1. Typological frequency and prototypicality:
Processing English past time tense-aspect morphology
Christopher Farina
Linguistics Program
University of South Carolina
1 Theoretical Foundations
1.1 Grammatical Aspect.
Definition: Morphosyntactic expression of how an action, event, or state relates to the flow of time
Grammatical aspects encoded in Standard American English (SAE):
Progressive: I was driving to the store.
Habitual: I used to drive to the store.
Perfective: I have driven to the store.  Focus of the study
Operationalized using the present perfect
Semantic consistency when not aspectually modified
Morphosyntactic minimal pair with the simple past
Competing definitions of perfective aspect:
Semantic: Complete event without internal temporal structure (Comrie 1976)
Syntactic: Temporal predication of a series of bounded states (Verkuyl 1972)
Licitness judgment comparisons between the (i) simple past & (ii)present perfect :
I drove to the store (?for/in five minutes) (already/today/yesterday).
I have driven to the store (*for/in five minutes) (already/today/?yesterday)
1.2 Lexical Aspect.
Traditional defn: Semantic property inherent in the meaning of the verb
Compositional defn: Syntactic property that emerges through the composition of a verb and its complement(s) and/or adjunct(s) at the verb phrase (VP) level
Relevant Vendler (1967) categories and parameters:
Durative: Occurs over time – lexical
Sarah rode her bicycle  [+dur]
Sarah crashed her bicycle  [-dur]
Telic: Has an inherent endpoint – lexical and compositional
Benjamin played [DP Ø [NP sonatas]].  [-tel]
Benjamin played [DP those [NP sonatas]].  [+tel]
Jenna walked [PP around [DP the mall]].  [-tel]
Jenna walked [PP to [DP the mall]].  [+tel]
1.3 The Aspect Hypothesis and Connectionism.
L1 and L2 acquisition of verbal morphology is semantically based
Early on, verbal morphology encodes lexical aspect distinctions, of grammatical aspect or tense
Later, extension of paradigm with potential over-generalization
Order of emergence for perfective aspect: Ach.  Acc.  Act.
Prototype: lexeme whose lexical semantics matches the semantics of the T-A morphology with which it is marked.
Prototypical perfect: (a) an unanalyzed whole (b) with past time reference (c) that denotes a persistent result (d) of a non-durative action.
Processed faster and more accurately than non-prototypes
Achievements and accomplishments are more typologically frequent in past tense and with perfective aspect; activities are less type frequent
Connectionist assumption: Processing prototypes in the input should be less effortful than non-prototypes; manifest as faster and more accurate
Overview
This research study investigates tense-aspect processing of prototypical and nonprototypical predicates by native and advanced nonnative speakers of English using a stop-making-sense task, which is a variation of the center-window, self-paced reading paradigm in which readers indicate when the sentence ‘stops making sense.’ Using a connectionist application of Andersen and Shirai’s (1994) aspect hypothesis, this study examines the importance of the two prototypical components of perfective aspect that are mirrored in lexical semantics (telicity and non-durativity) and typological frequency in the processing of tense-aspect (T-A) morphology for both native and advanced nonnative speakers of English. Investigating the notion of prototypicality and its possible effects on processing, this research finds support for the importance of telicity as a prototypical notion of perfective aspect in English but not for non-durativity. These results maintain for both native and nonnative speakers to varying degrees, whereas typological frequency was not found to be a factor for either group. Overall, this research supports the idea that native and nonnative speakers acquire tense-aspect morphology through prototypical predicates, but do not exhibit the same processing costs or gains in the same contexts at advanced proficiency; native speakers are more likely to experience increased processing costs in non-prototypical contexts, and nonnative speakers are more likely to experience decreased processing costs in prototypical contexts.
4 Results
H1. NS and NNS do not process VPs faster for more frequent T-A types
Reading time in ms for high, mid, and low type frequency VPs do not differ from each other or by T-A context
H2. NNS process [+tel] VPs faster in present perfect contexts; NS do not
NS process [-tel] VPs slower in present perfect contexts
NNS show no increase in processing costs
H3. NS and NNS do not process [-dur] VPs faster in present perfect contexts
H4. NS and NNS generally perform similarly, except for the following:
NS have faster reading times (~400ms per VP; ~100ms per word)
NS are more affected by interactions between T-A morphology and telicity
NNS are more affected by type frequency of T-A morphology and of telicity
H5. NNS performance correlates with proficiency but not time in the US or age of acquisition t df p
Hi-Mid
.903 35
.373
Mid-Low
.679
.502
Hi-Low
1.860
.071
[+tel][-prf]
[+tel][+prf]
t32 NS
1630
1609
p>.05
NNS
1961
1759
p<.05
[-tel][-prf]
[-tel][+prf]
t32 NS
1541
1705
p>.05
NNS
2071
2043
p<.05
Categ. \ Param.
Dur.
Tel.
Activity + -
Accomplishment
Achievement
3 Hypotheses
H1. NS and NNS will process verb phrases faster for more frequent T-A types.
H2. NS and NNS will process [+tel] verb phrases faster in present perfect contexts than past tense contexts.
H3. NS and NNS will process [-dur] verb phrases faster in present perfect contexts
H4. NS and NNS will perform with similar processing gains and costs
5 Discussion
5.1 Theoretical Implications.
T-A type frequency does not significantly affect NS or NNS processing
Connections between lexemes and T-A morphology may not be direct
Type frequencies in the sample may need to be different by more than factors of 10 for each category to trigger measurable differences
The prototypical perfect in SAE
Resultative character [+tel] impacts processing; psychologically real
Non-durative character [-dur] has no measurable effects
Matched and mismatched semantics have differential effects on the participants
NS reading time is increased in contexts wherein prototypes are contradicted (atelic VP in present perfect), but no concomitant decrease when prototypes are followed (telic VP in present perfect)
NNS reading time is decreased in contexts wherein prototypes are followed, but not concomitant decrease when they are followed
5.2 Pedagogical Implications.
Type frequency need not be considered when developing processing-driven curricula among upper-intermediate and advanced NNS
When teaching the perfective system in SAE, use telic VPs to decrease processing costs by exploiting shared semantics and prototypicality
4 Methodology
4.1 Participants.
4.2 Instruments and Procedure.
Personal information survey.
Paper survey captures biological and personal history info
Test for proficiency.
Cloze-style passage derived from Slabakova (2000)
One blank every 7th word – 40 total blanks
All-or-nothing coding
Stop-making-sense task.
Variation of the center-window, self-paced reading task
[SPACE] displays the next word; [SHIFT] stops the sentence
SMS response used to indicate comprehension
Several test items were logically illicit
50% of distractors semantically illicit
Captured data: response and reading time per word
Verb plus three words into the VP
Example Sentences:
1 a. John and Graham (have) played outside in the rain, but
they never finished playing so both thought they had won.  [-tel]
b. John and Graham (have) played a game in the rain, but
they never finished playing so both thought they had won.  [+tel]
2 a. Katie and Brad (have) traveled to the beach on Sunday,
but they never reached the shore like they had wanted to.  [+dur]
b. Katie and Brad (have) arrived at the beach on Sunday,
but they never reached the shore like they had wanted to.  [-dur]
NS Controls
NNS Participants
19 NS of English
17 NNS of English
Ages: 18;0-23;1 (μ=19;0)
Ages: 19;3-32;2 (μ=24;1)
14 Male; 5 Female
16 Male; 1 Female
Eng Prof: (μ=20.95)
Eng Prof: (μ=15.94)
2 Research Questions and Guiding Assumptions
Do NS and NNS of English process verb phrases according to T-A typological frequency of the verb?
If connectionist assumptions are correct, verbs that occur more often in the simple past should be processed faster when in the simple past than they are in the present perfect.
Likewise, the opposite should hold true for those more frequently in the present perfect.
Do NS and NNS process telic and atelic verb phrases with differential effects to processing depending on in which T-A context they appear?
If the prototypes in the AH are psychologically real, there should be a gain in processing telic VPs in the present perfect…
And a concomitant cost in processing in the simple past
Do native and nonnative speakers process non-durative and durative verb phrases with greater or lesser difficulty depending on in which tense-aspect context they appear?
If the prototypes in the AH are psychologically real, there should be a gain in processing non-durative VPs in the present perfect…
Selected References
Andersen, Roger & Yasuhiro Shirai Discourse motivation for some cognitive acquisition principles. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 16(2)
Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen The aspect hypothesis. Language Learning
Comrie, Bernard Aspect: An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Everbroeck, Ezra van Language type frequency and learnability from a connectionist perspective. Linguistic Typology
Raveh, Michael The contribution of frequency and semantic similarity to morphological processing. Brain and Language
Roberts, Leah, & Sarah Ann Liszka Processing tense/aspect-agreement violations on-line in the second language: A self-paced reading study with French and German L2 learners of English. Second Language Research 29(4)
Salaberry, Rafael M The acquisition of English past tense in an instructional setting. System
Shirai, Yasuhiro Semantic bias and morphological regularity in the acquisition of tense-aspect morphology: What is the relation?. Linguistics 48(1)
Slabakova, Roumyana L1 transfer revisited: The L2 acquisition of telicity marking in English by Spanish and Bulgarian native speakers. Linguistics. 38(4)
Slabakova, Roumyana Aspectual constraints in the mental lexicon. Jounral of Psycholinguistic Research 30(2)
Slabakova, Roumyana & Silvina Montrul Aspectual tenses in Spanish L2 acquisition: A UG perspective. In Yasuhiro Shirai & Rafael Salaberry (eds.), Tense-aspect morphology in L2 acquisition, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Vendler, Zeno Verbs and times. In Linguistics in Philosophy, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Verykuyl, H. J On the compositional nature of the aspects. Dordrecht, NL: Reidel.