list of abbreviations
list of tables
list of figures
chapter one introduction
1.1 significance of the study of temporality
1.2 significance of the present study
1.3 outline of the book
chapter two theoretical background
2.1 temporal semantics and the tense-aspect system
2.1.1 time specification and expressions of temporal relations
2.1.2 the tense-aspect morphology of past in english
2.2 lexical aspect: the inherent temporal properties
2.2.1 lexical aspect versus grammatical aspect
2.2.2 inherent aspectual classification of verbs on time schemata
2.2.3 inherent semantic aspectual properties of verbs
2.2.4 distinctions of lexical aspects by semantic properties
2.2.5 diagnostic tests of lexical aspectual categories
2.3 chapter summary
chapter three previous studies on acquisition of temporality
3.1 studies on acquisition stages of temporality
3.1.1 developmental stages of temporal system in l1
3.1.2 developmental stages of temporal acquisition
3.2 studies on acquisition order of past morphology: a formal perspective
3.2.1 acquisition of irregular and regular past morphology
3.2.2 the principle of saliency
3.3 studies on lexical aspect: a semantic perspective
3.3.1 the defective tense hypothesis
3.3.2 the primacy of aspect hypothesis
3.3.3 the aspect hypothesis
3.3.4 principles underlying tense-aspect acquisition
3.4 review of research methodologyin temporal studies
3.4.1 longitudinal versus cross-sectional studies
3.4.2 individual versus group data
3.4.3 data elicitation tasks
3.5 chapter summary
chapter four methodology
4.1 research hypotheses
4.2 participants
4.3 data elicitation
4.3.1 the task
4.3.2 elicitation procedure
4.4 data coding
4.4.1 identification of obligatory simple past contexts
4.4.2 coding for features of phonetic saliency
4.4.3 coding for lexical aspectual categories
4.4.4 coding for verb type
4.5 data analysis
4.5.1 selection of data for analysis
4.5.2 tests for bias of the selected data
4.5.3 division of participants for the cross-sectional study
4.5.4 data processing
4.6 chapter summary
chapter five results and findings
5.1 results from analyses of phonetic saliency
5.1.1 results from the overall descriptive study: evidence for hypothesis 1
5.1.2 results from the cross-sectional study across the five proficiency groups: evidence for hypothesis 2
5.2 results from analyses of lexical aspect
5.2.1 results from the overall descriptive study:evidence for hypothesis 3
5.2.2 results from the cross-sectional study: evidence for hypothesis 4
5.3 chapter summary
chapter six discussion
6.1 the effect of phonetic saliency
6.1.1 the irregular versus regular constraint
6.1.2 the constraint of saliency on irregular variants
6.1.3 the constraint of saliency on regular variants
6.2 the effect of lexical aspect
6.3 a general discussion
6.4 chapter summary
chapter seven conclusion
7.1 major findings
7.2 pedagogical implications
7.3 limitations and suggestions for future studies
bibliography
appendix data collection task
acknowledgements