John Benjamins. 2002. — 489 pages. — (Language Acquisition and Language Disorders). — ISBN: 9027224951; 1588112179This volume grew out of a Colloquium on Description and explanation in L2 acquisition of tense-aspect morphology: Complementary perspectives organized by the editors of this volume at the 21st Annual Meeting of AAAL (American Association for Applied Linguistics) held at Stamford, CT, in March 1999. We asked the presenters to update, revise and expand their papers, and we also invited additional contributions, in an eVort to present complementary, multiple perspectives on the analysis of the development of tense and aspect in L
2. Indeed, databased studies included in this volume deal with a wide variety of languages — English, Spanish, Italian, French, Chinese and Japanese.The present volume provides a cross-linguistic perspective on the development of tense-aspect in L2 acquisition. Data-based studies included in this volume deal with the analysis of a wide range of target languages: Chinese, English, Italian, French, Japanese, and Spanish. Theoretical frameworks used to evaluate the nature of the empirical evidence range from generative grammar to functional-typological linguistics. Several studies focus on the development of past tense markers, but other issues such as the acquisition of a future marker are also addressed. An introductory chapter outlines some theoretical and methodological issues that serves as relevant preliminary reading for most of the chapters included in this volume. Additionally, a preliminary chapter offers a substantive review of first language acquisition of tenseaspect morphology. The analysis of the various languages included in this volume significantly advances our understanding of this phenomenon, and will serve as an important basis for future research.
