Interlanguage Development by Two Korean Speakers of English With a Focus on Temporality

Abstract

This study investigates the acquisition of temporality in English by 2 Korean speakers over a period of 24 months. Temporality is examined from two perspectives: (1) the expression of past‐time events (PTEs) and (2) semantic aspect and verb morphology, that is, the testing of the Aspect Hypothesis. The analysis of the expression of PTEs confirms earlier findings. The learners’ use of discourse devices preceded lexical means, which, in turn, preceded inflectional means. The analysis of the distribution of verb morphology in relation to semantic aspect generally supported the claims of the Aspect Hypothesis. The extension of progressive marking, however, was not observed. Further, contrary to the hypothesis, learners used progressive marking on state verbs.