Abstract
This article examines the emergence of the present perfect in the interlanguage of 16 instructed adult learners of English as a second language. It is part of a longitudinal study of the expression of temporality in interlanguage; it focuses on the learners' form‐meaning associations by investigating their use of the present perfect in written and oral texts. The article first describes the order of emergence of the present perfect with respect to other tense/aspect forms and then the potential influence of instruction by comparing production to instructional logs. Examination of the linguistic contexts in which the present perfect appears shows that adding a new inflection in the tense/aspect system requires not only establishing new form‐meaning associations but also revising existing ones.
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