An Empirical Investigation Into The Acquisition Of English Simple Present Tense: From The Perspective Of Markedness Theory

The acquisition of tense and aspect has become a hot research topic in recent decades in the field of second language acquisition (SLA), and many fruitful conclusions have been made by linguists and scholars. The simple present tense, as a basic and fairly significant part of English tense-aspect system, has also been studied from different perspectives by scholars at home and abroad. It has been dealt with from the pragmatic point of view and from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. Some scholars have studied its underlying meaning as well as its usages, and the acquisition of it by second language (L2) learners has also been investigated. However, the research of the simple present tense is still inadequate in the field of SLA. There are rare researches considering the influence of functional markedness on the acquisition of the simple present tense.Markedness theory is one of the hot research topics in the linguistic study nowadays. Markedness refers to the asymmetries within a category which was first put forward by Trubetzkoy of Prague School. In 1970s, Eckman introduced markedness theory into the field of SLA. One contribution of markedness theory to SLA is to predict the acquisition order and difficulties.This paper investigates the acquisition of the simple present tense within the framework of markedness theory and attempts to explore the effect of functional markedness on the acquisition of the simple present tense. The following questions are to be studied: 1) Whether the acquisition of the simple present tense varies by different English proficiency levels? 2) How markedness affects the acquisition of different functions of the simple present tense? The author investigates 114 college students'acquisition of the simple present tense through a test composed of two tasks, namely T/F judgement and Chinese-English translation. The data collected is analyzed by SPSS and the findings are summarized below:1) The acquisition of the simple present tense by different proficiency levels is of no significant difference. 2) The unmarked functions are generally acquired better and faster than the marked functions, which is in agreement with the markedness hypothesis.3) The correct rate of one marked function and that of unmarked functions are not significantly different.The paper then utilizes related theories in SLA to discuss the results and reveals the underlying reasons of the acquisition order which is affected not only by markedness but also by other factors like input. Finally, the pedagogical significance and the limitations of the study are pointed out.