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In:Research at the Intersection of Second Language Acquisition and Sociolinguistics: Studies in honor of Kimberly L. Geeslin
Edited by Megan Solon, Matthew Kanwit and Aarnes Gudmestad
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 43] 2025
► pp. 10–34

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Chapter 1
A study of lexical bases and variation of progressive constructions in the Spanish of English-speaking learners

 | University of Mississippi
 | Indiana University
 | California State University, Fresno
 | Indiana University
Published online: 26 June 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.43.01faf
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 (n = 20) baseline. 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.
Article outline
  • Previous studies
    • Spanish progressive constructions
    • L2 Spanish progressive research
  • Current study
  • Method
    • Participants
    • Tasks
    • Analysis
  • Results
    • Rates of form selection by group
    • GLM results
    • Developmental trends
  • Discussion
    • Answers to research questions
    • Implications for pedagogy
  • Conclusion and future directions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
References (43)
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