The following utterances were produced by a second language learner at the early stages of
learning English. All of the sentences were gathered from spontaneous utterances. The most
likely intention (given the context) of these utterances is provided in parentheses, when the
intention of her utterance is not obvious from the forms produced. As you see, the learner has
two forms to express progressive meaning: the Verb + -ing form (e.g., eating and the simple
form of the verb (e.g., watch)
Question 1: What hypotheses does the leaner have regarding progressive sentences? When does
she use the Verb + -ing form? When does she use the simple verb form of the verb? State the
hypotheses (or hypothesis) that can explain all or most of the utterances below.
Question 2: Can the hypotheses/hypothesis in (i) explain all of the utterances below? If not, how
do you account for the utterance(s) that the hypotheses/hypothesis cannot explain?
