AAAL Presentation
March 2019
With Dr. Hyun-Sook Kang at UIUC, Lindblad and Uchikoshi presented a study on the development of tense and aspect in the English narratives of dual language learners (DLLs) learning English/Spanish or English/Cantonese. The frequency distribution of English tense and aspect markers were analyzed in relation to foregrounding and backgrounding in the storyline.
Results show that DLLs during the early developmental phases (i.e., kindergarten) employ non-inflected base forms more frequently than the simple present or simple past regardless of the narrative genre. As DLLs develop their proficiency in English, they show more uses of the simple past forms in telling stories, but fewer uses of the base forms or the simple present forms.
