Introduction: Tense, Aspect and Modality in Second Languages (TAML2). Recent Applied Studies

Abstract

There is no doubt that the acquisition of tense, aspect and modality in second languages (TAML2) is a widely studied topic, due to the complexity it entails, being, in fact, one of the most fruitful lines of research in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). However, after a long tradition of 30 years of study, which has brought to light numerous and important findings as regards how these three grammatical categories are acquired by second language learners, such as, for instance, the Aspect Hypothesis (AH) (Andersen & Shirai, 1996), the Discourse Hypothesis (Bardovi-Harlig, 2000), the Default Past Tense Hypothesis (Salaberry, 1999), and the Lexical Underspecification Hypothesis (Giacalone-Ramat & Rastelli, 2008), in the twenty-first century there are still many unanswered questions related to their acquisition in second languages.