The Role of Grounding and Lexical Aspect in L2 Acquisition of Perfective Aspect Marker -le in Chinese

Abstract

Acquisition of the perfective marker -le in Mandarin Chinese is a daunting task for second language learners. To date, there has been no consensus on what it is about -le that makes it such a challenge to learners. This study investigates the acquisition of -le from both a lexical perspective and a discourse perspective. I test two hypotheses: (1) whether the distribution of -le in lexical aspectual class, i.e., state, activity, accomplishment, and achievement, plays a role in the way L2 learners use -le, as predicted by the Aspect Hypothesis; and (2) whether the distinction in discourse between foregrounding and backgrounding plays a role in the way L2 learners use -le, as predicted by the Discourse Hypothesis. Three proficiency levels of participants participated in an oral storytelling task: Frog, Where Are You, in Chinese. The results show that both the Aspect Hypothesis and the Discourse Hypothesis are supported. All of the participants used -le to distinguish foreground and background, and they also used -le predominately with achievements. Lower-level participants differ from higher-level speakers in that they produced much less -le with bounding materials in foreground with achievement predicates. It is concluded that the challenge of acquiring -le comes from the syntactic complexity of -le with bounding materials, rather than lexical aspect or grounding.