The Acquisition Of The English Aspectual System By Chinese Learners Of English

This thesis investigates the acquisition of the English aspectual system by Chinese learners of English in the framework of generative grammar. The focus is on the acquisition of the English perfect aspect encoded by the present perfect tense. The simple past tense and the simple present tense that encode the English neutral aspect have been included in an empirical study as a contrast to the present perfect tense. The English aspectual system is contrasted with the Chinese aspectual system. Differences as well as similarities are illustrated between the two languages.Cross-sectional data is collected from 94 Chinese learners of English. The participants are divided into two groups: the low level group and the high level group. The former group consists of 41 non-English major freshmen, while the latter group, 53 English major juniors. The data is analyzed by SPSS 13.0. Chi-Square analysis is used to calculate significance of relationship between variables.The results of the experiment indicate that, of the three tenses, learners' acquisition of the present perfect tense is the worst. On the analysis, three types of errors concerning the perfect aspect are found. They are caused by four main factors: confusion about some tenses, the influence of the native language, the influence of verb types and the erroneous use of verb types.