Testing The Aspect Hypothesis: The Acquisition Of The Simple Past By Instructed Chinese Learners Of English

Chinese students are often found to have difficulties with the acquisition of English simple past. They tend to past- mark some verbs/predicates rather than others as exemplified in the following errors produced by senior English majors.a. --Where *are you last might? I didn't see you at QQ?" ?Last night I met an attractive girl in the chatroom?"b. --In the past, we could get the news of the world, only by TV or newspapers. But it *takes time. We always got the news several hours later, or even days later.Researchers have directly tied the inherent lexical value of the verb/predicate to the development of tense/aspect morphology and proposed the Aspect Hypothesis. The Aspect Hypothesis correlates temporal morphology with the lexical aspect (inherent semantic features, such as dynamic, telic, and punctual) of the verb/predicate. With respect to past marking, it claims that learners will initially restrict past marking to achievements and accomplishments, and later gradually extend the marking to activities and then statives. Previous studies have established a solid empirical ground for the claim that development of tense/aspect morphology is strongly influenced by the inherent aspect of the verb. However, more studies of instructed L2 learners are needed to verify the universality of the Aspect Hypothesis. Our primary aim in this study is to examine the role of lexical aspect in Chinese-English interlanguage tense/aspect development. The secondary aim is to explore possible LI influence stemming from Chinese aspectual system.This thesis reports two cross-sectional studies (N=99, N=60) on the acquisition of English past tense morphology by Chinese EEL students, with the focus on testing the predictions of the Aspect Hypothesis. Study 1 took a replication design of the cloze task in Collins (2002). Study 2 was a complementary study to Study 1. A repeated MANOVA analysis was performed. The results from both studies in general support the predictions of Aspect Hypothesis. Consistent with the Aspect Hypothesis, the use of simple past wasundergeneralized. The learners treated telics (achievements and accomplishments) as best examples of past tense carriers, but showed lower use of past with state and activity verbs. It appears that tutored learners, like untutored learners, were sensitive to lexical aspectual class, but the effect of lexical aspect was little at higher level of proficiency. The results also show that as predicted by the Aspect Hypothesis, the learners associated progressive marking -ing with activities, base/present with statives. Interestingly, the link between inappropriate perfect use and telics was found in both studies, suggesting an LI influence caused by the restricted use of Chinese aspect marker -le. In line with the Aspect Hypothesis, the association of lexical aspect and tense/aspect morphology decreased as appropriate use of simple past/proficiency level increased. The results of the acquisition of stative be provide important evidence in support of the Prototype Account advanced by Andersen & Shirai (1994).Our findings lend support to the Aspect Hypothesis by proving the correlation between tense/aspect inflection and lexical aspect. The present study provides additional evidence for the effect of lexical aspect on classroom language learners. Meanwhile, our study also provides some insights into LI influence on the use of the simple past and explores the way in which LI influence interacts with lexical aspect. Finally, the findings carry practical implications to English teaching for Chinese students.