Verb semantics and the acquisition of tense-aspect in L2 English

Studies on the L2-acquisition of Tense-Aspect (TA) have argued that the eme rgence and development of verb morphology is constrained by semiotic-concep tual prototypes in a way that coincides with the claims of the Aspect Hypot hesis (AH) (Andersen & Shirai 1996). This papers presents results from a lo ngitudinal study of the development of TA in L2 English which suggests that the influence of such prototypes is itself constrained by other factors, n otably L1-induced predispositions to mark specific temporal categories, the morphophonemic nature of different grammatical categories, and the nature of the processing mechanisms that operate in the learning of grammatical mo rphology.