Calculating telicity in L2
Larissa Nossalik Department of Linguistics, McGill University
Abstract
Recent linguistic research reveals that natural languages encode information about event structure (i.e., telicity, boundedness, dynamicity) syntactically. Although telicity is calculated within the little vP-domain cross-linguistically, the exact mechanism via which a verbal predicate acquires the telic value is language-specific.
The goal of my study is to determine whether L2 learners can acquire a telicity assigning mechanism different from their L1 mechanism. The results of the experiment that I conducted suggest that even less advanced L2 learners have no difficulties in acquiring the L2 telicity assigning mechanism, given that all L2 participants demonstrated native-like knowledge of it.
