| This project investigates writing from a linguistic perspective, and uses tense/aspect to index differences between dialects, registers, and quality in advanced, adult writing. The project entails a survey of tense/aspect research and provides a unified description of tense/aspect in terms of form and function. The products of this effort are a formal analytical framework of linguistic features (e.g., subject type, clause location, etc.) and a functional analytical framework (e.g., nonpast time, durativity, speaker stance, etc.). These frameworks are based on the principles of descriptive grammar, functional grammar, discourse analysis, and pragmatics. The methodology uses corpus linguistics methodology and holistic assessment to collect a controlled corpus, which consists of six groups of texts: British and American professional fiction writing, British and American professional academic writing, L1 American university student academic writing, and L2 German university student academic writing. The formal framework prepares the data for quantitative analysis, and the functional framework guides qualitative interpretations. Descriptions of tense-aspect use in the professional texts provide a normative baseline against which tense-aspect use in the L1/L2 student writing is compared. Since tense/aspect are complex syntactic and semantic categories that express a wide range of language functions, they can index differences between dialects, registers, and writing quality. The results identify only minor differences between dialects, but a range of formal and functional differences in fiction vs. academic writing, and L1/L2 student vs. professional academic writing. For example, fiction writing uses tense/aspect as narrative tools (e.g., character conflict, flashback, dramatization of the narrative). Academic writing uses tense/aspect to indicate relevant vs. irrelevant concepts, narrate procedures, and describe results. Also, tense-aspect shifts play a major role in negotiating conflicting ideas, justifying procedures, and identifying innovation. These uses of tense/aspect are largely absent in L1/L2 student writing. L1/L2 academic writing also expresses speaker subjectivity, which is exhibited in professional fiction writing. One of the main implications is that both L1 and L2 students may benefit from a linguistic component in writing instruction on both frequent (e.g., temporal framing) and infrequent tense-aspect language functions (e.g., relevance, credibility, event potentiality). |
