Abstract:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>This study tests how patterns of temporal reference in the linguistic expression of advanced Chinese learners of English co-vary with their nonverbal event categorisation. 42 learners were asked to retell videos with achievement-type events and activities in English. Results from expression showed pronounced crosslinguistic influence in learners’ infrequent combination of ongoingness with achievements, when compared with the English controls. Categorisation data signals that L1-modulated preferences also underlie learners’ nonverbal judgements. Crucially, the main new finding is covariation between the frequency of combined forms in learners’ retellings and how close their overall categorisation choices are to the target control group’s.</jats:p>