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Disentangling aspect and tense in L2 acquisition

A feature reassembly approach to perfective markers le and guo in L2 Chinese grammars

ORCiD logo with link | University College Cork
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University College Cork.

Published online: 16 December 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.25004.guo
Abstract
This article reports on an empirical study investigating the second language (L2) acquisition of the Chinese perfective markers le and guo and their aspectual/temporal features by English-speaking learners, under the framework of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis ( (2008). Feature assembly in second language acquisition. In J. Liceras, H. Zobl, & H. Goodluck (Eds.), The Role of Features in Second Language Acquisition (pp. 106–140). Erlbaum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, (2009). Some thoughts on the contrastive analysis of features in second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 25(2), 171–225. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). English lacks dedicated perfective markers, whereas Chinese is rich in aspect marking but has no morphologically realised tense. This study provides a feature-based account of the Chinese perfective markers le and guo and their English corresponding forms (the simple past tense -ed and the present perfect). An acceptability judgment task, a multiple-choice task, and an online sentence completeness judgment task were conducted on 65 L2 learners of three proficiency levels and 25 Chinese natives. Our findings are largely compatible with the predictions of the FRH. It is found that a complex mapping between the L1 tense and L2 aspect markers can lead to persistent learning challenges. Le is more difficult to acquire than guo as the acquisition of le involves a more intricate feature reassembly process. L2 learners must disentangle and reconfigure aspectual and temporal features in the L2 feature sets, while also distinguishing between different aspect markers in L2 Chinese.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Perfective marking in English and Chinese
    • 2.1Perfective marking in English
    • 2.2Perfective marking in Chinese
      • 2.2.1Chinese perfective marker le
      • 2.2.2Chinese experiential marker guo
  • 3.Feature Reassembly and L2 acquisition of Chinese perfective markers
    • 3.1The Feature Reassembly Hypothesis
    • 3.2Previous studies on feature reassembly in L2 aspect/tense
    • 3.3L2 acquisition of Chinese perfective markers
  • 4.The study
    • 4.1Research questions
    • 4.2Participants
    • 4.3Methodology and test items
      • 4.3.1The acceptability judgment task (AJT)
      • 4.3.2The context-based multiple-choice task (MCT)
      • 4.3.3The timed sentence completeness judgment task (SCJT)
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Results of the AJT
      • 5.1.1Results of Type 1 (control verb with le) and Type 2 (control verb without le)
      • 5.1.2Results of Type 3 (*[−repeatable] VP with guo) and Type 4 ([+repeatable] VP with guo)
    • 5.2Results of the MCT
    • 5.3Results of the SCJT
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1The L2 acquisition of aspectual features of le
      • 6.1.1From L1 tense marking to L2 perfective marking
      • 6.1.2Differentiating between perfective and imperfective
    • 6.2The L2 acquisition of aspectual features of guo
    • 6.3L2 acquisition of the temporal functions of le and guo
    • 6.4Feature reassembly as a complex acquisition process
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Data Availability Statement
  • CRediT statement
  • References
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