The effect of lexical aspect on Turkish EFL learners' use of present perfect forms

Abstract

The aspect hypothesis argues that L2 learners' interlanguage system of tense-aspect morphology is, to a certain extent, determined by the inherent semantic features of verbs, which is also known as "lexical aspect". So as to substantiate the grounds of the aspect hypothesis, a great number of studies inquire into the effect of lexical aspect on L2 learners' use of the simple past tense and progressive aspects. However, there exist very few studies that mainly focus on L2 learners' acquisition and use of present perfect markings within the scope of aspect hypothesis. With this in mind, the current study aims at investigating the role of lexical aspect on L2 learners' use of present perfect markings in English. More specifically, it attempts to find out whether L2 learners show a tendency to associate the present perfect forms with certain lexical aspectual categories in two different sentential contexts; namely, with or without adverbs of duration. The written data have been elicited from 34 Turkish EFL learners through a comprehensive cloze test. The research findings indicate that EFL learners' use of present perfect forms is constrained by both lexical aspects of verb predicates and the sentential context in which these forms take place. The study also reveals that the intrinsic semantic properties of verbs have a significant impact on L2 learners' preference for certain tense-aspect morphological markers, which offers verifying research evidence for the aspect hypothesis. © Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 2023. All rights reserved.