A Contrastive Study Of English And Mongolian Verbs

When human beings use the language to build the sentences and discourses to indicate the characters of events and phenomena, the time expressing is a very important aspect. Because it not only can determine the location of events, but also it should be the factor of reference to demonstration of the events, and it is an indispensable part of discourse framework.So it can be said that to express the function of verbal time information is one of the most important functions of every natural language.The grammar tense category is to express the time information devices, which is one of the most important language categories of verbal grammar categories. However, the different languages have not only the different tense systems and tense categories in meanings, but also they have different devices to indicate them. Because the difference of language typology determines the different devices of language verb tenses. Some languages’ verb tense are realized through verb variations and inflectional affixes (e g. Russian, Latin etc), and some languages’verb tenses are realized through suffixes (e g. Mongolian), and some are realized through word order, lexical indications and auxiliaries (e g.Chinese), also some others are mainly realized through inflectional, suffixes and auxiliary verbs, like English verb tenses which vary according to person and number of the subject. The devices of realizing verb tense categories are so different that they could bring a lot of trouble to people cognate its verbal category.Under the tense theory and guidance of Contrastive Linguistics, If contrastively analyzing between Mongolian and English verb tense system objectively, systematically and scientifically, we could find out how the English and Mongolian language confer the time information to their verbs, and summarize their similarities and dissimilarities, and the result benefits for the students to prevent from the mother tongue’s negative transfer previously when they learning English (or Mongolian), and refrain students from the blind action in learning, therefor it enhance the consciousness of students’ language cognation, and improves the quality of second language teaching.This dissertation mainly aims at describing and exploring the similarities and differences between English and Mongolian verb tense and system, so as to serve for the English verb tense fundamental teaching.This dissertation has carried out synchronic contrastive study of the verb tense system between English and Mongolian, so as to investigate their universals and peculiarities. Observed from the external time viewpoint, the event process can be divided into the past tense, the present tense and the future tense, so it is the case with English and Mongolian, and they have three kinds of absolute time corresponding grammar form to express the verb tenses. In Mongolian, to indicate the absolute time by declarative mood and indicate the relative time by verbal adjectives and verbal adverbals.These verbs have different functions according to their different suffixes and to express different tense and tense-aspect compounding meanings. Although sometimes using analytic devices such as "verb+auxiliary" to express the tense, Mongolian verbs tend to demonstrate the concept of tense mechanism mainly by the morphological devices even if there are some time words or phrases available, but their function only to make time cleaner in the sentence. So the Mongolian verb tense information has the character of explicitness, it can be easily cognate and understood.English verb tense is realized mainly through the inflectional, suffixes and auxiliaries, which vary according to person and number of the subject, its variations and indications are not rich enough to the Mongolian, the devices which to express tense and aspect are comparatively monotonous. So comparatively speaking, English verbal tense information has the character of implicitness. The author holds that it is difficult to master the English verbal tense. Therefor, there are some critical difference between both the English and the Mongolian verbal tense, which are explicitness or implicitness.This dissertation has higher value of contrastive study between English and Mongolian verb tense theory, and benefit for the second language teaching and English-Mongolian translations in certain degree.The dissertation includes seven chapters, except the preface, whose main ideas run as the following: In preface we turned out the research reasoning, objectives and significance, methods, newly-points of this dissertation and summary of previous contrastive studies between English and Mongolian verb tense.Chapter one is mainly discussing the verb tense and aspect category, different concepts of time and their differences, the reflection of tense category in language and the relation of between verb tense and aspect.Chapter two has mainly contrastively analyzed the verb simple tenses, namely; the simple present tense, the simple past tense, the simple future tense and the simple past future tense of English and Mongolian, and explored their similarities and dissimilarities, and summarized the valuable parts in the second language teaching.Chapter three has contrastively analyzed verb continuous (progressive) tenses, namely; the present continuous tense, the past continuous tense, the future continuous tense, the past future continuous tense of English and Mongolian, and explored their similarities and differences, and summarized the valuable parts in second language teaching.Chapter four has contrastively analyzed the verb perfect tenses, namely; the present perfect tense, the past perfect tense, the future perfect tense and the past future perfect tense of English and Mongolian, and explored their similarities and differences and summarized their valuable parts in second language teaching.Chapter five has contrastively analyzed verb perfect continuous tenses, namely; the present perfect continuous tense, the past perfect continuous tense and the past future perfect continuous of English and Mongolian, and explored their similarities and differences and summarized their valuable parts in the second language teaching.Chapter six has contrastively studied between special verb form of English-the English subjunctive mood and Mongolian verbal mood and found out their corresponding parts, and summarized their valuable parts in second language teaching.Chapter seven has verified the practicability of contrastive studies between English and Mongolian verbal tense, we transfer the media language and teaching method, lecturing English verb tense in preliminary university Mongolian classes in different languages-Chinese and Mongolian, then given the same tests in different classes and analyzed the result of tests statistically and verified the applied value of our research achievement.The summary part is the conclusion of the dissertation. In this last part, the author summarizes what is advisable and what is deficient in his study, and manage to point out challenges and direction in his further study of the English and Mongolian verb tense system.