Temporal adverbials and early tense and aspect markers in the acquisition of Dutch

Abstract

This chapter examines how Turkish and Moroccan learners acquire the semantic and structural properties of the Dutch temporal reference system. The findings of this study demonstrate how these second language learners put early tense markers in utterance-initial position, in the topic component. In contrast, early aspect markers are embedded in front of the verb, in the focus component. Evidence is found that this development of verbal morphology is shaped by a parallel structural embedding of lexical adverbials in an earlier stage of acquisition. With respect to the aspect before tense debate, I demonstrate that the first occurrences of morphosyntactic temporal marking emerge as grammatical aspect marking in the focus component of the learner utterances. © 2006 Springer.