1. Introduction ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 2. A Brief Introduction of Tense/aspect -----------------------------------------------3
2.1.Difference between Chinese tense/aspect and English tense/aspect----------3 2.2 English Simple Past Tense ----------------------------------------------------------3 2.3 Chinese Aspect Marker le------------------------------------------------------------4
2.4 Lexical Aspect Constraints on English Simple Past Marking and the Use of
Chinese Perfective Aspect Marker le---------------------------------------------------5
3. Process of data analysis------------------------------------------------------------6
3.1 Research questions--------------------------------------------------------------------6 3.2Data collection--------------------------------------------------------------------------6 3.3 Data analysis---------------------------------------------------------------------------6 4. Results and Discussion--------------------------------------------------------7 4.1 Result-----------------------------------------------------------------------------8 4.2 Discussion------------------------------------------------------------------------------9
5. Implications -------------------------------------------------------------------------10
5.1. Theoretical implications------------------------------------------------------------10 5.2. Pedagogical implications-----------------------------------------------------------11
The Effects of Aspect Marker le on the Simple Past Use in
English Interlanguage
Abstract
Tense/aspect system, as the main grammatical device in expressing temporality, is an important issue in first and second language acquisition. Therefore, it receives much attention form both theoretical and applied linguists. English tense/aspect acquisition poses great difficulty for Chinese EFL learners, because Chinese and English are distinct in expressing temporality. English tense/aspect is mainly realized by adding verbal morphology or markings to verbs; however, Chinese has no tense category, but it can express temporality through such devices as temporal adverbials and context. English simple past, as a tense of high frequency and higher error rate is taken as the topic of this study. In Chinese, the concept of \"past\" is frequently expressed by the application of the perfective aspect marker le. So it becomes the aim of the present study to investigate the effects of the aspect marker le on the simple past use in English interlanguage of Chinese EFL learners.
key words: simple past time; aspect marker le
摘 要
时体，作为表达时间概念的主要语法手段，是母语及二语的习得的重点.因此一直备受理论语言学家和应用语言学家的关注。然而，由于英汉语言在表达时间方面的差异，英语时体习得给中国的英语学习者带来很大困难。英语时体主要是通过动词的曲折变化来实现的。而汉语中虽然不存在时制，但时间可以通过时间状语和语境等手段来表达。英语的一般过去时是一种出现频率和出错率较高的时制。汉语中过去时间概念通常由完成体标记“了”的使用来表达。因此，本研究的目的是考察体标记“了”对中国英语学习者使用英语一般过去时的影响。 关键词：一般过去时；体态标志语“了”
1.Introduction
Tense/aspect is one of the most important and difficult parts of language learning
(Dietrich, Klein&Noyau, 1995; Bardovi-Harlig, 2000). One language's tense/aspect system, which the native speakers can naturally acquire, poses many problems for second language (L2) and foreign language (FL) learners of it.
Chinese and English are typologically different and distinct in expressing temporality. The differences between them influence the acquisition of English tense and aspect. In English, tense/aspect is mainly realized by adding verbal morphology or markings to verbs, such markings as \"-ed\" for past tense, \"-ing\" for progressive, \"-s\" or \"-es\" for the third person simple present, etc.. In Chinese, however, whether there is tense category is still a pending question. The traditional view is that Chinese has aspect category but no tense category(王
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力，1943;高名凯，1948; Li and Tompson, 1981). But temporality in Chinese can be expressed through devices as temporal adverbials and context(戴耀晶，1997). With respect to aspect, Chinese has a rich system of aspect markers. According to Li&Tompson (1981), Chinese has four verbal aspects: (a) deliminative: reduplication of verb; (b) imperfective (duratives): zai(在)，zhe(着);(c) experimental: guo(过);(d) perfective: le(了).
Due to the differences in the two languages, tense category in English is especially difficult for Chinese EFL learners to acquire. Huang&Yang (1998) announced that the
simple past still has both higher frequency and higher error rate in English-learner's language for Chinese learners.蔡金亭(2003: 61-72) conducted a corpus-based study on all kinds of errors in the use of tense/aspect and found that simple past, present perfect and past perfect are among the most difficult tense /aspect types. So it is of great importance to study the
Chinese learners' acquisition of English tense/aspect. During last years, there have been a few empirical studies conducted to examine the English-learner language of Chinese learners
(Sun, 1997;杨素英、黄月圆、孙德金，1999;蔡金亭，2002, 2003). Their studies, however, selected either non-English majors or English majors as their subjects, which resulted in the deficiency of information about the acquisition of English simple past by Chinese EFL learners at different proficiency levels. Therefore, the present study, taking English simple past as its topic, involves English majors, non-English majors together with senior middle school students as its subjects. And three groups are divided according to their English proficiency levels-primary/low, intermediate/middle and advanced/high.
2. Literature Review
2.1 Difference between Chinese tense/aspect and English tense/aspect
In English, tense and aspect are main grammatical devices in expressing temporality. There are three tenses: past, present and future; and two aspects: perfective and imperfective. According to Comrie(1976,1985), tense is deictic and locates an event on the time line with respect to a reference point and the moment of speaking, which is a systematic grammatical marking of the verb (by affixes, vowel alternation, auxiliaries, particles, etc.). Aspect does not locate an event or situation on the time line, nor does it relate the time of one situation to another. It refers to the internal temporal make-up (temporal constituency) of a situation which is expressed by such means as verb morphology, adverbials or specific particles. The difference between these two terms is that tense reflects situation-external time and aspect reflects situation-internal time.
Whether Chinese has tense and aspect system has been a controversy for decades. The traditional view is that Chinese has aspect category but no tense category(王力，1954, 1982; Li&Tompson,1981). Meanwhile, there are linguists(张秀，1957;龙果夫，1958;张济卿， 1998) who challenged the traditional view and put forward that Chinese has not only aspect category but also tense category. In this thesis, the traditional view is adopted. But it should be pointed out that the lack of tense category in Chinese does not mean the lack of expressions for temporality, as temporality in Chinese can be expressed through devices such as temporal adverbials and context.
The tense/aspect system of Chinese is quite different from that of English. English uses grammatical means to mark tense and aspect. Chinese does not change verb forms to indicate
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tense(王力，1943) as English does. Chinese does not use verb affixes to signal the relation between the time of the occurrence of the situation and the time that situation is brought up in speech (Li&Thompson, 1981). It uses lexical and contextual means to express temporal location.
2.2 English Simple Past Tense
Past tense locates a situation to the left of the present moment time in absolute tense. So the semantic meaning of all past forms is thus the location in time prior to the present moment. The past tenses in English usually include: 1) Simple past; 2) Past progressive; 3) Present perfect; 4) pluperfect. In this thesis the focus will be on the simple past tense, because the simple past still has both higher frequency and higher error rate in English-learner language for Chinese learners (Huang&Yang, 1998). It should be noted that simple past tense also functions as a perfective aspect from the typological perspective. Brinton (1988:52) announces that in English simple past tense is the most commonly used means to express perfective meaning. So it is more appropriate to call simple past tense as simple past as used in the following chapters.
Simple past morphology can be divided into two major classes: the regular and irregular past. The regular simple past morphology is formed by applying the rules for the simple past inflection: by adding the suffix \"-ed' to the main verb, for example, stop-stopped, live-lived. The irregular simple past morphology refers to all those past formswhich deviate from the regular patterns, for example, go-went, eat-ate. Every English verb can be converted into past tense with simple past marking like \"-ed\" or other irregular inflections, So it can be inferred that English simple past tense is unmarked. 2.3 Chinese Aspect Marker 1e
According to Li and Tompson (1981), particles guo and le are frequently applied to indicate the concept of \"past\" in Chinese. While, in the study conducted by Cai in 2002, guo was found to be seldom used by the participants in the obligatory contexts for simple past. So only the aspect marker le will be described in the following paragraphs. The Chinese aspect marker le has been the interest of both Chinese and foreign linguists for a long time(吕叔湘1959, 1980; Chao, 1968; Li & Thompson, 1981;刘月华，1988;龚千炎，1991). It is widely believed that there are two distinct les in Mandarin Chinese, although fundamentally they may share the meaning of \"contrast to previous state\" (Li, 1990). One is called `verbal le' which immediately follows a verb (V+le+O); it is also called le l; and the other is called `sentential le' which occurs in the sentence(V +O+le) and is also called 1e2. The following contrasts are provided:
(13) a.他吃了三碗饭。 Ta chi le san wan fan. He ate three bowls of rice. b.他吃三碗饭了。 Ta chi san wan fan le.
He has eaten three bowls of rice. (Huang, 1988)
However, there is another case, in which le is used immediately after the predicate and at the end of the sentence at the same time, these two les are fused into one, which is called 1e3.
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For example: (14)他哭了. Ta ku le. He cried.
He has begun crying.(蔡金亭，2003)
Verbal le is a prototypical perfective aspect marker providing an entirety view rather than locating events in time (Li&Thompson, 1981). In contrast, the sentential le (1e2) is saidto give a change of state/status’meaning (Li&Thompson, 1981, 1982). For instance, Sentence (13b), with the sentential le, conveys the meaning that \"before now he hadn't eaten three bowls of rice\" and \"now he has come into that status\". Now it is widely acknowledged that le following the verb is considered as the aspect marker, which includes both le 1 and 1e3.The aspect marker le is the concern of this study, it occurs after the verb, either in the middle or at the end of a sentence.
2.4 Lexical Aspect Constraints on English Simple Past Marking and the Use of
Chinese Perfective Aspect Marker le
As mentioned in the previous part, every English verb, whether it is a state, activity, accomplishment or achievement, can be converted into simple past tense with past marking like \"-ed\" or other irregular inflections. From this it can be inferred that English simple past tense is unmarked or less marked
However, previous researches on Chinese aspect markers have shown that there are certain aspectual constraints on the occurrence of le. The verbal le requires an endpoint or boundary in the situation it presents (Li&Thompson, 1981;Yang, 1995, 1999). In other words le only occurs in bounded situations, namely achievements and accomplishments. For example,
(15)同学们买了多东西。
Tong xue me mai le hen duo dong xi. My classmates bought a lot of things. (16)晚会持续了三个小时。
Wan hui chi xu le san ge xiao shi. The party lasted for three hours.
In example (15), Mai le (bought) is an achievement, because the action of mai le (bought) is telic and instantaneous, and it is completed before the reference time. In example (16), the Chinese verb chi xu (last) was telic and completed for some time span before the reference time (the present) as well, but it is durative, san ge xiao shi (three hours) is the best proof. So chixu (last) is an accomplishment.
Generally speaking, Chinese aspect marker le tends not to be added to those static verbs,because they don't have a bounded end, and they can not clearly imply a completed action before the reference time. Therefore Chinese simple past forms are marked or more marked.
To sum up, the past time notion is usually expresses by simple past tense in English, and in Chinese, the aspect marker le can also be used to indicate that something happened in the past. But they are different in that, le only occurs in bounded situations, namely achievements and accomplishments. Therefore, L1 transfer, which results from similarities and differences
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between the TL and NL, may happen in learning English simple past for Chinese EFL learners. Therefore the effects of Chinese aspect marker le on simple past marking become the focus of this thesis.
3. Methodology
3.1 Research questions
(1) How does Chinese aspect marker le affect the English simple past use for Chinese EFL learners of each proficiency level?
(2) Does this effect display a balanced development with the increase of the proficiency level of the Chinese EFL learners? 3.2 Data collection
The participants were asked to write an English narrative with the topic \"An Unforgettable Event\" (one of the topics adopted by蔡金亭in 2003), and translate the English version into Chinese. The total words of each narrative range from one hundred to two hundred according to their different English proficiency levels (the time required for this task is nearly the same). The teachers first asked the students to finish the narratives according to the requirements, and then asked them to translate their English compositions into Chinese one sentence by one sentence. As we know, EFL learners usually think in mother tongue in English writing. Therefore, the immediate Chinese translation of English writings will reflect the participants' thinking process of writing in English. Ultimately, the author sampled 30 ones from every group, excluding those unfinished, and those without the proper genre (some are essays and poems).
Narratives and resources
It is generally believed that EFL learners tend to think in their mother tongue when writing in English. So this study adopts immediate translation to discover the learners'
thinking process and further study the influence of the Chinese aspect marker le on the simple past use in English. During the coding of this variable, the aspect marker le was identified within the Chinese translation whose English equivalents were obligatory contexts for simple past. All the other finite verbs were coded as another type. On the whole, all the finite verb tokens were coded into two types:
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(1) finite verbs without aspect markers (2) finite verbs with the aspect marker le 3.3 Data analysis
The author employs Chi-square test to analyze the effects of Chinese aspect marker le on the English simple past use. In other words, the distribution of the simple past variation by the existence of le in general and in every group were studied.
4. Results and Discussion
4.1 Results
The analysis shows that the total number of appropriate simple past forms (marked as in Standard English) is 1308, taking up 84.82% of 1542 in all. For inappropriate simple past forms, the number of non-target-like simple past forms is 21 (1.36%), simple present forms 145 (9.40%), perfect forms 20 (1.30%), progressive forms 22 (1.43%) and other forms 26 (1.69%). simple past forms are not marked as in Standard English, they Although the still belong to simple past tense forms. So the percentage of simple past tense forms both appropriate and inappropriate is 86.19%. The author then checked the Chinese versions, and distinguished sentences with le and those without le, as is shown in the table below.
From the table above we can see that due to the presence of perfective marker le, the finite verbs with the aspect marker le exhibit higher percentage of the simple past and lower percentage of simple present and progressive forms than those without aspect marker le. That is to say, the perfective aspect marker le can facilitate the appropriate use of simple past in the obligatory contexts for simple past. To discover the relationship between the use of le in concurrent Chinese version and the simple past variation, a Chi-square test was performed. The results obtained from the test show that the existence of the aspect marker le is significantly associated with the simple past variation in English narratives(p=0.02), as is shown in the table below.
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It seems that the results show the same conclusion drawn by Cai Jinting(2003:185) that the perfective aspect marker le can facilitate the appropriate use of simple past in the obligatory contexts for simple past. But the question is: does the perfective aspect marker le facilitate the appropriate use of simple past for Chinese EFL learners of different proficiencylevels?
The author, in order to find out the influence of the aspect marker le, tries further examinations on those three groups respectively. The results are shown as below.
(1) The influence to the group 1
The author firstly examined the distribution of the simple past variation of Group 1(primary level) by the existence of le. The results are shown as in the table below.
The distribution of the simple past variation by the Existence of le in group 1
The data from Table 3.3 clearly show that the rates of simple past variation with the aspect marker le are different from those without le. The simple past marking with le takes up 76.36%, and the simple past marking without le takes up 72.42%. The simple present forms with le take up 10.90%, and those without le take up 15.04%. Perfect forms and progressive forms without le take up 3.90% and 5.01 % respectively while those with le take up zero. That is to say, of Group 1, the finite verbs with the aspect marker le exhibit higher percentage of the simple past marking and lower percentage of simple present, perfect, progressive forms than those without le.
It shows that, for Group 1，the existence of the aspect marker le is significantly associated with the simple past variation in English narratives
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(2) The influence to the group 2
The distribution of simple past variation of Group 2 (intermediate level) by the existenceof le is shown in the following table.
The simple past marking with the aspect marker le takes up 86.15%, and the simple past marking without 1e takes up 81.67%. The simple present forms with le take up 9.23%, and those without perfective marker le take up 17.14%. The percentages of perfect, progressive and other forms are relatively smaller, so they were disregarded. Thus, of Group 2, the finite verbs with the aspect marker le exhibit higher percentage of the simple past marking and lower percentage of simple present, perfect and progressive forms than those without aspect marker le. Then, we can see that for the students of intermediate level, the perfective aspect marker le can facilitate the appropriate use of simple past in the obligatory contexts for simple past. But compared with the students of primary level, students of intermediate level do not rely so much on perfective aspect marker le when marking simple past. (3) The influence to the group 3
The distribution of simple past variation of Group 3 (advanced level) by existence of le is shown in the table bellow.
The simple past marking with the aspect marker le takes up 96.77%, and the simple past marking without le takes up 97.88%. The percentages of simple present, perfect, progressive and other forms are relatively smaller, so they were disregarded here. And the results from the Chi-square test (see Table 3.8) show that the existence of the perfective aspect marker le in
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Group 3 is not signficantly associated with the simple past variation in English narratives From the data given above, it is hard to decide whether the existence of the aspect
marker le in Group 3 facilitates the appropriate use of simple past in the obligatory contexts for simple past or not. The conclusion should be negative. The reason lies in the fact that students of advanced level have already acquired the simple past and have a good mastery of English simple past marking, so they hardly resort to the presence of perfective aspect marker le when deciding whether to use simple past forms or not. And the data in Table 3.7 even show that the finite verbs with the aspect marker le exhibit lower percentage of the simple past marking than those without aspect markers, which should be explained by other factors such as verb salience, lexical aspect, temporal adverbials, clause types, narrative structures and so on. Here due to limitation of space, we will not unfold them. 4.2 Conclusions and Discussion
From the previous sections, we know that, for Chinese EFL learners in general, the
existence of the aspect marker le facilitates the English simple past use in the obligatory contexts for simple past (p=0.02<0.05), however, this facilitating effect varies for English learners of different proficiency levels. For Group lof the primary level and Group 2 of intermediate level, the existence of the aspect marker le significantly facilitates the English simple past use in the obligatory contexts for simple past, with the p value of 0.008(<0.05) and 0.027 (<0.05) respectively. For Group 3, p=0.257(>0.05), which shows that, the presence of the aspect marker le has no obvious effect on the simple past use for English learners of advanced level. The p value increases from 0.008(Group 1) to 0.027(Group 2) to 0.257(Group 3) with the increase of the proficiency level of the learners. It means that the influence of the aspect marker le decreases when the students become better in mastering English. These effects can be explained through the theory of language transfer.
The perfective aspect marker le in Chinese is an indicator of perfect, i.e., completion of some action. The completion of an action is not related to time. But most completed actions occur in the past, so the perfective aspect marker le basically entails that something occurred in the past. As the narratives in the present study are in the obligatory contexts for simple past, the events they describe all happened in the past. Correspondingly the events conveyed by the construction \"verb +1e\" in the Chinese versions are all in the contexts of past time. In this case, the aspect marker le is thought to function as a past tense marker. Therefore, for the students of primary level and intermediate level, the aspect marker le is often translated into English simple past tense. The reason is that they generally think in Chinese and transfer the characteristics of Chinese tense/aspect when writing in English which is a foreign language. But for the students of advanced level, who have conquered the interference of their mother tongue to some extent and are able to think in the target language, the aspect marker le nearly has no effect on their appropriate use of simple past in the obligatory contexts for simple past.
5. Implications
5.1. Theoretical implications
The theoretical implication lies in the contribution to the understanding of the properties of interlanguage.
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First, interlanguage is constrained by UG To some extent, the L2 learning process is a process of parameter resetting. It is true that \"interlanguage grammars are not limited to the parameter settings realized in the L1 grammar\". When the interlanguage lacks some parameter settings, there will be a process of parameter resetting, as is proposed by White (2003), \"Functional categories, features and feature values absent from the LI grammar are
instantiated in the interlanguage representation\". From this study we can see that Chinese EFL learners at advanced level have achieved success in parameter resetting, and their writings show very few errors.
Second, interlanguage exhibits great influence from L1.That is because \"for many
principles of UGS it appears that the L1 can never be completely ruled out as a source of the L2 learner's unconscious knowledge\" (White, 2003: 41). Through the examination of the influence of Chinese perfective aspect marker le on the use of English simple past, the author finds that the influence is especially significant for Chinese EFL learners at primary and intermediate level.
5.2. Pedagogical implications
The present study also has some implications for L2 pedagogy.
First, in the obligatory contexts for the simple past, participants of the present study are found to produce some other tense/aspect forms besides some non-target-like forms of the simple past: that is, simple present, present perfect, progressive and others. This finding implies that both positive evidence and negative evidence should be utilized in teaching
English tense/aspect to Chinese EFL learners. So teachers of English should not only provide enough input of genuine English texts, but also they should inform students of the differences between many types of tense/aspect, especially those that are easy to be confused, and inform them some tense/aspect errors frequently made by Chinese EFL students. In a word, both positive and negative evidence are both beneficial to English teaching and learning because they can help the students, especially the primary and intermediate level students, to successfully reset the parameters and thus to output natural target language.
Second, English teachers should effectively take advantage of Ll transfer in English teaching. This study has identified the facilitating effects of the Chinese perfective aspect le role insimple past and help the students reset the parameters of the target language. Besides le, other aspect markers of tense/aspect in English, so like guo and zhe may also benefit the learning of some types they may also be used to raise the teaching efficiency. Meanwhile, English teachers should also pay special attention to the interfering effects of these aspect markers, and try to avoid the negative transfer they may bring about in students' learning. In a word, to make English learning easier for the students, English teachers should make full use of the positive transfer and also try to overcome the negative transfer.
The Effects of Aspect Marker le on the Simple Past Use in
English Interlanguage
Bibliography参考书目 (小三黑)
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Bardovi-Harlig, K. Narrative structure and lexical aspect: Conspiring factors in Second language acquisition of tense-aspect morphology.1998
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