The development of tense and aspect morphology in L2 Korean
This study investigates whether L2 Korean acquisition data upholds the Aspect Hypothesis, which claims that the development of grammatical tense and aspect marking is determined by lexical aspect. Cross-sectional data were collected from 60 learners of Korean enrolled in U.S. universities by using focused written elicitation tasks: a cloze test and a picture description task. The results support the Aspect Hypothesis: The Korean learners spread past tense marker –ess- from telic verbs to activities to states, and they use the progressive marker -ko iss- for action-in-progress meaning most frequently with activities and accomplishments, but its result state meaning is acquired very slowly. So far, little attention has been paid to the variations in sequence of development among various languages, since research on the acquisition of tense and aspect morphology has focused on finding the universal pattern of the spread of each tense and aspect marker. Our study reveals the sequence of development from the past –ess- to the progressive -ko iss-, unlike the developmental order shown in L1 and L2 English data.