PROGRESSIVE –ING MORPHOLOGY IN CHILD ENGLISH L2 ACQUISITION
PROGRESSIVE –ING MORPHOLOGY IN CHILD ENGLISH L2 ACQUISITION

Summary/Abstract: The article examines the stages of grammatical development of the L2 English verb marker -ing in the acquisition of English as L2 in the Bulgarian young learner classroom. To address this issue it focuses on the specifics of the aspectual system in English. It also examines the theoretical framework of the Processability Theory (PT) and shows the key features underlying each of the stages of L2 morphological acquisition. A 14-month longitudinal study is then presented to test this hypothesis with data obtained from the speech production of six Bulgarian primary school pupils acquiring English as L2. Though the results comply partly with the hypothesized by the PT developmental schedule of the –ing verb morpheme in the L2 oral samples of the study subjects, they also provide evidence that classroom instruction influences the acquisition of L2 verbal morphology.

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