The use of aspect in czech l2

  • The focus of the present paper is on the difference between English and German learners‘ use of perfectivity and imperfectivity. The latter is expressed by means of suffixation (suffix -va-). In contrast, perfectivity is encoded either by suffixation (-nou-) or by prefixation (twenty different prefixes that mostly modify not only aspectual but also lexical properties of the verb). In the native Czech data set, there is no significant difference between the number of imperfectively and perfectively marked verb forms. In the English data, imperfectively and perfectively marked verb forms are equally represented as well. However, German learners use significantly more perfective forms than English learners and Czech natives. When encoding perfectivity in Czech, German learners prefer to use prefixes to suffixes. Overall, English learners in comparison to German learners encode more perfectives by means of suffixation than prefixation. These results suggest that German learners of Czech focus on prefixes expressing aspectual and lexical modification of the verb, while English learners rather pay attention to the aspectual opposition between perfective and imperfective. In a more abstract way, the German learner group focuses on the operations carried out on the left side from the verb stem while the English learner group concentrates on the operations performed on the right side qfrom the verb stem. This sensitivity can be to certain degree motivated by the linguistic devices of the corresponding source languages: English learners of Czech use imperfectives mainly because English has marked fully grammatical form for the expression of imperfective aspect – the progressive -ing form. German learners, on the other hand, pay in Czech more attention to the prefixes, which like in German modify the lexical meaning of the verb. In this manner, Czech prefixes used for perfectivization function similar to the German verbal prefixes (such as ab-, ver-) modifying Aktionsart.

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Metadaten
Author:Barbara Schmiedtová
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-308545
URL:http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/fileadmin/material/ZASPiL_Volltexte/zp29/zaspil29-schmiedtova.pdf
ISSN:1435-9588
ISSN:0947-7055
Parent Title (English):Acquisition of aspect / Ed. by Dagmar Bittner & Natalia Gagarina, , Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung, Berlin, 2003; ZAS papers in linguistics Vol. 29
Publisher:Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung
Place of publication:Berlin
Document Type:Part of a Book
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2013/11/14
Year of first Publication:2003
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2013/11/14
GND Keyword:Fremdsprachenlernen; Morphologie; Aspekt <Linguistik>; Tschechisch; Deutsch
Volume:29
Page Number:18
First Page:177
Last Page:194
HeBIS-PPN:381233944
Dewey Decimal Classification:4 Sprache / 49 Andere Sprachen / 491 Ostindoeuropäische und keltische Sprachen
Sammlungen:Linguistik
Linguistik-Klassifikation:Linguistik-Klassifikation: Zweitspracherwerb/Fremdspracherwerb / Second language acquisition/Foreign language acquisition
Linguistik-Klassifikation: Morphologie / Morphology
Linguistik-Klassifikation: Kontrastive Linguistik / Contrastive linguistics
Zeitschriften / Jahresberichte:ZAS papers in linguistics : ZASPiL / ZASPiL 29 = Acquisition of aspect
:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-306704
Licence (German):License LogoDeutsches Urheberrecht