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- Title
The impact of the absence of grammatical tense in L1 on the acquisition of the tense-aspect system in L2.
- Authors
Suying Yang, Rebecca; Yue Yuan Huang, Rebecca
- Abstract
Many researchers have found that learning go through stages in acquiring the L2 tense system: from relying on pragmatic devices to using more lexical devices, and then to using more grammatical morphology. Chinese is a language that has no tense and relies on pragmatic and lexical devices to indicate temporal locations. The present study investigates what impact a [-tense] L1 may have on the acquisition of the English tense system. The authors have found the following: classroom instruction may force an early start of tense use; the Chinese way of expressing temporarily may reinforce the learners' initial tendencies of relying on pragmatic and lexical devices to indicate temporal locations; and the early start of tense use and the L1 reinforcement of the learners' initial tendencies result in an extended period during which the learners' expression of temporality exhibits a very slow shift from depending more on pragmatic and lexical devices to depending more on grammatical devices. They have also found that the function of temporal adverbials may change from tense substitute to tense reminder as a result of special classroom training processes.
- Subjects
TENSE (Grammar); ADVERBIALS (Grammar); FOREIGN language education; LANGUAGE &; education; ENGLISH grammar; LINGUISTICS; ENGLISH language usage
- Publication
IRAL: International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 2004, Vol 42, Issue 1, p49
- ISSN
0019-042X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1515/iral.2004.002