 1991).Examples of achievement verbs include arrive, leave, notice, recognize,andfall asleep.Accomplishment verbsshare features with activityverbs[- punctual] and achievement verbs [+ telic]. Like activityverbs, theyhave inherent duration, as in build a house or paint a painting. Likeachievement verbs, they have a goal or an endpoint. In builda house,for example, the endpoint is the completion of the house, in readabook,the completion of the book. The classes of achievement andaccomplishment verbs can be grouped together as telic verbs, knownas events(Mourelatos, 1981).2'These and other examples of predicates representative of lexical aspectual classes are fromDowty (1979). We use the terms state verbs, activity verbs, and so on to refer to the membersof the lexical aspectual classes. However, as noted earlier, the relevant unit is generallyconsidered to be the predicate or verb phrase as in be tall, sing a song, or read a book.2There are also other analyses of lexical aspectual classes which are based on Vendlercategories that might be of interest to the reader (e.g., Binnick, 1991; Quirk, Greenbaum,Leech & Svartvik, 1985). The literature on lexical aspectual classes has developed diagnostictests that distinguish the aspectual categories from each other. (See especially Vendler,1967; Dowty, 1979). One such test is the in + time phrase/for + time phrase test whichdistinguishes activity verbs from accomplishment and achievement verbs. Activity verbs areacceptable with adverbial phrases such asfor ten minutesbut unacceptable with in tenminutes

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Acquisition Studies Related to Lexical Aspectual ClassesMost of the research on the acquisitionof tense and aspect by learn-ers of a second language in the frameworkof lexicalaspect has investi-gated uninstructed learners (e.g., Andersen, 1991; Robison, 1990),and many studies have examined languages other than English (e.g.,French-Trevise, 1987; Veronique, 1987; German-Klein, 1986; vonStutterheim & Klein, 1987; Spanish-Andersen, 1991). This cross-linguistic work suggests that the distribution of tense/aspect morphol-ogy in learner language may be influenced by lexical aspect.Andersen's (1989, 1991) studies of two untutored children learningSpanish as a second language showed that the preterite was used earlyin punctual verbs (achievements) and spread gradually to accomplish-

ments, activities, and finally to states. The use of imperfect movedfrom states, to activities,accomplishments, and finallyto achievements.Robison's (1990) study of a very low proficiency adult untutoredlearner of English showed that punctual verbs were significantlymorelikely to show past tense marking than durative verbs (12% vs. 5.1%use of past in past time contexts) and that durative verbs were morelikely to show -ing (e.g., I workin')than punctual verbs(20.6%vs. 5.1%).Although the spread of Spanishtense/aspectmorphology is not directlyapplicable to English, the principle is: Both studies suggest that lexicalaspect determines the distributionof verbal morphology in untutoredlearners.Not only has this pattern been observed in SLA but it has also beenreported in child (first)language development. Lexicalaspect has beenreported to play a role in the development of verbal morphology inthe child language of English (Bloom, Lifter, & Hafitz, 1980), Italian,(Antinucci & Miller, 1976), French (Bronckart & Sinclair, 1973), andGreek (Stephany, 1981). (For a comprehensive review and interpreta-tion of LI studies, see Andersen & Shirai, 1994; Shirai, 1991.)Preliminaryevidence suggests that instructed ESL learners also showthe influence of lexical aspectual class on tense/aspect. In a study ofthe relation of form and meaning in interlanguage verbalmorphology,Bardovi-Harlig (1992) reported that punctual verbs showed higher useof simple past than durative verbs. Although the number of learners(N= 135) was large in comparison to the studies of untutored learners,the relatively small number of verbs tested (three activity and twoachievement verbs) makes the results only suggestive.Further evidence that classroom language learners show the influ-(e.g.,John sleptforan hour/*inan hour).Accomplishment and achievement verbs are acceptablewith in-phrases but unacceptable with for-phrases (e.g., John built a house in a year/*for ayear).

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ence of lexical aspect in their acquisitionof tense comes from a studyof Englishas a second language (ESL)and French as a foreign language(FFL), which examined narratives written by learners in a film retelltask (Bardovi-Harlig & Bergstrom, in press). However, such naturalis-tic production is difficult to interpret for three reasons. First, thenumber of verb phrases in unguided production is not balanced acrosslexical aspectual classes. For example, achievement verbs far outnum-bered the verbs in the other lexical aspectual classes, accounting forone half of all the verbs used by both groups. Second, the number ofdifferent verbsin the stativeclass isoften limited. As mightbe expected,be is the most widely used stative verb in the ESL sample, occurringin 64%(90/140) of the stativesample. Finally,although Bardovi-Harligand Bergstrom examined the production of 23 learners in each ofthe ESL and FFL environments, their study investigated four groupsof learners cross-sectionally, which resulted in a fairly small numberof learners at a particular level of proficiency (in the largest groupn=7, in the smallest, n=4).The present study is designed to address some of the limitations ofprevious work by testing a reasonably large number of learners atmultiple levels of proficiencyon avarietyof predicates,balanced acrosslexical aspectual classes. The goal of the study is to determine whetheradult classroom language learners, like their untutored child and adultcounterparts, exhibit the influence of lexicalaspect in their acquisitionof tense and grammatical aspect and to propose a pedagogical ap-proach to facilitate acquisition. We thus test the following hypothesis:

Lexicalaspectwillinfluencethe acquisitionof simplepasttense.In a secondary hypothesis, we predicted that the effect of lexicalaspectcould be enhanced or diminished by the introduction of adverbsof frequency. Investigating the influence of adverbs of frequency

provides additional evidence for the association of tenses with specificrestricted meanings or environments in the learner grammar. Suchan effect wasanticipatedon the basisof Bardovi-Harlig's(1992) obser-vation that the adverb of frequency usually triggered present tenseuse in past time contexts.

METHODSubjects

A cross-sectional study was conducted testing 182 adult learners atsix levels of proficiency from beginning to advanced. All learnerswere enrolled in the Intensive English Program, Center for EnglishTHE ACQUISITION OF TENSE AND ASPECT 111


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classifies all the verb forms the learners supply for each context andgives the percentage of the responses for each form supplied at eachlevel (Bardovi-Harlig, 1992).4Responses were grouped into categories according to verbal mor-phology: past, which included simple past tense forms and regularizedpast tense forms such as telled;3nonpast, which included simple presentsuch as tells,and uninflected base forms such as (she) tell, (base onlyoccurred where there was also a high occurrence of simple present);progressive, which included a verb+ -ing with no auxiliary, presentprogressive, and past progressive; perfect, which included all perfectforms; and miscellaneous forms, which included all remaining forms.The results presented in Tables 2-4 were figured in the followingway. For each learner, the number of past, nonpast, and progressiveresponses to verbs in each lexical aspectualclass was tabulated. Takingthe use of verbal morphology with activityverbs as an example (seeTable 3), first the number of past responses to the 12 activity verbswas tallied. The same was done for nonpast and progressive. Thisproduced a usage score for each of the three main form types foreach learner. The level percentages reported in Tables 2-4 representthe average of the usage scores for the learners in each level. Thestandard deviations indicate the range of variationamong individualsat a given level.The results show that the acquisition of past tense is not a unitaryphenomenon occurring simultaneously in all contexts. We find clearevidence that lexical aspectualclass influences the sequence of acquisi-tion of the past tense. This section presents the findings related to thedistribution of the simple past, then examines the alternative formsused by the learners.The Use of Simple Past

Learners produced 8,554 responses to the cloze passages withoutadverbsof frequency. The results showed thatachievement and accom-The minimum TOEFL score required for entry in Level 4 is 400. The ideal scores forentry into Levels 5 and 6 are 450 and 500, respectively. This task was administered at theend of a term so that learners had completed the level by which they are identified.4We present the distribution of tense morphemes in the forms supplied (we have adjustedfor incomplete answers by omitting them from the data). This has the greatest impact onLevel 1 and 2 who had more difficulty in completing the task than students at other levels.This analysis brings these data into line with studies of free production data in which thereis no such thing as an unanswered item(Bardovi-Harlig & Bergstrom, 1993; Robison, 1990;Schumann, 1987).5The regularized past tense forms were most frequent at Level 1 where learners scored68.5% appropriate use with the regularized forms on achievements and accomplishmentscombined and 58.4% without them. Other levels showed virtually no use of regularizedforms.



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plishment verbs exhibit high levels of appropriate use of simple pasteven at the lowest levels of proficiency (see Table 2). Because theuse of past with achievement and accomplishment verbs is similarthroughout, with the possible exception of Level 1, we group themunder the heading of events following Mourelatos(1981). (See Figure1.) For event verbs, learners show approximately 80%appropriate useof simple past as early as Level 2. In contrast,activityverbs show muchlower appropriate use of simple past. In Level 2, activityverbs showsimple past in only 65.1% of the sample. The use of simple past stayslow with activity verbs between 53.6% and 68.3% until Level 5. It isnot until the advanced level of proficiency, Level 6, that learners show82%appropriate use of simple past with activityverbs-a rate reachedfor event verbs by high beginning learners in Level 2. Although thegap between event verbs and activity verbs for the appropriate usenarrows considerably by Level 6, event verbs still show slightly morethan a 10%advantage. State verbs, like activityverbs, show low ratesof appropriate use of past, in Levels 1-3, but show higher rates thanactivityverbs in Levels 4 and 5, and the same rate as activityverbs byLevel 6. An illustration of the pattern is provided in Figure 1.The results indicate that lexical aspectual class influences the use ofsimple past tense on this task. They further indicate that level ofproficiency influences tense use. A MANOVA procedure (repeatedmeasures) wasperformed to determine whether there wasa statistically

TABLE 2The Use of Simple Past by Lexical Aspectual Class and Level in Percentageof Responses

EventsLevel States Activities Accomplishments Achievements

1 52.7 50.8 73.3 62.4(21.7) (35.4) (27.3) (25.4)2 57.4 65.1 81.9 79.5(22.6) (19.3) (17.1) (17.6)3 66.5 68.3 87.0 87.6(21.0) (18.4) (15.0) (12.2)4 71.9 53.6 82.9 84.2(17.3) (19.8) (13.9) (12.1)5 76.4 67.7 90.6 87.8(25.8) (19.7) (11.1) (12.4)6 82.9 82.0 91.9 90.9(10.6) (13.8) (9.7) (13.2)NS 97.6 95.7 97.8 97.3(4.4) (7.3) (5.8) (3.5)

Note. () = SD

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FIGURE 1Distribution of Simple Past by Lexical Aspect

II I I I I6Level

-*- Events -- Activities-- States

significant difference in past tense use across the lexical aspectualclasses and across level of proficiency. Both lexical aspectual class andlevel were found to be significant (F[3,525]=102.47, p < .01;F[5,175]= 12.51, p < .01, respectively).The interaction between lexicalaspectual class and level is also significant (F[15,525]=4.37, p < .01).Because of the relativelylow rates of appropriate use of simple pastwith activityand state verbs we can say that learners undergeneralizethe simple past; they do not use the simple past everywhere theycould (or everywhere native speakers do). In the following sections,we examine the factors that contribute to the undergeneralization ofsimple past in the case of activityand state verbs.Activity Verbs

Examination of the alternatives to simple past used by the learnersalso reveals the influence of lexical aspect. In the case of activityverbsTHE ACQUISITION OF TENSE AND ASPECT

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State VerbsThe responses to items containing state verbs favored a differentalternative to the simple past. Ten items tested state verbs using avariety of lexical verbs as in Example 5.5. Lastnighteverything(seem)seemed(100%)veryquietand peaceful.The main competing form to simple past in stateverbsis the nonpast(see Table 4). The use of simple present, which Andersen and Shirai(1994) interpret as meaning "continued existence" (p. 148), is consis-tent with the enduring quality of state verbs. Learners do not useprogressive forms with state verbs, which means that the past progres-sive is not being grossly overgeneralized. Instead, it is restricted todynamic verbs and, specifically,to activityverbs. The exception to thisis that state verbs show a modest use of progressive in Level 1 (7.3%of the responses), but this is only one third the use of progressive(24.6%) found in activityverbs at the same level of proficiency.The use of progressive with activityverbs,and its negligible use withstate verbs, and the corresponding use of nonpast with state verbs andits much lower use with activityverbs provides further evidence thatlexical aspectual class influences the learners' use of verbal mor-

phology.TABLE 4

The Distribution of Tense-Aspect Markers in Stative Verbs With and Without Adverbsof Frequency in Percentage of Responses

Statives w/o Frequency Adverbs Statives w/ Frequency AdverbsLevel Past Nonpast Prog Past Nonpast Prog

1 52.7 17.5 7.3 53.0 14.0 12.5(21.7) (14.2) (13.7) (27.3) (15.7) (19.3)2 57.4 26.3 1.6 54.7 32.8 2.0(22.6) (18.3) (3.9) (23.7) (24.4) (5.5)3 66.5 14.3 1.1 53.4 28.4 1.2(21.0) (14.6) (4.4) (29.3) (28.8) (4.4)4 71.9 10.4 3.6 56.6 29.6 2.9(17.3) (11.9) (6.5) (27.8) (24.7) (6.4)5 76.4 12.8 0.7 66.7 31.5 0.0(25.8) (14.4) (3.8) (31.7) (30.8)6 82.9 6.8 0.6 83.3 12.3 0.0(10.6) (10.1) (2.4) (15.4) (13.2)NS 97.6 0.0 0.0 98.3 1.7 1.7(4.4) (5.2) (5.2) (5.2)

Note. ( ) = SD



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Adverbs of FrequencyThe meaning of past tense in the learner grammar was further investi-

gated by testing activity and state verbs in the environment of adverbsof frequency as in Examples 6 and 7. The adverbs of frequency em-ployed in the elicitation tasks included such common adverbs as always,often, usually, and everyday.(See Appendix A for a complete list.)

6. When George lived in Peru he (play)played(100%) soccer everyday.7. When George was awayat school he usually (seem)seemed(100%) happy,but really he often (feel)felt (97%) sad.Nine additional activity verbs and six state verbs were tested inthe environment of adverbs of frequency, yielding a total of 2,730

responses. With the introduction of adverbs of frequency in the envi-ronment of activity verbs, the appropriate use of simple past staysnearly constant (see Table 3). However, the competing forms changein the environment of the adverbs. The use of nonpast (i.e., simplepresent tense and base forms) increases noticeably, becoming the chiefcompetitor to the appropriate use of simple past.The competing form in state verbs is always the nonpast (see Table4). Unlike the case of activity verbs, when adverbs of frequency occurin the environment of state verbs, the rate of appropriate use of simplepast tense falls and the use of nonpast increases noticeably, more thandoubling in some cases. The occurrence of adverbs of frequency inthe environment of state verbs enhances the association of state verbswith nonpast and the appropriate use of simple past drops. In contrast,in activity verbs, adverbs of frequency again introduce a nonpast read-ing; but in this case, nonpast replaces progressive as the most usedalternative, the nontargetlike progressive being more susceptible thanthe targetlike use of past. The increase in the use of nonpast withadverbs of frequency in past-tense contexts shows that learners do notrecognize such environments as environments for the simple past,revealing another way in which the distribution of past is undergener-alized in the grammars of some learners. The responses indicate thatsome learners associate the concept of present so strongly with adverbsof frequency that this association overrides contextual cues that estab-lish the past tense. It is only at the advanced level of proficiency, wherelearners show approximately 80% appropriate use of past, that adverbsof frequency have little effect.

DISCUSSIONWith respect to the hypothesis, the results show that learners treatevent verbs (achievements and accomplishments) as best case examples

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of past tense carriers at all levels of proficiency but show lower useof past with activity and state verbs. Thus, it appears that tutoredlearners, like untutored learners, are sensitive to lexical aspectual classwith respect to tense use, not only at beginning stages of acquisition,but at higher levels of proficiency as well.We observed three stages in the acquisition of the simple past. Inthe first stage, event verbs show higher use of past than noneventverbs (activityor state verbs). In the next stage (at about Level 4) stateverbs begin to show higher use of past than activity verbs. Finally,activity verbs how the same rate of use of past as state verbs. Theresults show that the use of simple past is undergeneralized. The earlyuse of simple past with event verbs suggests that learners find telicverbs to be the best case examples of past-tense carriers. State andactivityverbs each show a different competitor, with state verbs show-ing high use of nonpast and activityverbsshowing high use of progres-sive. The use of tense/aspect morphology with certain lexical aspectualclasses reflects the inherent meaning of the verbs. Andersen (1991)links this to Bybee's observation that "inflectionsare more naturallyattached to a lexical item if the meaning of the inflection has directrelevance to the meaning of the lexical item" (p. 318). As learnersmove awayfrom using verbalmorphology in accordwithlexicalaspect,toward marking tense uniformly across lexical aspectual classes, theymove toward a targetlike use of tense.Second, in addition to activity and state verbs, some learners findadverbs of frequency to be an unlikely environment for the simplepast.This providesadditionalsupport thatlearners associatethe notionof habitual action with present tense, whereas the native speaker re-sponses show that for them, the notion of habitual action is dissociatedfrom tense, occurring with past or present. The use of nonpast formsincreases with the presence of adverbs of frequency in both activityand state verbs, but their use is greater in state verbs where there isno secondary competition from progressive forms.The use of nonpast in the environment of adverbs of frequencyprovides additional evidence that learnersassociatetenses with specificmeanings which are undergeneralized compared to the target lan-guage associations. The results show that the learners have difficultymaintaining tense continuity established by the past-tense context inthe environment of adverbs of frequency suggesting that learnersassociate the notion of habitual action, represented by adverbs offrequency, with the concept of present habitual. The learner under-generalizations can be represented as subsets of the relevant rules oftarget grammar as in Figure 2.The acquisitional sequence found in this study and in the studiesof uninstructed learners (of both LI and L2) may have at least twoTHE ACQUISITION OF TENSE AND ASPECT 119


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FIGURE 2Distribution and Meaning of Past in L2 and NS Grammars

Events Completive

AllVerbs w/wo Prior /Adverb

A. Environments of Past B. MeaningAssociated withFormUsage Past Form

potential sources. The first is that the influence of lexical aspectualclass may be an acquisitional universal. A potential additional sourceis that the input to the learner contains what Andersen has called adistributionalbias.Andersen (1990) hypothesizes that if two forms occurin the same environment, but if one seems to be more common, thelearner can "misperceivethe meaning and distribution of a particularform that he discovers in the input" (p. 58). Such could be the casewith the use of simple past with event and activityverbs when a learnersingles out event verbs as the best carriers of simple past.Whatever the source of the acquisitional sequence observed herefor classroom language learners and elsewhere for untutored learners,there is evidence that learners follow the one-to-one principleproposedby Andersen (1984, 1990). This principle states that the emergentgrammar of a learner associates one meaning with one form. Thus,the original meaning will be more limited than the final association.Andersen cites the initial association of past with accomplishment/achievement verbs as an example of the one-to-one principle.In contrast to early stages of acquisition,the mature target languagedoes not maintain a strict one-to-one relationship between form andthe limited meaning of punctual or telic. Although the early stages ofacquisitionof past tense suggest that simple past morphology is initially

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associated with the concept of past punctual action, native speaker useof simple past is not distributionally restricted. Its association withverbs of all lexical aspectual classes suggests a more general meaningof prior. Thus, there is pressure on the learner grammar to movetoward broader meaning, as reflected by the occurrence of simple pastin all lexical aspectual classes.6There is evidence from this study, however, that learners have diffi-culty moving beyond the one-to-one principle with respect to past tenseusage for quite some time. Reflecting on the import of acquisitionalsequences to pedagogy, Andersen (1990) concludes:

Perhaps a one-form-one-meaning relation is inevitable as a first entry intoa language. If so, a major goal of foreign language research should be todiscover what form-meaning relations learners perceive and incorporateinto their interlanguage. The assumption is that acquisition-directed lan-guage pedagogy should work within such natural tendencies. (p. 52)The next section presents a pedagogical approach offering input tolearners which is designed to help them acquire a more targetlike useof simple past tense.

Pedagogical TreatmentUsing the acquisitional data to provide an assessment for instruction,we find that learners even at advanced levels of proficiency show lowrates of appropriate use of simple past tense with activity and stateverbs and low rates of appropriate use of past in the environment ofadverbs of frequency. The past tense is a building block for othertenses both formally and conceptually (Bardovi-Harlig, 1994) and itsappropriate use is pedagogically expected of intermediate and ad-vanced learners. The low rates of appropriate use can be attributedto undergeneralizations in the learner grammar, and the acquisitionalsequence indicates the needed area of instruction. Second languageacquisition theory determines the means of instruction.This pattern of undergeneralization presents an interesting case forcurrent hypotheses concerning learner grammars and the usefulnessof classroom instruction. When the learner grammar forms a subsetof the target grammar, learners are thought to revise their grammarson the basis of positive evidence. Positive evidence is any input whichshows a learner what sentences, constructions, or combinations are

possible in a language (Sharwood Smith, 1991; White, Spada,Lightbown, & Ranta, 1991). Positive evidence contrasts with negative6Andersen (1990) calls this the multifunctionalityprinciple.The multifunctionality principleshas two parts, associating one meaning to multiple forms and one form to multiple meanings.We are only concerned with the second case here.



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evidence which provides information to a learner that a particularform is not allowed in the language.7 Although there have been anumber of theoretical and pedagogical discussions which have dealtextensively with negative evidence, or various types of corrective feed-back(White, 1991; White, 1992; White et al., 1991; Schwartz&Gubala-Ryzak, 1992), the important role that positive evidence could play inexpanding undergeneralizations in learner grammarshas not receivedmuch attention. The presentation of positive evidence is hypothesizedto help learners whose grammar could be represented by the innercircles of Figure 2 to expand their grammarsto incorporate the form-meaning associations in the outer circle. However, such a change re-quires that learners notice a difference between the input and theirown production in order to revise their interlanguage rules (Schmidt,1990, 1992).The following sections address the presentation of positive evidenceand the implementation of focused noticing in the classroom.We drawon examples from an experimental unit which is under development inthe Intensive English Program,Center for EnglishLanguageTraining,Indiana University. The unit is not intended to teach all of tenseand aspect but to address the undergeneralizations in the learnergrammars. We have used the unit with high beginners (Level 2) andintermediate learners (Level4) whose scoreson the cloze tasksreportedin the previous section show high formal accuracyof simple past andappropriate use of past with event verbs but who still show low scoreswith activityand state verbs. The unit is centered on the presentationof contextualized examples of tense use in authentic language. As asource of input, we used a reading based on a narrativeaccount fromNational Public Radio'sAll ThingsConsideredabout a man working withthe homeless in Washington, DC. We selected a narrativeas an exampletext because of the rich variety of tenses to be found in a narrative.However, any genre of text could be used.The general organization of the unit follows the order of providingexamples of past tense usage through the narrative, then focusednoticing exercises. We repeat this cycle twice. Although the presenta-tion of positive evidence is under the control of the teacher, noticingis entirely under the control of the learner.Positive Evidence

The goal of the presentation of positive evidence is to give learnersexamples of how the target language works. In this case, our goal was7In a classroom, negative evidence may take the form of correction or corrective feedbackbut may more broadly include misunderstandings or lack of communication in classroomand other settings. (See Schachter, 1986.)

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and then an occurrence of the two forms (Example 9). (An excerptfrom the narrative is provided in Appendix B).8. Find a sentence with only one verb in the simple past. Write it on theline below.9. Find a sentence with one simple past verb and one past progressive verb.Write it on the lines below.We also focus on activity verbs in the text which occur in bothpast progressive and simple past forms. Students are given the pastprogressive forms and then asked to find the corresponding simplepast forms.10. Kerwin [the narrator] used the following verbs in the past progressive.

He also used them in the simple past. Find the simple past forms, writethem beside the past progressive and write the line where you foundthem. Look at the way the past progressive and the simple past areused. Can you tell a difference in meaning?Past Progressive Simple Past Linewas walking (lines 1-2)was doing (lines 55-56)In this exercise the learner's attention is directed to the fact thatthere is not a one-to-one relation between a lexical aspectual classand tense/aspect morphology by giving the learners contextualizedexamples of both tense/aspect forms. Following this exercise, classdiscussion centers on the differences in meaning of the verbs in pastand past progressive as used in the text at hand. Additional exerciseswould follow emphasizing the use of past with state verbs, adverbs offrequency, and combinations thereof.

Beyond Positive Evidence and Focused NoticingIn addition to using authentic text to present positive evidence andusing focused noticing exercises, we also use a range of productiontasks to provide contextualized practice. At each stage in the unit, thelearners complete controlled and free production activities. The unitbegins with a written summary of the reading. The lessons whichfocus on the use of past with adverbs of frequency include a topicallyappropriate essay: "When you were in high school what did you usuallydo? Were there some things that other teenagers always did that yourarely or never did?" The topic provides a context in which past tenseverbs can be used with adverbs of frequency.Next, instruction focuses on the use of simple past with activityverbs. Using the original reading passage, the learners' attention isdirected to activity verbs used in both the simple past and past progres-

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sive, as discussed above. A cloze passage that is a condensed versionof the original text provides contextualized practice in the use of thesimple past and the past progressive. A final writing assignment isgiven which offers practice in reporting situationsas either completed(requiring past)or in progress at the time of another event (suggestingpast progressive). This was set up through the instructions ("Writeaparagraph. Use the sentence below to start it. Try to tell both whatwas happening around you and what you did.")and the opening linetaken from the firstsentence of the authentic narrative("Iwaswalkingdown the street one day last week.").It is important to note that input enhancement is not a method oflanguage teaching in and of itself. Input enhancement may varyalongtwo dimensions: explicitness and elaboration (Sharwood Smith, 1981,1991). Sharwood Smith represents this as four possibilities (more orless explicit combining with more or less elaboration). The unit wedeveloped was less explicit, providing no formal rules, but more elabo-rate, providing contextualized examples and repeated opportunitiesto notice over four days of instruction. (Compare White, 1992, andWhite & Trahey, 1993, for a description of an input flood.) It shouldbe noted, however, that we took advantage of the fact that all learnersin our program are exposed to the names for tenses both from instruc-tion and materialsand that we used grammaticallabels in the noticingexercises. Thus, input enhancement can be adapted for use in a varietyof instructional methods. The invariantcomponents to input enhance-ment for our approach to the past tense are the presentation of positiveevidence and the focused noticing.Two other advantages of using positive evidence should be noted:longevity and efficiency. We expect that the effects of positiveevidenceto be long lasting. Once learners notice the difference between theirgrammars and the target grammar through instruction, unmodifiedinput in the form of written texts of various types, conversation, andother aural input such as news broadcasts provide support that inEnglish the simple past isdistributed acrosslexicalaspectualcategories.As a result, we expect the gains in the use of past made throughinstruction to be retained after the instruction ends.9 In fact, thatis the pattern reported by Harley (1989) on written retention tests(composition and cloze) administered to a group of sixth-grade Frenchimmersion students 3 months after they had received experimentalinstruction through a series of functionally based lessons in the distri-bution of the French tense/aspect system. A similar pattern has been9Preliminary tests on this unit with small numbers of students support this claim. Of thefive classes which we have tested, all improved immediately after instruction and, moreimportantly, maintained their higher scores or showed continued improvement when testedone month after instruction (see Bardovi-Harlig & Reynolds, 1994).



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found in the acquisitionof questions where learners of question formscontinued to develop after the specific instructional period was over(Spada & Lightbown, 1993; White et al., 1991).We hypothesize that maintenance of improved scores or even addi-tional improvement is a characteristicof the presentation of positiveevidence which may distinguish it from negative evidence. Becausepositive evidence, by virtue of the fact that it is found in all naturallyoccurring language input, is available to the learner after instruction(and because negative evidence is thought to be unavailable),learnersmaintain high levels of appropriate use, even improving in some cases.Thus, the difference in presenting negative and positive evidence ininstruction is that the presentation of negative evidence is an isolatedoccurrence limited to the classroom. In contrast, the presentation ofpositive evidence through authentic language samples and focusednoticing is reinforced by the ambient language inside and outside theclassroom. Once a learner is assistedin noticing a particularcharacteris-tic of the language, natural input supports the instruction. Such a casemay be found in the acquisitionof questions mentioned earlier (Spada& Lightbown, 1993; White et al., 1991). Questions are high frequencyitems in classrooms, and the learners seemed to be able to take advan-tage of their presence in classroom talk as positiveevidence (even whenthe instructional focus on questions had ceased) leading to continueddevelopment of question forms in learner language.10Thus, we expectpositive evidence to have long-term effects.Finally, the use of positive evidence is pedagogically efficient. If wewere to approach instruction of the past from the point of view ofnegative evidence, or error correction, we would find that learnerssupply a variety of alternatives to the simple past with activity andstate verbs and with adverbs of frequency. Thus, such correction,whether explicit or not, would have to address a number of verb forms.However, the use of positiveevidence is pedagogicallyefficient becauseall learners have the same target form and thus the positive evidenceis relevant to all the learners in a class regardless of their individualhypotheses about tense marking.

CONCLUSIONThe results of the study reported here demonstrate that lexicalaspect plays an important role in the use of past tense by instructedadult learners of English as a second language. The use of past tenseby classroom language learners shows similar patterns of distribution

'?We thank an anonymous reviewer for bringing the case of questions to our attention.

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to those of untutored learners of English. Moreover, on the basisof available data, comparison to learners of other languages such asSpanish suggests that the influence of lexical aspect may be commonto language acquisition in general, part of what VanPatten (1990) callsthe core of SLA (p. 25). Further research is needed to determine howthe influence of lexical aspect is realized in different target languages.This article also demonstrates the importance of observing acquisi-tional sequences for the purposes of instruction. Through research,we identified areas of difficulty in the acquisition of the tense/aspectsystem. We found that the teaching of past tense for achievement andaccomplishment verbs is much less necessary, whereas the teaching ofsimple past with activity verbs and with adverbs of frequency is clearlywarranted, and indications are that it is worthwhile. Based on SLAtheories, we have suggested that the presentation of positive evidencewill help learners broaden the undergeneralizations in their grammars.We argue that input enhancement which includes focused noticing aswell as positive evidence provides learners with an awareness whichhelps input to become intake even outside the classroom.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSWe thank Harry L. Gradman, Director of the Center for English Language Train-ing, and Susan Greer and Marlin Howard, Directors of the Intensive EnglishProgram, for their assistance in coordinating the elicitation tasks and their contin-ued support of the project. We thank Dr. Camillia MajdJabbari for her statisticalanalysis of the data. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers fortheir helpful suggestions. An earlier version of this paper was presented in 1993at the 27th Annual TESOL Conference in Atlanta, GA. This study was supportedby a grant to the first author from the National Science Foundation (BNS-8919616).

THE AUTHORSKathleen Bardovi-Harlig is Associate Professor of TESOL and Applied Linguisticsat Indiana University. Her research and teaching interests include SLA, interlan-guage pragmatics, and teacher education. Her work on the acquisition of tenseand aspect has appeared in LanguageLearning,AppliedPsycholinguistics,and editedcollections.Dudley W. Reynolds, Associate Instructor at the Center for English LanguageTraining, is a PhD candidate specializing in SLA and discourse pragmatics atIndiana University. His dissertation investigates repetition as a pragmatic devicein the writing of ESL learners. He has published in WorldEnglishesand the ELTJournal.THE ACQUISITION OF TENSE AND ASPECT 127


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A. Zaenen (Eds.), Tenseand aspect.(Syntaxand Semantics14) (pp. 191-212). NewYork: Academic Press.Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik,J. (1985). A comprehensivegrammarof theEnglish language. London: Longman.Robison, R. (1990). The primacy of aspect: Aspectual marking in English interlan-guage. Studiesin SecondLanguageAcquisition,12, 315-330.

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Rutherford, W. (1987). Secondlanguage grammar:Learningand teaching.New York:Longman.Schachter, J. (1986). Three approaches to the study of input. Language Learning,36, 211-225.Schmidt, R. (1990). Consciousness, learning and interlanguage pragmatics. Univer-sity of Hawai'i WorkingPapers in Linguistics,9, 213-243.Schmidt, R. (1992). Awareness and second language acquisition. Annual Reviewof Applied Linguistics,13, 206-226.Schumann, J. (1987). The expression of temporality in basilang speech. Studies inSecondLanguage Acquisition,9, 21-41.Schwartz, B., & Gubala-Ryzak, M. (1992). Learnability and grammar reorganiza-tion in L2A: Against negative evidence causing the unlearning of verb move-ment. SecondLanguageResearch,8, 1-38.Sharwood Smith, M. (1981). Consciousness raising and the second languagelearner. AppliedLinguistics,2, 159-168.Sharwood Smith, M. (1991). Speaking to many minds: On the relevance of differ-ent types of language information for the L2 learner. SecondLanguageResearch,7, 118-132.Shirai, Y. (1991). Primacyof aspectin languageacquisition:Simplifiedinputandprototype.Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.Smith, C. S. (1983). A theory of aspectual class. Language, 59, 479-501.Spada, N., & Lightbown, P. M. (1993). Instruction and the development of ques-tions in L2 classrooms. Studiesin SecondLanguage Acquisition,15, 205-224.Stephany, U. (1981). Verbal grammar in modern Greek early child language. InP. S. Dale & D. Ingram (Eds.), Child language: An internationalperspective(pp.45-57). Baltimore, MD: University Park Press.

Trevise, A. (1987). Toward an analysis of the (inter)language activity of referringto time in narratives. In C. W. Pfaff (Ed.), First and secondlanguage acquisitionprocesses(pp. 225-251). Cambridge, MA: Newbury House.VanPatten, B. (1990). Theory and research in second language acquisition andforeign language learning: On producers and consumers. In B. VanPatten &J. F. Lee (Eds.), Second language acquisition/Foreignlanguage learning (pp. 17-26). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.Vendler, Z. (1967). Verbs and times. In Z. Vendler, Linguisticsandphilosophy(pp.97-121). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (Reprinted from PhilosophicalReview, 1957, Vol. 66, 143-160)Veronique, D. (1987). Reference to past events and actions in narratives in L2:Insights from North African Learners' French. In C. W. Pfaff (Ed.), First andsecond language acquisitionprocesses(pp. 252-272). Cambridge, MA: NewburyHouse.von Stutterheim, C., & Klein, W. (1987). A concept-oriented approach to secondlanguage studies. In C.W. Pfaff (Ed.), Firstandsecondlanguage acquisitionprocesses(pp. 191-205). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.White, L. (1991). Adverb placement in second language acquisition: Some effectsof positive and negative evidence in the classroom. SecondLanguage Research,7, 133-161.White, L. (1992). On triggering data in L2 acquisition: A reply to Schwartz andGubala-Ryzak. SecondLanguageResearch,8, 120-137.White, L., Spada, N., Lightbown, P. M., & Ranta, L. (1991). Input enhancementand L2 question formation. AppliedLinguistics,12, 416-432.White, L., & Trahey, M. (1993). Positive evidence and preemption in the secondlanguage classroom. Studiesin SecondLanguageAcquisition,15, 181-204.



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APPENDIX AVerbs Used in the Cloze Passages by Lexical Aspectual Class

Achievement Verbsarrive, break, die, discover, drop, explode, fall out, find, happen, kill, lose, start, take off(as in theplane tookoff), turn (something) offAccomplishment Verbsbuy, change (apartments), change (the story into a funny one), eat a meal, finish all of thegrammar homework, give, go to the class, marry, move (from one apartment to another),rent a video, write two papersActivity Verbsdance, eat 0, go to the same school (as in attend),live (2), ride bicycles, sing, snow, swim, tellstories, work, worry (all weekend)Stative Verbsbe dangerous, belong, enjoy (2), know, need (2), own, seem, wantActivity Verbs with Frequency Adverbs(always) study a lot, play soccer (everyday), rain (everyday), (never) clean, (never) cook,(often) cook, (seldom) go out, (sometimes) work, (usually) eat 0State Verbs with Frequency Adverbs(always) look bad, (everyday) smell delicious, (never) want, (often) feel sad, (seldom) tastegood, (usually) seem happy

APPENDIX BExcerpt from the Narrative Text

I Kerwin: I was walking one night. It was bitterly cold, around Christmas2 1978, and I was walking. I think I was walking down to the river just to3 clear my head or to go for a walk. I love to walk. There was a man on4 the heating vent across the street from the State Department at 21st and5 E which was only a block from my apartment, and he called out to me. He6 said he wanted a buck to buy something to eat. I was very irritated with7 him for calling out after me. I didn't want to be bothered and I didn't8 believe him either. I thought, "well he just wants to get something to9 drink;" and I thought to myself, "well I'll fix him. I'll go and get him10 something to eat and that way he'll be frustrated and angry and didn't11 get what he wanted but at least I'll give him what he asked for." So I12 went up to my apartment, got him a bowl of soup, got him a sandwich and13 a cup of tea, and brought it down. I set it down and walked away. I14 continued my walk, didn't say a word to him, and didn't acknowledge his15 thanks. I never saw that man again, but I went home that night and I16 just thought: "well, you know that made me feel pretty good. That's the17 least I can do. That's all it takes to make me feel good and to think18 well you know here I'm helping the human being. I can do that. I mean19 what effort did that take."20 So I went home, and the next night I went out again with the same21 type of meal (I think a little bit more but the same type of meal). I22 just set it down on the heating vent where other people were, and I23 walked away. They thought I was a little bit crazy bringing out this24 food and setting it down, but I did. I simply went back to my apartment25 and that was the end of it. But I kept doing that, and I kept doing it

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