A Comparative Study Of The Comprehension Of English Aspect By Native Speakers Of English And Chinese EFL Learners

Tense and aspect have been widely investigated in both first language (L1) and second language (L2). However, the previous studies on tense and aspect mainly focused on the developmental sequence of morphology in the L2acquisition. How the learners of English as foreign language (EFL learners) comprehended the semantic meaning encoded in tense and aspect is under-explored.This dissertation is designed to investigate how the Chinese EFL learners interpret the semantic meaning of grammatical aspect, how they comprehend the semantic feature of telicity/atelicity, and which combinations of grammatical aspect, lexical aspect and tense they prefer, prototypical or nonprototypical ones. The performance of the Chinese EFL learners is then compared with that of the native speakers of English, so as to find out the shared features and differences in their comprehension of English aspect. In this study, a sentence interpretation test and a sentence preference test are conducted to fulfill the research purpose. The participants include Chinese college students at6proficiency levels (with40participants in each), and40native English speaking undergraduates. The research questions to be addressed in this dissertation are:1. How do the Chinese EFL learners and the native speakers of English interpret the semantic contrast between the simple present and present progressive on stative verbs, simple past and past progressive on telic verbs?2. How do the Chinese EFL learners and the native speakers of English comprehend the semantic feature of telicity/atelicity expressed by verb+direct object/prepositional phrase/(no) particle?3. Which combinations of grammatical aspect, lexical aspect and tense do the Chinese EFL learners and the native speakers of English prefer, prototypical ones (e.g., perfective, telic and past tense) or nonprototypical ones (e.g., imperfective, telic and past tense)?4. What are the shared features and differences exhibited by the Chinese EFL learners at different proficiency levels and the native speakers of English in the interpretation of the semantic contrast between grammatical aspects, the comprehension of the semantic feature of telicity/atelicity and the preference for prototypical and nonprototypical combinations? The research findings are:both the native speakers of English and the Chinese EFL learners detected the semantic contrast entailed by the simple present and present progressive on stative verbs, simple past and past progressive on telic verbs. Both the native speakers of English and the Chinese EFL learners comprehended the semantic feature of telicity/atelicity expressed by verb+direct object/prepositional phrase/(no) particle.The preference for prototypical and nonprototypical combinations varied according to verb categories. Both the Chinese EFL learners and the native speakers of English preferred stative verb sentence in the simple present form. Only English intermediate group and English high group performed like the native speakers of English in preferring accomplishment verbs in both simple past and past progressive form. All Chinese EFL learners preferred achievement verb sentence in the simple past form, while the native speakers of English preferred achievement verb sentence in both simple past form and past progressive form.The Chinese EFL learners and the native speakers of English exhibited certain shared features:their performance provides evidence for the composite nature of aspect and Prototype Theory. In spite of the common features, the Chinese EFL learners did perform differently from the native speakers of English, revealing evidence of L1transfer. Furthermore, English intermediate group and English high group exhibited similar pattern as the native speakers of English, but their performance did not reach native-like level. The Chinese EFL learners performed differently across proficiency levels as well, exhibiting non-linear progression towards the native-like level in the comprehension of English aspect. Nonetheless, generally speaking, two patterns were found: one was shared by three non-English groups and English low group, the other was shared by English intermediate group and English high group. There were also some unique features exhibited by non-English intermediate group.