A Study Of The Effects Of Lexical Aspect On The Simple Past Use In The English Interlanguage

As an essential part of natural languages, the expression of temporality has received extensive attention from scholars. The scholars have extensively studied the acquisition of tense/aspect system in interlanguage, for the purpose of better understanding and finally effectively promoting language learning and teaching. As the first foreign language for Chinese learners, English has attracted the attention of many researchers in the tense/aspect system.This thesis is an attempt to explore the tense/aspect system in Chinese learners' English interlanguage, and hopefully to find the problems learners are faced with from the perspective of lexical aspect of the predicates, and finally to find out the possible causes of the problems and corresponding solutions.This thesis is an attempt to address the following three research questions:(1)What is the relationship between simple past use and lexical aspect in the interlanguage of Chinese learners of English?(2) How does English proficiency affect the relationship between simple past use and lexical aspectual classes?(3) What is the relationship between accomplishments and achievements?The participants were 120 English learners of three proficiency levels: primary, intermediate, and advanced. 120 compositions about past event, people or thing were collected. In analyzing the data, both quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis were performed. Chi-square test was also carried out to ensure the validity of the qualitative analysis.The findings of the study support the Aspect Hypothesis: firstly, Chinese English learners first use simple past marking on achievements and accomplishments, and then extend to activities and finally to statives; secondly, lexical aspect is significantly associated with simple past use, indicating that lexical aspect has a positive infiuence on the acquisition of simple past; thirdly, with the increase of proficiency level, the influence of lexical aspect on the use of simple past in obligatory contexts decreases, and the degree to which lexical aspect influences the simple past use increases with proficiency level; fourthly, there is no significant difference between accomplishments and achievements, suggesting that the property of telicity is a more powerful constraint.The results of the study have both theoretical and pedagogical implications. It reveals the problems existing in the acquisition of tense/aspect system for Chinese learners of English as well as the possible causes for the problem. Besides, the research methods as well as the findings of the study may contribute to the study of L2 tense/aspect acquisition and hopefully benefit and facilitate future studies in this area.