A Contrastive Study Of Aspect Categories Between English And French

This thesis tries to make a contrastive analysis of the aspect categories between English and French, so as to cast light on the similarities and differences of the two languages. Many researches have been conducted to analyze these two languages from different perspectives. However, from the literature available, it is found that most of the researches focus on English tenses and French tenses. Few studies have been made of the aspect categories between English and French. This thesis, therefore, tries to undertake a research into the study of aspect categories between English and French and have a clear understanding of aspect category.The contrastive study is used to explore the similarities and differences of aspect categories in English and French. This thesis mainly gives examples of grammatical aspect, lexical aspect and semantic aspect in English and French and then makes a contrastive analysis. Through the study conclusions are made as follows:in English and French, similar grammatical forms have similar aspect meanings. At the same time, different grammatical forms also have similar aspect meanings. There are great differences in grammatical aspects and lexical aspects of English and French, but semantic aspects are basically the same in English and French. One TENSE in one language often relates to more than one TENSE in the other language from the point of aspect meaning. This thesis will benefit for our deep understanding of the grammatical category "aspect" and using this grammatical category proficiently in English and French. At the same time, this thesis will also increase our understanding of the similarities and differences of languages and language differences of grammatical category.