A study of the distribution of classes of lexical aspect in Spanish by Chinese learners of Spanish in oral narration

Abstract This paper aims to analyze the non-native use of Spanish verbs of different aspectual classes by Mandarin Chinese speakers performing oral narrative tasks. In this work, we adopt Vendler’s (Vendler, Zeno. 1967. Linguistics in philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press) lexical-aspect classification (states, activities, accomplishments, and achievements), and we analyze the Spanish L2 acquisition of these categories by sinophones both at the level of the lexical form acquisition and at the semantic level. Based on data obtained from two oral narrative tasks elicited from storyboard vignettes performed by three groups of learners of L2/L3 Spanish (ranging from B1 to C1 levels of the CEFR), this work supports Jiang’s (Jiang, Nan. 2000. Lexical development and representation in a second language. Applied Linguistics 21(1). 47–77) L2 lexical acquisition pattern at the lexical form level, as our sinophone learners show a similar pattern to the one observed in native speakers in the use of aspectual class of compositional form (accomplishments)and aspectual classes of individual form (states, activities and achievements). However, at the lexical semantic level, we found that, besides L2 proficiency, the properties of lexical semantics may also impact learners’ L2 lexical processing.