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F. Chasioti

Of Aspect and Tense: A Corpus-Based Study on the Role of Lexical Aspect in the Acquisition

and Use of the English Past Tense

Abstract

This is a corpus-based study that focuses on the interplay between lexical and gram-matical aspect in the acquisition and use of the simple past tense in English (PT) by native speakers of Greek. It was hypothesized that the notion of change inherent in telicity (as proposed by Rothstein 2004a), and the degree to which change can be perceived by learners, have an impact on the process of acquisition and use of the tense leading to learners’ using PT forms in I-statement constructions with atelic verb classes (i.e. states and activities). The Sketch Engine software was used for the analysis of the Evosmos Learner Corpus of Written English (ELC), a learner corpus of written assignments produced by Greek learners of English attending the 3rd Model Experimental Primary School of Evosmos (Thessaloniki) (EPSE). The find-ings showed that the interaction between the grammatical (perfective) aspect of the PT and the different lexical aspectual classes affects the use of the tense in that, verbs belonging to atelic classes (states and activities) are primarily encountered in I-state-ment constructions when used in the PT, whereas telic verb classes (accomplishments and achievements) are not constricted by the type of pronoun subject.

1. Introduction

This study was motivated by the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis (LAH) and, in particular, by its first claim which states that “[l]earners first use (perfective) past marking on achievements and accomplishments, eventually extending [its] use to activities and statives” (Bardovi-Harlig 2000, 227).

Early first language (L1) studies, such as those conducted by Bronckart & Sinclair (1973) and Antinucci & Miller (1976) (as cited in Bardovi-Harlig 2000, 193), report on learners’ using perfective forms with verbs that denote a clear change of state or a result before those that do not. Regarding second language (L2) acquisition, most L2 studies report on adult learners and focus on either English or Spanish as an L2. The results of these studies show that “past morphology is strongly associated with achievement and accomplishment verbs” (Andersen & Shirai 1996, 543). Findings such as these have constituted the basis for the formulation of the LAH.

This paper focuses on the impact of the interplay between lexical and grammatical (perfective) aspect and its role in the acquisition and use of the simple past tense in

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English (PT) by native speakers of Greek at the “Basic User” (A1, A2) level accord-ing to the Common European Framework of Reference for languages (2001). This study involves the analysis of a learner corpus of written assignments implement-ing I-statement analysis, Word Sketch analysis, as well as the categorization of ver-bal predicates into classes (i.e. states, activities, accomplishments, achievements) for the purposes of said analyses. The results obtained address the role that the feature of change, which is inherent in telicity, plays in the acquisition and use of the tense.

2. Background

2.1 Tense

According to Comrie (1976, 9), tense is a “grammaticalized expression of location in time”. This “location in time” may be accomplished relative to: (a) the present moment (Comrie 1976), or “Speech Time” (Smith 1991, 145), for absolute, or fixed, tenses (Comrie 1976, 2; Smith 1991, 145), or (b) the time of some other situation (Smith 1991), for relative, or flexible, tenses (Smith 1991). Of the languages that distinguish between tenses the most common are: the present, the past, and the future tense; that is, a situation is located temporally as simultaneous, prior, or subsequent to the moment of speaking, respectively (Comrie 1976, 2).

The simple paste tense in English is a grammatical category signaled by ver-bal inflection and, in particular, by the inflectional morpheme -ed that attaches to the base form of the verb (e.g. last-ed). As Carter & McCarthy (2006, 609) write, “[n]egative and interrogative forms are constructed with the auxiliary “did” while there is a group of verbs that form the past tense irregularly”. The PT refers to a “definite past time clearly separated from the moment of speaking” (Carter & Mc-Carthy 2006). An inherent characteristic of the PT (and of the linguistic category of tense, in general) is its grammatical aspect.

2.2 Grammatical and lexical aspect

Aspect contrasts with tense, Comrie (1976, 5) writes, in that the former denotes “sit-uation-internal time”, whereas the latter refers to “situation-external” time. Aspect describes the temporal organization of a situation and refers to “the structural prop-erties of the event itself” (Rothstein 2004a, 1); that is, its situation structure, also known as “Aktionsart” (Smith 1991, 3).

Within the study of aspect, linguists distinguish between grammatical and lexi-cal aspect (Rothstein 2004a, 1). The two co-occur and interact in languages (Smith 1991, 3, 5). Grammatical (“viewpoint”· Smith 1991, 3) aspect is expressed by means of “verbal morphology” (Guéron & Lecarme 2004, 1), whereas lexical (“inherent”· Andersen & Shirai 1996, 530) aspect is “construed on the basis of lexical content of a verbal root and that of its complements” (Guéron & Lecarme 2004, 1–2). Ac-

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cording to Smith’s (1991) “two-component theory”, every sentence “presents aspec-tual information about [both types]”, as the two co-occur and interact but are also independent from one another (Smith 1991, 5).

Grammatical aspect frames a situation, as it “presents an event with a particu-lar extent and focus” (Smith 1991, 5). According to Smith (1991, 6), there are three main viewpoint aspect types: the perfective, the imperfective, and the neutral view-point. Only the perfective viewpoint will be addressed and further discussed, as it is the grammatical aspect signaled by the PT. The basic property of the perfective viewpoint, e.g. Lily swam in the pond (Smith 1991, 106), is that it “present[s] a situ-ation as a single whole. [Its] span […] includes the initial and final endpoints of the situation: it is closed informationally” (Smith 1991, 103). Additionally, it presents situations as “punctual” (Smith 1991, 104). However, this punctuality is just an im-pression, according to Smith (1991), as “it arises from the closed nature of the per-fective situation”.

The second type of aspect distinguished is lexical aspect. Lexical aspect “refers to the inherent semantic properties of the linguistic expressions used to refer to a situation” (Bardovi-Harlig 2000, 213). Lexical aspect, as Smith (1991, 4) writes, “pres-ents a situation as belonging to a certain category of event or state”. Vendler (1974) identifies four aspectual classes: states, activities, accomplishments, and achieve-ments. His classification constitutes an expression of the “intuition that there are two properties which are crucial in categorizing eventualities or event type […]: whether [the eventuality] has a natural stopping point ([…] telic), and whether we can analyze it as progressing or developing (whether it is dynamic or has stages)” (Rothstein 2004a, 7).

States are “stable” (Smith 1991, 37), “homogeneous” situations, as they hold for every instant of a period and are not analyzable into stages (Rothstein 2004a, 14). Stative eventualities have an “arbitrary final point” (Smith 1991, 37) and are also du-rative, that is non punctual, as they last for a long or short period of time (Smith 1991, 6). Examples of state predicates are: love, know, think.

Activities and, unlike states, have stages and “the situation [described] will only continue if it is continually subject to a new input of energy […]” (Comrie 1976, 49). Similar to the class of states, activities are homogeneous and durative, and they “do not have an inherently determined endpoint” (Rothstein 2004b, 539). Examples of activity predicates are: read a book, push a cart, etc.

The example mentioned above acquires a different meaning if the temporal adver-bial in an hour is added. For instance: I read the book in an hour. In this case, we en-ter the lexical aspectual class of accomplishments. Accomplishments “are activitie[s] which move toward a finishing point (Rothstein 2004a, 21) and are, therefore, telic. The endpoint is nonetheless determined by their meaning (Rothstein 2004b, 540).

The final class of verbal predicates is called achievements. Achievements are not durative but are characterized instead as “near-instantaneous” and “non-homoge-neous, since they are treated as too short to have parts”, while “their endpoint is

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determined by their meaning (Rothstein 2004b, 540); they are, thus, telic. Examples of achievement verbs are: reach the summit, die, arrive. Vendler’s (1974) four-class classification will be adopted throughout.

The exact period of time that the duration of a verbal predicate describes is in-extricably linked to that verbal predicate. Rothstein (2004a, 154), however, writes that the properties of the direct object are a “side issue”, in that “achievements, un-like accomplishments, are telic, independent of the properties of the arguments”. She exemplifies her argument through the following example: When she rang the bell, servants arrived in a minute (Rothstein 2004a, 155). Here, the direct object of the verb ring, that is bell, is not affected by the process denoted by the verb in an incremental manner (cf. She ate the sandwich). nonetheless, both VPs denote telic eventualities. Rothstein (2004a, 157), therefore, adds the following claim to her ar-gumentation: “[a] VP is telic” […] “if it denotes a set of countable events […]” (in the example above, the ringing of the bell). The linking thread that conjoins accom-plishments with achievements is that, as Rothstein (2004a, 156) argues, “they involve events of change” and the event described is over “when the change has taken place. As long as a change applies to a singular argument, it is easy to see that the struc-ture of the change determines ‘how long’ the event is”.

2.3 The Lexical Aspect Hypothesis

The theory of lexical aspect constitutes the basis of the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis (LAH) (Bardovi-Harlig 2000, 193). As Bardovi-Harlig (2000, 196) argues, “oppos-ing tense and grammatical aspect to inherent aspect appears to be too strong in sec-ond language acquisition as well as first language acquisition”. The LAH in second language acquisition postulates that “language learners will initially be influenced by the inherent semantic aspect of verbs or predicates in the acquisition of tense and aspect markers associated with or/affixed to these verbs” (as cited in Bardovi-Har-lig 2000, 197). The aspect hypothesis is comprised by “four separate claims […], stated in terms of grammatical aspect and its relation to lexical aspect using the Vendler categories […]” (Bardovi-Harlig 2000, 227). However, only its first claim will be addressed in this paper, namely that “[l]earners first use (perfective) past marking on achievements and accomplishments, eventually extending use to activ-ities and statives” (Bardovi-Harlig 2000).

3. The present study

3.1 Hypotheses

The aim of this paper is to explore the role of lexical aspectual class in the process of acquisition and the patterns of use of the simple past tense (PT) in English.

Following the first claim of the LAH, namely that “learners [will] first use (per-fective) past tense marking on achievements and accomplishments, eventually ex-

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tending use to activities and statives” (Bardovi-Harlig 2000, 227), it will be hypoth-esized that:(1) The sum of tokens of achievement and accomplishment Vs in the PT will be more

than the sum of activity and state Vs.Subsequently, it will be hypothesized that:

(2) The reasons why learners use activities (and states) in the PT less frequently than other categories is because activities – like states – describe events that denote no observable (obviously apparent or perceived) change. In order for that to be true, it will be expected that:

(3) State and activity Vs used in the PT will be, in their majority, encountered in I-statement constructions, rather than in other syntactic configurations.

3.2 Methodology

3.2.1 The Evosmos Learner Corpus of Written English (ELC)

One written corpus of learner assignments was used in this study. Specifically, this was a learner corpus of English comprised by texts written by native speakers of Greek. The learners whose written texts were used attend the EPSE and are learning English in school as a foreign language. The learners belong to the three final grades of primary education (i.e. 4th/d, 5th/E, and 6th/F); their age range was 9–11 years old. The corpus will be referred to as the Evosmos Learner Corpus of Written English (ELC). Its design criteria were determined by the team of the School of English (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) professors responsible for the educational and experimental programs that transpire in the school.

The ELC consists of 68,832 tokens in total. It comprises 805 different written texts produced during the academic years 2010–2011 and 2011–2012 by a total of 156 students attending the aforementioned classes. The length of the assignments was not more than 400 tokens each in any of the groups.

3.2.2 Corpus analysis procedure

In order to answer the research questions mentioned above, the ELC was analyzed as follows:

The corpus was obtained in the form of raw text data (.txt format) and was up-loaded to the online corpus query tool, Sketch Engine (www.sketchengine.co.uk) both in their entirety (all texts of all groups together in one corpus), as well as sub-divided in order to form 3 subcorpora, one for each class. These included: (a) the d class subcorpus (including the assignments written by learners attending the d class): 20,903 tokens; (b) the E subcorpus: 38,821 tokens; and (c) the F subcorpus: 9,108 tokens. Sketch Engine was developed by Adam Kilgarriff, Pavel Smrz and david Tugwell. Sketch Engine is available as a web-based Corpus Query System (CQS); users are able to upload their own raw data and compile a corpus themselves (Pearse 2008, 4; Kilgarriff, Ruchly, Smrz & Tugwell 2004). The software then parses and

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annotates the corpus with part-of-speech (POS) and lemma information using the TreeTagger annotation tool for English.

Each subcorpus was examined separately. The procedure described was followed three times, once for each subcorpus. First, a concordance query was made in the Sketch Engine program, written in the particular CQL (Corpus Query Language) of the software. The default attribute selected was that of “lemma”. The concordance written in CQL was the following: [tag=“V.d*”] and a list of all past tense verb forms in the corpus was generated. Afterwards, the option of “Frequency List” was selected. A first level Frequency List was compiled based on the attribute of “Lem-ma”. The Frequency List presented all verb lemmata in the past tense found in the subcorpus in a declining order of Frequency (that is, hits in the corpus, categorized from most to least frequent).

Following this, each lemma on the list was examined separately in order to de-termine its lexical aspectual class (according to Vendler’s four-way classification). Furthermore, all verbs were cross-checked to eliminate misspelling or false catego-rizations.

A Word Sketch analysis was then conducted in each of the subcorpora. Through the Word Sketch command, the lemma of each V was individually typed. The Word Sketches were then generated, including information such as: subject, modifier, pro(noun) subject and so on. The arguments were found and subsequently grouped according to frequency. All verb classes were examined as to the context within which they are encountered and, particularly, with relation to I-statement analysis.

3.2.3 I-statement Theory

I-statement analysis is “a form of discourse analysis that examines how people speak or write in the first person to describe their actions, feelings, abilities, goals and so on, and how they thus construct particular socially situated identities for themselves through language (Gee 2005, 141). They are typically categorized “on the basis of the type of predicate that follows ‘I’” (Gee 2005, 141–42).

Gee proposes the following kinds of I-statements: (i) “‘cognitive statements’, in which the [speaker] talks about thinking and know-

ing (e.g. ‘I think…’); (ii) ‘affective statements’ when the [speaker] talks about desiring and liking (e.g.

‘I want…’); (iii) ‘state and action statements’ when the [speaker] talks about his or her states

or actions (‘I am mature…’); (iv) ‘ability and constraint statements’ when the [speaker] talks about being able

or having to do things (‘I can’t say anything to them’); and (v) a category of what we call ‘achievement statements’ about activities, desires,

or efforts that relate to ‘mainstream’ achievement, accomplishment, or dis-tinction (‘I want to go to MIT or Harvard’)” (Gee 2005, 141–42).

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4. Results and discussion

4.1 Results

This section includes the results obtained from the corpus analysis procedure de-scribed earlier. The research questions that follow were designed to test the hypoth-eses outlined above:

(a) What is the most frequent (i.e. number of tokens) lexical aspectual class en-countered in the past tense in the Evosmos Learner Corpus (ELC)?

In the ELC texts, the most frequent V class found in the PT is that of accomplish-ments (111 tokens), followed by states (96 tokens), then achievements (87), and fi-nally activities (11). Given that this is a cross-sectional study (as opposed to a longi-tudinal one) the data available represent an instance of the acquisitional process, rather describe the process in question. The numerical differences between classes are not big they are, however, existent.

(b) Is frequency of PT use related to overall frequency in the ELC? Which is the most frequent lexical aspectual class irrespective of PT marking?

The category of state Vs has the most tokens out of the four classes (6,234 tokens / 14 types), followed by activities (2,011 tokens / 3 types), then by accomplishments (1,092 tokens / 23 types), and finally by achievements (481 tokens / 30 types).

The frequency counts above have allowed for a rather unexpected discrepancy to surface: even though activity Vs (as a lexical aspectual class) are very frequent in the ELC, they are not found in the PT but for in the F subcorpus and, there, only 11 tokens are encountered. I will hypothesize that the reasons why learners use activi-ties (and states) in the PT less frequently than other categories is because activities – like states – denote atelic eventualities, not in the sense that the events described lack an endpoint, but in that they denote no observable (obviously apparent or per-ceived) change. The argument affected in prototypically atelic verb classes (i.e. states and activities) is not (only) the object of the V (which is not affected incrementally anyway) but also (and primarily) the subject, or the agent/experiencer involved in the process described who is ultimately experiencing of change.

If this hypothesis is true, it would be expected to hold that state and activity Vs used in the PT would be primarily encountered in I-statement constructions in the ELC, rather than in other syntactic configurations. The case would be hypothesized to be such because time is a subjective category and the writer of the text (i.e. the narrator) is the one recalling the state or activity in the past and is now also expe-riencing the resulting change. The atelic events are thus “transformed” into telic events, in that the perfective aspect lends to them the necessary endpoint (which is conducive but not crucial for the denoting of a telic eventuality), and the fact that the writer does not experience them anymore, creates the change that ultimately brings about telicity.

(c) Which type of pronoun argument most frequently serves as a subject to atel-

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ic (i.e. states and activities) verb classes? That is, are the PT instances of atelic verbs classes found in I-statement constructions?

After performing a complementary set of Word Sketch analyses (to each separate subcorpus, as well as to the ELC as a whole) the subjects (pronoun and nominal) were identified. nominal subjects were ‘translated’ to their pronoun equivalent (for example: The house to It).

As has been shown above, as far as state Vs in the ELC are concerned, out of 90 tokens of PT state V forms, 73 are encountered in I-statements of the following kinds (81,1%):• 47stateandactionI-statements• 20affectiveI-statements• 4cognitiveI-statements• 2abilityandconstraintI-statements

As far as activities are concerned, the only activity Vs in the PT are found in the F subcorpus and are the following: play, take, and visit. Out of the 11 tokens of ac-tivity Vs in the PT, 9 of them are found in I-statement constructions of the state and action kind (e.g. We played basketball at the court). The examples are too few to be considered conclusive they are, nonetheless, indicative and follow the pattern of the state Vs used in the PT.

(d) Are I-statement constructions extensively used by learners, irrespective of lexical aspectual class? Which pronouns serve as subjects to telic verb classes (i.e. accomplishments and achievements)?

Regarding accomplishments, 27 out of 111 tokens (24,32%) are found in I-state-ment constructions whereas in 39 (35,13%) tokens the pronoun we serves as a sub-ject, followed by 23 tokens of they (20,72%) and 22 tokens of He/She/It (19,81%).

As for achievement Vs, 21 out of 87 (24,13%) tokens are found in I-statement contexts. The most frequent pronoun subject is, again, that of He/She/It (33 tokens) (37,93%), followed by that of We (25 tokens) (28,73%). The least frequent pronouns subjects are They (6 tokens) (6,89%) and You 2 tokens (2,29%).

4.2 Discussion

The results presented in the previous section bring about a set of assumptions re-garding the role of lexical aspect and its interaction with the PT. Regarding the set of hypotheses outlined earlier, the analysis of the data seems to confirm the hypoth-esis that lexical aspect does, in fact, influence the course of acquisition of the PT, in that achievements and accomplishments precede activities and states. Particularly, there are 198 tokens of achievement and accomplishment verbs (111 accomplishment tokens and 87 achievement tokens) and 107 activity and state tokens (96 states and 11 activities).

This numerical difference cannot be attributed to overall frequency counts. That is, the fact that accomplishments and achievements outnumber activities and states

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does not stem from the former being more in overall number in the ELC. nonethe-less, it should be mentioned that the V be (a state verb) is particularly frequent in all subcorpora, therefore that could have led to the particularly high number of to-kens regarding this class. Through this initial analysis, it was found that there were only 11 activity V PT tokens [despite them being an overall very frequent class (2,011 tokens), and these are only encountered in the F subcorpus].

The Congruence Principle (Andersen 1993), which has been offered as an expla-nation to the LAH, states that “a grammatical morpheme is used by learners accord-ing to how congruent the meaning of the morpheme is with the meaning of the lexical item to which it is attached. […]” (Andersen 1993, as cited in Andersen & Shirai 1996, 554). It could be the case that accomplishments and achievements pre-cede activities and states because the former are telic and, consequently, congruent with the perfective aspect that presents events as whole (i.e. having an endpoint), whereas as the latter are dissimilar to the perfective aspect they have to be ‘matched’ with leading, consequently, to incongruence. Also, since, according to Smith’s (1991, 3) “two-component theory”, every sentence “presents aspectual information about [both] situation type and viewpoint” aspect (Smith 1991, 5), the argument that an incongruence between the two would constitute an obstacle for learners in their ac-quisition of the tense, appears to be valid – or, at least, plausible.

As has been pointed out by Comrie (1976, 45), the arguments of the verbs are es-sential in the process described by the V since it is them that are “incrementally af-fected” (Rothstein 2004b, 541) by the process described by the V; it is their nature that will determine the length of the process described and when it will have to nec-essarily cease. As found in the ELC (and in the F subcorpus, in particular), in the example: Yesterday I visited a museum with my brother, the learner describes the event in relation to the moment of speaking (the ‘now’ of the student when writing the assignment) when, logically, the visiting activity described has ended. The ‘change’ here is that the I in the sentence is no longer on the visit described and has, hence, perceived a ‘change’ in that they now are someplace else, doing different activities. The change here is not ‘obvious’ in the way that the sentence I built a house is (in that, in the end of said building, one sees an actual house). Yet the change is expe-rienced by the person writing (i.e. recalling or narrating) the event.

Change, therefore, arises in its non-prototypical sense – it is meant as a ‘transi-tion’ from happening to not-happening, and thus somewhat detaches itself from the notion of an endpoint. An endpoint is just a moment, whereas change is an activity, its endpoint and all that has transpired relative to that activity, until the moment of speaking. The arguments of the verb are, again, involved only, in this case, which particular argument is involved (and how it is involved) is of importance. Regard-ing atelic V classes, the direct object (if it exists) does contribute to the subsequent impression of telicity, or else the eventuality would have been telic ab initio. How-ever, it is not solely the fact that the V has an object it affects that makes it telic. The argument that contributes to this ‘borrowed’ telicity in atelic eventualities (irrespec-

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tive of whether the V is transitive or not), is primarily the subject (or agent, or ex-periencer) since it is the one that does or does not perceive the change.

The research questions formulated in order to investigate the second hypothesis appear to confirm its status; that is, learners do, in fact, use activity and state Vs primarily in I-statement constructions (as compared to other syntactic configura-tions). As evidenced by the data, in the ELC, out of the 90 tokens of PT state V forms, 73 (81,1%) are encountered in I-statements. However, the same I-statement patterning does apply to the rest of the aspectual classes (i.e. accomplishments and achievements). As shown in the previous section, I-statement constructions are not the primary context in which other V classes are encountered. Instead, the Vs used in the PT that belong to these classes appear to be almost equally distributed amidst pronoun subjects.

The particular methodological analysis was chosen based on the consideration that, when change is not obvious – that is observable through the senses in the real world – then it can be experienced by a person (in our case: the learner). The incon-gruence mentioned earlier – that between the perfective aspect and the atelic nature of the two V classes under examination here – and the use of atelic Vs in the PT in I-statement contexts could be perceived as essentially another way of making the event telic and, thus, ‘coming closer’ to the perfective aspect signaled by the PT. That is, learners could be utilizing this particular context as a stage in their acquisition process, one that precedes extending the use of the PT to all Vs, irrespective of lex-ical aspectual class. The subject (i.e. the experiencer or agent) I could serve learners at this stage as the missing link that joins situation-external (i.e. tense) with situa-tion-internal (i.e. lexical) aspect and ultimately aids the extending of PT use to ac-tivities and states. The fact that achievements and accomplishments are inherently telic eventualities does not create incongruence issues and, as is shown by the data here, learners are able to use them in a variety of contexts.

Conclusion

The aim of this paper was to address the role of lexical and grammatical aspect in the acquisition and use of the PT. Based on the findings obtained following the analysis of the ELC, learners appear to be influenced by the feature of telicity, and in particular by the change it entails. Learners will most frequently use the PT with telic verb classes (i.e. achievements and accomplishments) and will not be constrained by the pronoun that serves as their subject. However, regarding atelic verb classes (i.e. states and activities) learners will initially use PT forms in I-statement (before other) contexts, since – as was hypothesized – this context, in combination with the perfective aspect, allow for the change to be most readily perceived.

Further research could help illuminate the patterns of use of other tenses, as well as compare the interaction of the imperfective or neutral grammatical aspect with the different lexical aspectual classes. The other claims of the LAH could also be

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addressed. Larger learner corpora could be implemented, including data from dif-ferent languages and multiple modalities (i.e. spoken). A longitudinal study could help further illuminate the acquisition process. Last, this analysis of empirical data could be used to enhance the ‘Can do’ statements describing the written production competence corresponding to the “Basic User” level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).

References

Andersen, R. W. & Y. Shirai. 1996. “The Primacy of Aspect in First and Second Language Ac-quisition: The Pidgin-Creole Connection”, in W. C. Ritchie & T. K. Bhatia (eds), The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition. London: Academic Press, 527–70.

Bardovi-Harlig, K. 2000. Tense and Aspect in Second Language Acquisition: Form, Mean-ing, and Use. Maiden: Blackwell Publishers.

Carter, R. & M. McCarthy. 2006. Cambridge Grammar of English: A Comprehensive Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Comrie, B. 1976. Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Prob-lems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Council of Europe. 2001. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learn-ing, Teaching, Assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gee, J. P. 2005. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method, 2nd ed. new York & London: Routledge.

Guéron, J. & J. Lecarme. 2004. “Introduction”, in J. Guéron & J. Lecarme (eds), The Syntax of Time. Boston: MIT Press, 1–25.

Kilgariff, A., P. Ruchly, P. Smrz & d. Tugwell. 2004. “The Sketch Engine”, in Proceedings of EURALEX 2004 (Lorient, France). [http://www.sketchengine.co.uk/sketch-engineelx04.pdf]

Pearse, M. 2008. “Investigating the Behaviour of MAn and WOMAn in the BnC Using Sketch Engine”, Corpora, 3, 1–29.

Rothstein, S. 2004a. Structuring Events: A Study in the Semantics of Lexical Aspect. Malden: Blackwell Publishers.

—. 2004b. “derived Accomplishment and Lexical Aspect”, in J. Guéron & J. Lecarme (eds), The Syntax of Time. Boston: MIT Press, 539–53.

Smith, C. S. 1991. The Parameter of Aspect. dordrecht: Kluwer.Vendler, Z. 1974. Linguistics in Philosophy. Ithaka: Cornell University Press.

Key-words: Lexical aspect hypothesis, English past tense, L2 acquisition, learner corpus, I-statement theory, grammatical/lexical aspect, telicity, change.