Abstract
Progressive Aspect Across Temporalities: Variation Between Synthetic and Analytic Forms in L1 and L2 Spanish
Tense‑mood‑aspect (TMA) mappings and the variable morphosyntactic structures that express them are a key aspect of language learning. An example from Spanish is progressive aspect expression, which is likely to pose difficulty for English‑speaking learners because English encodes progressiveness primarily through one construction (be + V‑ing), whereas Spanish varies between analytic (e.g., estoy comiendo "I am eating") and synthetic (e.g., como "I eat") forms. To date, however, acquisition studies have primarily focused on present temporalities. The present study aims at determining the frequency of selection of synthetic and analytic forms across course levels while assessing the linguistic factors that significantly condition selection. For this purpose, four groups of college‑level learners (N = 107) and one first language (L1) group (N = 20) completed a 30‑item written contextualized preference task. The dependent variable was the participant’s selection of the synthetic form, the analytic form, or that both were equally possible. The independent variables manipulated were the lexical aspect of the verb (stative or dynamic), the presence of a co‑occurring adverb (one of immediacy or none), lexical frequency (high or low), and temporality (past, present, or future). The results showed that relative rates of selection were stable across groups, with each selecting synthetic forms in over 50% of contexts. Moreover, within‑group mixed‑effects regression analyses provide evidence that learners become sensitive to a greater number of significant linguistic factors as proficiency increases. In particular, the analyses revealed that lexical frequency and temporality, in addition to lexical aspect, are relevant predictors of progressive aspect expression, as learners move from making no distinction between forms to native‑like patterns of selection at later stages of acquisition.
Key words: morphosyntactic variation, progressive constructions, tense‑mood‑aspect, lexical frequency, temporality.