A study of lexical bases and variation of progressive constructions in the Spanish of English-speaking learners
Published in Research at the Intersection of Second Language Acquisition and Sociolinguistics, 2025
Abstract
We investigated allowance of five common lexical bases used to form Spanish progressive constructions: estar, andar, ir, venir, and seguir. In a written contextualized acceptability task, five identical sentences appeared after a given context, the only difference being the lexical base used. Participants evaluated each sentence as possible or not possible. There were 80 sentences (4 verbal aspectual categories × 4 adverbial types × 5 lexical bases), producing a corpus of 7,600 responses. We compared learners from four different proficiency levels (n = 75) and a first-language Spanish baseline (n = 20). Results indicate that estar was the most accepted lexical base, and learners allowed all five lexical bases from the lowest Spanish proficiency level. Relevant pedagogical implications are discussed.
Recommended citation: Fafulas, S., Guo, J., Berríos, J., & Geeslin, K. L. (2025). "A study of lexical bases and variation of progressive constructions in the Spanish of English-speaking learners." In M. Solon, M. Kanwit, & A. Gudmestad (Eds.), Research at the Intersection of Second Language Acquisition and Sociolinguistics: Studies in honor of Kimberly L. Geeslin (pp. 10–34). John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.43.01faf
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