On crosslinguistic variations in imperfective aspect: The case of L2 Korean

This article examines the acquisition of Korean imperfective markers, the progressive -ko iss- and the resultative -a iss-, with a view to understanding how tense/aspect morphology expands beyond prototype associations with inherent aspects of the verbs. We hypothesized that -a iss- will develop later than -ko iss-, but that the development of -a iss- will precede or coincide with the expansion of -ko iss- marking for result state meaning. Cross-sectional data were collected from 120 learners of second language Korean using a sentence interpretation task and a guided picture description task. The results support our hypothesized acquisition route of imperfective markers, establishing dynamic durativity as the prototypical meaning of the Korean imperfective -ko iss- and suggesting individual variation in expanding the prototype.