Temporal Expressions in Second Language Writing

Abstract

The aspect hypothesis has been proposed to interpret morphological markings for verbs [1]; however little research has examined how the suffixes of verbs are marked in the context of narrative writing for a real audience. This study investigated tense-aspect markings in written narratives by native English speakers and English learners at intermediate or advanced levels. The participants and the researcher saw the silent film Modern Times in a classroom, but the latter left at the midpoint. Upon the end of the film, they were told to describe to the researcher by writing down the second half of the film. The findings seem to support the hypothesis partially. The progressive form was found attached to dynamic verbs, but never with state verbs. The frequency of the –ing form occurring with activity verbs embodying the durative feature was higher. However, the occurrence of present or past tense did not bear a strong relationship with any specific lexical aspect. The proficiency levels seem to have a relationship with tense-aspect markings: (1) the native English speakers wrote narratives mainly in the present tense, (2) the advanced learners were in favor of the past tense, and (3) the intermediate learners displayed divergent performance.