Variation in verbal morphology is a phenomenon which has been the object of linguistic research for a long time. Two competing sets of predictions have been put forth to account for the distribution of verbal inflections in learner language: The Aspect Hypothesis posits that learners predominantly use inflections to indicate categories of lexical aspect, while the Discourse Hypothesis claims that they are used to differentiate foreground from background in narratives. Drawing on a corpus of more than sixty L2 narrations elicited in a German-English immersion elementary school, this longitudinal study analyzes the interaction of lexical aspect and discourse grounding. The results confirm both predictions and show more clearly than previous research in what way both effects can interact with each other. Results of Statistical Analysis are appended. [This work was published by WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.]