An Empirical Study On The Acquisition Of PPAC Containing Different Types Of Verbs

As a universal phenomenon, aspect, on the basis of the speaker’s talking time,indicates the distribution of action or process in a certain time. Languages codeaspects differently. The aspects of English are generally divided into progressive andperfective. The former refers to the distribution of action or process in the time ofspeaker’s talking. The later focuses on the completeness of action or process. Scholarsfrom home and abroad have studied English progressive from varied angles and theirresearches are fruitful. Some scholars even view English progressive as a grammaticalconstruction in recent years. Under the framework of Construction Grammar(shortened as CxG), they explain the form and meaning of it in a unified way, whichis quite novel and creative. However, there are some insufficiencies in the abovestudies. Present researches mainly concentrate on the functions and usages of Englishprogressive aspectural construction, and there is no empirical study on the acquisitionof English progressive aspectural construction.Therefore, the author attempts to conduct an empirical study on the acquisitionof English progressive aspectural construction among sophomores of English major inSISU, with CxG, Prototype Theory and Coercion Theory as its theoretical basis.However, since aspect is usually used together with tense, there are plenty ofcombinations between tense and aspect. In order to exclude the disturbance of tense,this paper narrows down the topic to present progressive aspectural construction(shortened as PPAC). The study shows that PPAC is acquired by means of inductionand generalization of form and meaning rather than learning by rote or drills.Moreover, three findings are presented after data analysis. First, prototype meaningsof PPAC are better acquired than those non-prototype meanings. Second, there iscertain acquisition order of semantic gradient of PPAC. Third, students master PPACdifferntly when PPAC is combined with various types of verbs. When PPAC iscombined with activity verbs, they are mastered best. While when PPAC is togetherwith stative verbs, they are mastered worst. At last, some teaching suggestions will be raised in hope of improving grammar teaching.