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Lexical Aspect and the Use of Simple Past Tense by Thai Learners of English

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Lexical Aspect and the Use of Simple Past Tense by Thai Learners of English LEXICAL ASPECT AND THE 1. Introduction USE OF SIMPLE PAST English tenses generally pose difficulty for TENSE BY THAI LEARNERS learners. Several studies with Thai learners OF ENGLISH1 of English showed that one of the most common errors they made was the use of 2 tenses. For example, in one of the earliest Suriya Sriphrom studies of Thai learners of English, 3 Theeraporn Ratitamkul Suwattee (1971) examined students’ difficulties in using the English verb system. She analyzed 152 English Abstract entrance examination papers written by Thai students and found that the error This cross-sectional study investigated the count on the use of tenses showed the use of the simple past tense form by twenty highest frequency. Malayamonthon (1998) Thai learners of English at two levels of also reported a similar result. He asked proficiency. A cloze test developed by 137 Thai upper secondary students of a Ayoun and Salaberry (2008) was adopted. public school to write a composition after The findings showed that the learners in watching the animated film ‘Cinderella’. the high proficiency group used the past He investigated errors drawn from 30 tense form more accurately than the English compositions. Results showed that learners in the low proficiency group. the errors on tense usage were most When verbs were categorized according to frequent (30.78%). As the inaccurate use lexical aspect, both groups of learners of tenses is a highly frequent mistake, were found to use the simple past tense some studies have analyzed the causes of form most often with telic events as well as errors among Thai learners. Noochoochai with states. This did not correspond to the (1978) and Tawilapakul (2003), for prediction of the Aspect Hypothesis, which example, claimed that transfer was one of asserts that low-level learners tend to use the causes. Noochoochai analyzed tense the simple past tense form with telic events errors in 200 compositions written by first. The distributional bias in the input advanced English students at the university could account for the pattern found in this level. He found that the percentages of study. incorrect usage of the simple future tense form and simple past tense form were higher than the percentages of correct usage. The students’ most frequent mistake was 1 incorrectly replacing simple past tense forms This paper is a part of the doctoral with base or bare verb forms. Tawilapakul dissertation entitled Development of the analyzed a Thai-English translation test done relationship between tense forms and temporal-aspectual meanings in English in by 75 first-year undergraduate students to relating past events by Thai learners investigate the impact of the use of time 2Ph.D. candidate, Department of Linguistics, markers in Thai. It was found that some Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, time markers in Thai gave a positive Bangkok, Thailand. impact on the use of English tenses. For 3Assistant Professor, Department of example, m̂ a-rew-rew-níi ‘recently’ Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn guided the students to use past tense University, Bangkok, Thailand. Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 05:02:53PM via free access Lexical Aspect and the Use of Simple Past Tense by Thai Learners of English correctly and rew-rew-níi ‘soon’ guided that language learners crosslinguistically them to use future tense correctly. encounter difficulty in tense use. However, time marker such as ‘at the age of…’ had a negative impact. In the In the following section, the Aspect sentence at the age of sixteen, he was Hypothesis is reviewed as an approach running a family business, past that uses semantic categories of lexical progressive tense was expected. A few aspects as a linguistic factor accounting students (2.67%) used the correct tense. for developmental patterns of tense and She concluded that time markers, as a aspect acquisition. linguistic factor, played a role in tense use. Both studies ascribed such errors to the 2. The Aspect Hypothesis fact that Thai has only one verb form To encode time in English, tense and which does not change according to aspect are obligatory. Tense is a temporal reference, thus concluding that grammaticalized expression of location in some errors in tense use resulted from time (Comrie 1985: 9). Lyons (1995: 318) language transfer. The above studies defined tense as the category which results demonstrated that Thai students had from the grammaticalization of incidental difficulty in using English tenses. (definite) deictic temporal reference. Klein However, most of the previous studies, (2010:43) mentioned terminological except that of Tawilapakul, did not confusions of tense and showed that such investigate other linguistic factors which technical terms can refer to, firstly, the could account for correct and incorrect use grammatical notion; secondly, a particular of English tenses by Thai learners. form; thirdly, a particular function or Difficulty in acquiring tenses in English meaning. In this study, ‘tense form’ and may stem from the fact that Thai is an ‘tense meaning’ are used to avoid isolating language with little use of confusion. For example, in They went to inflectional morphology. However, native school yesterday, the simple past tense speakers of languages with inflectional form went is used to convey simple past morphology were found to encounter tense meaning. In They go to school similar difficulty. Klein (1995) conducted yesterday, however, the simple present 4 research on the acquisition of English tense form go is used to express simple temporality. He collected data from four past tense meaning. Italian adult learners over a period of two According to Comrie (1976:3), aspects are and a half years. His Italian informants different ways of viewing the internal showed that, at the beginning, the verbs temporal constituency of a situation. For used were not modified for tense or aspect example, in John was reading when I and they normally had the form of the bare entered, the first verb presents the stem. Later on, some informants gradually background to some event, while that moved in the direction of the target event itself is introduced by the second language. Despite the fact that Italian and verb. The second verb presents the totality English are both inflectional languages, of the situation referred to without the Italian learners of English failed to use reference to its internal temporal past tense forms correctly and consistently at an early stage of learning. This shows 4The form go can also be regarded as a bare form, which is a form with no inflection. 65 Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 05:02:53PM via free access MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities Regular 17.1, 2014 constituency. Lyons (1995: 322) defined walk. Dynamic verbs which have a aspect as the category which results from specific endpoint are telic verbs. Among the grammaticalization of the internal telic verbs, two subdivisions are found temporal constituency (or contour) of according to the last internal temporal situations (actions, events, states, etc.). feature, punctuality. Telic verbs which Like ‘tense’, the term ‘aspect’ is also take place instantaneously are called ambiguous. According to Smith (1997: 1), achievements. Achievements capture the the term ‘aspect’ refers to grammaticized beginning or end of an action (Mourelatos viewpoints such as the perfective and 1981) and can be thought of as reduced to imperfective aspects. As this type of a point (Andersen 1991). Examples of aspect is conveyed morphologically, it is achievements are begin, end, arrive, leave, known as ‘grammatical aspect’. In recognize, die, fall asleep and reach the addition, the term ‘aspect’ also refers to summit. The other type of telic verbs is temporal properties of situations, or accomplishment. Accomplishments have situation types which concern the inherent an endpoint like achievements but do not semantics of verbs. This type of aspect is take place instantaneously. They have therefore called ‘lexical aspect’. Table 1 some duration like activities. Examples of below shows four situation types or lexical accomplishments include run a mile, make aspects proposed by Vendler (1967). a chair, build a house, etc. Table 1 Feature analysis of the four verb Lexical aspect was claimed to play an classes (adapted from Shirai and Andersen important role in tense and aspect 1995) acquisition. Brown (1973) and also Bloom, Lifter and Hafitz (1980) found that STATE ACTIVITY ACCOM- ACHIEVE- PLISHMENT MENT children’s English past tense marking is Punctual - - - + not distributed evenly to all past tense Telic - - + + contexts, but appears to be selectively Dynamic - + + + attached to instantaneous, change of state verbs that denote clear end-results (as Vendler categorized verbs according to cited in Shirai 2010). Such trends have their internal temporal features. The also been found in second language internal temporal features are dynamicity, acquisition. Andersen (1991) noticed that telicity and punctuality. Dynamicity learners of English as a second language distinguishes all other predicates from begin with verbs with no inflection, where states. States are not interruptible. all verbs appear in the base or bare form. Examples of states include seem, know, When these learners start using past need, want and be (as in be tall, be big, be inflections, the inflections are limited to green) (Bardovi-Harlig 2000). Dynamic punctual verbs, which are momentary in verbs can be divided into two main groups duration, e.g., recognize someone or win according to telicity. Telicity is an internal the race. Subsequently, past inflections are temporal feature which pertains to an used with other verb classes. Andersen endpoint. Dynamic verbs which have assumed that the semantics of events or duration but have no specific endpoint are inherent lexical aspects of verbs play a classified as activities. For example, John role in the emergence of tense and aspect is running and I studied all week. More marking in second language acquisition.
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