The Role of L1 Influence and Lexical Aspect in the Acquisition of Temporality System in L2 English（模版作文）30

1、the role of l1 influence and lexical aspect in the acquisition of temporality system in l2 english abstract the acquisition of english verbal morphology has been mostly tested as a second language in englishspeaking settings with different l1 background students. this study analyzes narrative writte

2、n data from 91 instructed chinese efl learners of five proficiency levels aging from 13 to 22, to examine the l1 influence and lexical aspects on the acquisition of temporality system of english exhibited by chinese efl learners in china. the students investigated have a forced early start in tense-

3、aspect use in l2 through classroom instruction, due to the grammatical characteristics of english, which is different from l1-chinese. this early start of english temporality system in primary school and the extended years of acquisition comparing with other l1 background learners, may be the reinfo

4、rcing effect of -tense l1 chinese. empirical data supports the aspect hypothesis that the acquisition of tense and aspect by instructed chinese efl learners in china, is influenced by the lexical aspects. the learners regard accomplishments verbs and achievements verbs more representative for past m

5、arking than activities verbs and states verbs. it seems learners follow the general pattern of lexical aspect hypothesis, in spite of l1 backgrounds, learning environments or ages. this may be another evidence of the universal grammar. what is intriguing in the present study, which has not been disc

6、ussed in the previous literature, is that, from the data we have collected, at the beginning, our subjects use past marking on achievements and accomplishments verbs, gradually extend the marking first to states verbs, then to activities verbs, not at the same time. potential sources contributed to

7、this acquisitional sequence and methodological suggestions are discussed. key words: tense, aspect, past marking, lexical aspect hypothesis, instructed chinese efl learners 提要提要 对英语动词词法的习得的研究,多在目标语(英语)学习环境中进行,而研究的 对象是来自不同语言背景的学生。 本文分析了 91 名五个不同语言水平,年龄介 乎 13 到 22 岁,在中国课堂学习英语的中国学生的叙事作文,考察以汉语为母语的 学生的英语

8、时体习得情况。具体来说,考察一语迁移和词汇体对学习者的影响。 研究发现,由于英语的语法特征和汉语不同,学生在习得阶段早期,就在课堂 上被强迫开始学习和使用英语的时态系统。和其他不同一语背景的学习者,特别 是母语中有语法时态学习者相比, 汉语母语学生习得时态系统的时间相对较长, 这可能是一语迁移导致习得阶段的延长，固化了早期习得的结果。 实验发现, 中国的课堂语言学习者的时体习得,同样受动词本身的词汇体的 语义影响,即体先于时。学习者认为, 在谓语动词用过去时态的句子中,使用完成 动词(accomplishments verbs)和瞬间动词(achievements verb) 更具代表性,比使

9、用 状态动词(states verbs)和活动动词(activities verbs)更自然。这符合了二语习得理 论中的词汇体假说,和前人实验结果相符,为普遍语法的存在提供了新的证据。 本文的创新点在于,根据收集的数据,我们发现,学习者首先学会给完成动词 和瞬间动词标上过去时体, 然后再到活动动词,最后是状态动词。活动动词和状 态动词的过去时体使用,不是同时习得的。 最后,本文探讨了此习得顺序的可能原因并提出了相关教学建议。 关键词关键词: 时 体 过去时体 词汇体假说 母语为汉语的课堂英语学习者 contents chapter one introduction .1 1.1 backgro

10、und.1 1.2 organization of the dissertation.2 chapter two literature review.3 2.1 introduction.3 2.2 time, tense and aspect.4 2.3 the lexical aspect hypothesis.5 2.3.1 lexical aspect .5 2.3.2 lexical aspect hypothesis and its predictions for the l2 acquisition of english.7 2.3.3 previous studies on t

11、he lexical aspect hypothesis.8 2.4 the english and chinese temporality system.8 2.4.1 the english temporality system .8 2.4.2 the chinese temporality system.9 2.5 summary.10 chapter three research method.11 3.1 introduction.11 3.2 the research questions of the present study.11 3.3 subjects.12 3.4 el

12、icitation task.13 3.5 data processing.14 3.6 results.15 3.7 summary.17 chapter four analysis and discussion.18 4.1 introduction.18 4.2 general developmental pattern and l1 influence.18 4.3 an examination of the lexical aspect hypothesis in the use of simple past .19 4.4 summary.21 chapter five concl

13、usion.22 5.1 summary.22 5.2 limitation and suggestions for future research.23 references.25 chapter one introduction 1.1 background the ability to express temporal circumstance and properties of events plays an important role in communication. accordingly, the acquisition of temporality has been con

14、sidered one of the most important aspects of foreign language learning and has received significant attention from researchers in the field of both first and second language acquisition in the past 20 years. the studies on the development of temporal reference by learners of l1 and l2 can potentiall

15、y contribute in significant ways to our understanding of the process of language acquisition, particularly as we search for the universality of language acquisition through cross-linguistic comparisons. what is more, from a pedagogical point of view, tense acquisition process is considered one of th

16、e most important and difficult aspects of language learning and can play a part in developing optimal approaches and techniques for l2 teaching (lee, 2001). it is now widely accepted that the lexical aspectual classes of verbs influence the acquisition of tense-aspect morphology. however, to date, t

17、he studies dealing with the issue have mainly focused on learners of english as a second language (esl) in english settings. this dissertation intends to investigate the role of l1 influence and the lexical aspect hypothesis in determining the interlanguage development process by chinese learners of

18、 english with a focus on past tense. 1.2 organization of the dissertation this dissertation includes five chapters. the first chapter illustrates the research background and the importance of the present study. chapter two reviews related theories on tense, aspect, and the lexical aspect hypothesis.

19、 it also presents a brief comparison of the chinese and english temporality systems. reviews of previous studies on the lexical aspect hypothesis are provided. chapter three contains information about the present study including: research subjects, data collection, data processing and the results of

20、 the empirical study. chapter four discusses the possible influence of l1 chinese and lexical aspects on our learners. finally, we draw our conclusion from the data that: 1. the early start of english temporality system and the extended years of acquisition comparing with other l1 background learner

21、s, may be the reinforcing effect of -tense l1 chinese. 2. the acquisition of tense and aspect by instructed chinese efl learners in china is influenced by the lexical aspects. chapter two literature review 2.1 introduction this chapter first begins with definition of relevant concepts: time, tense a

22、nd aspect. then, it continues with the introduction of the lexical aspect hypothesis, namely, what lexical aspect is, its prediction for the l2 acquisition of english and previous studies on the hypothesis. lastly, it compares the temporality systems between english and chinese. 2.2 time, tense and

23、aspect in language, the concept of time is expressed with categories of tense and aspect. tenses are the most intrinsic, inherent and important grammatical categories of verbs (tallerman, 1998). tense, a category that “relates the time of situation referred to some other time, usually to the moment

24、of speaking” (comrie, 1976: 1-2). the term tense is traditionally used to refer to the way the verb changes its endings to express its meaning. time is often shown as acquisition line (the time line), on which the present moment is located as a continuously moving point. past time present time futur

25、e time but there is no identity between tense and time. present and past tenses can be used to refer to all parts of the time line. most uses of the past tense refer to an action or state which has taken place in the past, at a definite time, with a gap between its completion and the present moment.

26、 specific events, states, and habitual actions can all be expressed using the past tense (crystal, 2004): i arrived yesterday. (event) they were upset. (states) they went to work yesterday.( habitual) tense serves to locate an event in time, and aspect says nothing about when an event occurred, but

27、either encodes a particular way of conceptualizing an event or conveys information about when the event unfolds through time. from the semantic point of view, aspect is normally regarded as a property or characteristic of events and states (cruse, 2004). aspect shows the “different ways of viewing t

28、he internal constituency of a situation” (comrie, 1976: 3). as indicated in figure 2-1, aspect is divided into two linguistic categories: grammatical aspect and lexical aspect. grammatical aspect is not concerned with the external temporal points of reference of a given situation but with its intern

29、al temporal constituency, and it is expressed through morphological markers (ayoun others, like english, utilize grammatical reference (i.e., verb tense). “if both l1 time attributes and their linguistic references differ from those in l2, learners may find themselves in an environment where they ca

30、nnot pick out the temporal attribute to which tense is a grammatical reference.” (hinkel, 1992: 557) 2.4.1 the english temporality system english is considered to be a synthetic language, which relies mainly on inflectional morphology to indicate the grammatical relations among sentence constituents

31、 (li, 2006). it is a full tense marking language. tense and aspect are not morphologically realized separately. yang and huang (2004) give an explanation of the english temporality system. tense is specified by tense morphology (-ed, -s, - ) or irregular tense forms like was, were, had, went. when t

32、here is -ing, the reading is progressive aspect. when there is no -ing, we assume there is a zero aspectual morpheme - , which interacts with tense and lexical aspect of the verb to produce different aspectual readings. in the simple present, - produces a durative reading when it goes with a state.

33、for example, he lives in guangzhou. it produces a habitual reading when it goes with a dynamic verb. for example, john gets up at seven everyday. in the simple past, - usually gives a closed reading to a situation located in the past. for example, the most likely interpretation for a telic state mar

34、y lived in guangzhou is that mary lived in guangzhou in the past and she no longer lives there. for +telic situation, the simple past is much simpler, because only closed and completive readings are possible. for example, when we hear they built a house, we understand that the house has been complet

35、ed and is already there. therefore, the simple past tense is actually a combination of past time location and perfective aspect. the perfect forms in english are also combinations of tense and either the imperfective or the perfective aspect (yang notman, 1988, cited by liszka, 2004). temporal locus

36、 is indicated in three major approaches: discourse pragmatic devices such as contextual meanings and chronological order; adverbial lexical expressions such as yesterday(zuotian), the week before last week(qian yi zhou), last night(zuo wan), just now(gang cai), already(yi jing)and so on; or past and

37、 perfective markers acting as independent suffix after the verb such as le, guo, wan, and zo4, gwo in cantonese. for example: wo zuo tian zuo le gong ke. i yesterday did my homework. i did my homework yesterday. in this example, the adverbial lexical expressions yesterday and past and perfective mar

38、ker le claim a state of affairs which happened in the past and maybe have certain effect on present or relevance with present, which depends on the context. therefore, chinese is sometimes regarded as a “tenseless” language, that is to say, “the language does not use verb affix to signal the relatio

39、n between the time of occurrence of the situation and the time that situation is brought up in speech” ( li imperative sentences like “ come in.”; and verb-less sentences like “now him in the room.”, as they are not good indicator of use of past tense. we encountered difficulties in processing the d

40、ata. for example, the past marking of verb “read” is orthographically the same as the present form. in this situation, we examined other verbs occurred in the same clause or sentence to judge the real intention of the writer. if it still cannot be decided from the context, we excluded it from examin

41、ation. there are also cases that regular past form “ed” is used for irregular verbs, like “knowed” for “knew”. in this case, we consider it an unacceptable past marking, though the intention is correct. three native speakers of english were used to classify the predicates into vendler- type aspectua

42、l classes as defined earlier. they worked independently and reached 100% agreement in the classification of more than 90% of the tokens. for the tokens that did not reach agreement among the three raters achieved at least a majority of 67% (two out of three) agreement. 3.6 results a distributional a

43、nalysis was performed with each item and lexical aspectual class for the elicitation task. the responses were tabulated to yield a usage score. additional statistical analyses were conducted when necessary. we coded 1530 sentences with past marking produced by the learners of the five proficiency le

44、vels. during j1, students tend to undergeneralize the simple past. simple present is a more frequently used form in narratives. the acceptable past marking is as low as 41.6%. (see figure 3-1) the forms that are correctly used are those frequently used verbs reinforced by textbooks like: “see- saw”

45、and “be-was”. this shows that the students just start to set up their mental grammar of english which is very different from their l1 chinese grammar, and they have not acquired the english temporality system. it is not until u3 that the students overall acceptable past marking reaches as high as 80

46、.3% which is closest to native speakers 97.1% (bardovi-harlig & reynolds, 1995). figure 3-1 overall acceptable past marking we take the verbs in the simple past for our present investigation as this is the only form of past marking which is introduced in the textbooks to all our instructed subjects

47、from level 1 (j1) to level 5 (u3). the results show that achievements and accomplishments verbs share high levels of appropriate use in simple past, even at the lowest level, comparing with activities and states verbs (see table 3-2). learners show approximately 55% use of simple past in accomplishm

48、ents verbs and 45% in achievements verbs, even at the lowest level (j1). in contrast, activities verbs show much lower appropriate use in j1, only 32.6%, and states with a bit higher percentage 34.5%. table 3-2 the appropriate use of simple past by lexical aspectual class in percentage levels states

49、activities accomplishments achievements j134.50 32.60 55.10 44.20 j329.63 37.33 54.13 51.73 h243.85 45.65 64.35 64.95 u165.25 46.95 76.25 77.55 u376.08 67.38 90.28 87.48 in general, activities verbs remain the lowest use percentage in general across all the proficiency levels. the use of activities

50、verbs demonstrates a stable increasing trend. drastic increasing appropriate use happens from u1 to u3. the use of simple past stays low with activities verbs between 32.6% to 67.38% in the highest level- u3. at that time, most of the students have learned english for over 12 years. it is not until

51、advanced level of proficiency, u3, that learners demonstrate 67.38% appropriate use of simple past with activities verbs. however, for accomplishments verbs and achievements verbs, even at the high beginning level (h2), the appropriate past marking already reach 64.35% and 64.95% respectively. the g

52、ap between activities verbs and accomplishments verbs remains high even at the highest level at 22.9%, with an average of 22.04% at all proficiency levels. though the use of accomplishments drops slightly in j3 comparing to j1 (54.13% vs. 55.10%), this change is not found significant. the general tr

53、end keeps increasing and finally reaches as high as 90.28% appropriate use, with which close to native speakers (97.8%) (bardovi-harlig & reynolds, 1995). an illustration of the developmental pattern is provided in figure 3-2. figure 3-2 distribution of simple past by lexical aspect the illustration

54、 clearly shows that the semantic lexical aspect influences the use of simple past on the learners in the present research. a manova examination was performed to check the significance in the differences in the use of past simple in the lexical aspects across levels. lexical aspectual difference was

55、found to be significant between accomplishments /achievements verbs and states verbs, and between states verbs and activities verbs (p.001). 3.7 summary this chapter has been devoted to the description of the research methodology. it first starts with the information of the research subjects who are

56、 chinese efl learners of five different proficiency levels. the task of writing past events that was given to the learners has created compulsory use of past marking. afterwards, the procedure of data encoding, classification and analysis has been reported. finally, the chapter is concluded with the

57、 results of overall acceptable past marking, the appropriate use of simple past by lexical aspects in percentage, and the distribution of simple past by lexical aspects. chapter four analysis and discussion 4.1 introduction this chapter discusses the general development pattern of the learners acqui

58、sition of tense and aspect, the l1 chinese influence, and the examination of the lexical aspect in the use of simple past. 4.2 general developmental pattern and l1 influence our students are instructed chinese efl learners who have little exposure to english outside the classroom. past marking is ta

59、ught from the very beginning at grade five in primary school. however, the percentage of appropriate use of past marking, particularly simple past, in j1 (41.6%), which is not very low, shows that the students have a forced early start in tense-aspect use in l2 through classroom instruction due to t

60、he grammatical characteristics of english, which is different from l1 chinese. the students do not have ideas of the relationship between time and tense-aspect use in english until formally introduced in the classroom. the textbooks and teachers explanation do not guarantee the students to have acqu