THE ROLE OF NARRATIVE STRUCTURE IN THE ACQUISITION OF EUROPEAN PORTUGUESE PERFECTIVE AND IMPERFECTIVE MORPHOLOGY BY L1 MANDARIN CHINESE LEARNERS

Abstract

The study of the acquisition of L2 tense-aspect and the development of aspectual distinctions has been conducted according to various theoretical hypotheses, among which the Discourse Hypothesis stands out nowadays. In order to examine the relationship between the use of perfective/imperfective morphology and the narrative grounding, the present study is oriented by three research questions: (1) what is the temporal base like in the past narratives produced by L1 Mandarin Chinese learners of European Portuguese? (2) is the choice of perfective and imperfective verbal morphology influenced by the narrative grounding? (3) do the learners of different proficiency levels mark the narrative grounding with different verbal forms? On the basis of a quantitative analysis on the data collected from the narratives produced by 12 L1 Mandarin Chinese learners of European Portuguese, the results revealed that the temporal base for narratives is clearly perfective-imperfective and that the foreground was mostly marked by the perfective morphology, whereas the imperfective tended to be used to mark the background, irrespective of the learners’ proficiency levels.