Second Language Acquisition of Progressive Aspect of Stative and Achievement Verbs in English

Abstract

The progressive aspect in stative verbs, due to their semantic, and in achievement verbs, due to their occurrence at a single moment, is widely recognized as unacceptable and uncommon. This paper reports on the judgment of EFL learners of English as well as native speakers on compatibility of progressive aspect with these two verb categories. To the mentioned aim, 70 EFL learners of English, assigned to four groups of elementary, low intermediate, high intermediate and advanced learners, as well as 10 native speakers were chosen as the participants of the present study. A test of grammatically judgment of progressive form in state and achievement verbs in which the participants were given some sentences containing state and achievement verbs in progressive form along with some fillers was devised and the participants were asked to evaluate if they were grammatically acceptable or not. The results showed that the majority of native speakers judged progressive use in both state and achievement verbs as acceptable while advanced learners, with a wide margin, considered progressive forms unacceptable. When the results of all groups were analyzed, it was concluded that the higher the level of participants was, the more they accepted the progressive form as unacceptable.