A corpus-based study of the acquisition of the English progressive by L1 Chinese learners: from prototypical activities to marked statives

Abstract

Abstract This article investigates how EFL learners’ progressive markings are influenced by the lexical aspect of verbs, mode of expression (spoken vs. written), and proficiency levels, focusing on the controversial issue of stative verbs in progressives in L2 acquisition. Spoken (SECCL) and written (WECCL) corpus data from two proficiency levels of Chinese EFL learners and comparison data from native English speakers (COCA) were analyzed. The results suggest that in both learner and native data the progressive -ing is strongly associated with activity verbs, stative verbs being least likely to be inflected with the progressive. this association strengthens with higher proficiency of the learners. Learners’ use of stative verbs in the progressive and the overextended use of stative progressives was also found to be related to spoken versus written mode of production and proficiency levels, with learners retreating from overextension as their proficiency increases. A usage-based account of the findings is proposed.