‘Marking Past Tense in Second Language Acquisition’ presents an analysis of the difficulties faced by native speakers of English in the learning of Romance languages and in so doing proposes a comprehensive model of the acquisition of tense-aspect marking. While L1 speakers of English may quickly learn to identify and, to some extent, use the Spanish perfective and imperfective verb endings, the L2 representation of tense-aspect distinctions among both beginning and advanced learners requires a comprehensive multidimensional analysis. Through a detailed examination of new and existing empirical data, this monograph proposes a new model for examining tense-aspect marking in second language acquisition, which reconciles competing, alternative hypotheses.

This comprehensive account will be of interest to academics researching second language acquisition and applied linguistics.

"This ambitious volume systematically and thoroughly examines the theoretical and applied issues that the study of Spanish past tense raises. It does so by questioning and refining well-known (but not always well-understood) theoretical constructs upon which second language acquisition studies are based." -Professor Dalila Ayoun, University of Arizona, USA