TENSE AND MOOD IN PERSIAN AND ENGLISH: A CONTRASTIVE AND ERROR ANALYSES NEZAM EMADI THESIS SUBMITTED IN FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS UNIVERSITY OF MALAYA KUALA LUMPUR 2013 UNIVERSITI MALAYA ORIGINAL LITERARY WORK DECLARATION Name of Candidate: (I.C/Passport No: ) Registration/Matric No: Name of Degree: Title of Project Paper/Research Report/Dissertation/Thesis (“this Work”): Field of Study: I do solemnly and sincerely declare that: (1) I am the sole author/writer of this Work; (2) This Work is original; (3) Any use of any work in which copyright exists was done by way of fair dealing and for permitted purposes and any excerpt or extract from, or reference to or reproduction of any copyright work has been disclosed expressly and sufficiently and the title of the Work and its authorship have been acknowledged in this Work; (4) I do not have any actual knowledge nor do I ought reasonably to know that the making of this work constitutes an infringement of any copyright work; (5) I hereby assign all and every rights in the copyright to this Work to the University of Malaya (“UM”), who henceforth shall be owner of the copyright in this Work and that any reproduction or use in any form or by any means whatsoever is prohibited without the written consent of UM having been first had and obtained; (6) I am fully aware that if in the course of making this Work I have infringed any copyright whether intentionally or otherwise, I may be subject to legal action or any other action as may be determined by UM. Candidate’s Signature Date Subscribed and solemnly declared before, Witness’s Signature Date Name: Designation: ii ABSTRACT The present study investigates the two grammatical categories of tense and mood in Persian and English through the contrastive analysis (CA) and error analysis (EA) approaches. The present study seeks to provide a practical and descriptive structural grammar in terms of tense and mood and to identify the areas of difficulty encountered by Persian EFL learners as well. The verb is one of the main parts of speech in a language and the correct use of tense has an important role in language learning and communication in the tense languages like English and Persian. In the CA, the verbal forms and their applications in both English and Persian are described and then they are juxtaposed in order to find out the similarities and differences between them in terms of their tenses and moods. Furthermore, in the EA, the errors made in a structural test consisting of one hundred items of all English tenses which was administered to sixty Iranian undergraduate students of Shiraz University in Iran were analyzed. Through this EA approach, the frequency of occurrence of the errors and the sources of the errors were analyzed. The conclusions and recommendations are made based on the findings of the two approaches of CA and EA and from the two surveys comprising a questionnaire and interviews from 30 English teachers from 10 universities in Iran. According to this reseach, the number of tenses and moods are the same in both languages. There are twelve tenses in English and Persian while there is no often one to one correspondence in the form and use of them. In addition, there are three moods in both languages including Indicative, Subjunctive and Imperative. Notwistanding, the subjunctive mood in Persian has been already grammaticalized while in modern English it has declined even though we can say it is still alive. iii The pedagogical implications can help students and teachers in the learning and teaching processes of the target language. The EA results showed that negative interlingual transfers caused many errors by the participants in the test and on the other hand, many other errors were caused by intralingual errors of ‘ignorance of rule restrictions’ or of ‘false concepts hypothesized’. This will affirm the view that the native or non-native English teachers should have sufficient knowledge of the two languages - Persian as the source/first language and English as the target/foreign language. It is strongly recommendation that teachers give enough information to the EFL learners by illustrating some examples concerning the notions of stative verbs, dynamic verbs, achievement verbs, durative verbs, punctual or instantaneous verbs, perfective and progressive aspects in English language. Furthermore, regarding the English teachers’ attitudes and experience, and despite the shortage of time for English lessons which is claimed by the almost all teachers,the communication strategies needed for foreign language pattern learning should also not be ignored. iv ABSTRAK Kajian ini menganalisis dua kategori tatabahasa iaitu kala dan modus dalam bahasa Parsi dan Inggeris melalui pendekatan analisis kontrastif (CA) dan analisis kesalahan bahasa (EA). Kajian ini bertujuan untuk menyediakan tatabahasa kala dan modus berstrukturkan praktikal dan deskriptif. Dapatan kajian untuk mengenalpasti kesukaran yang dihadapi dalam kalangan pelajar asing yang menggunakan bahasa Inggeris (English foreign learners-EFL) dan bahasa Parsi. Kata kerja adalah salah satu daripada aspek utama dalam bahasa percakapan serta penggunaan kala yang betul mempunyai peranan yang penting dalam pembelajaran bahasa dan komunikasi dalam bahasa Inggeris dan Parsi. Analisis kontrastif (CA) menerangkan secara lisan dan aplikasi bagi kedua-dua bahasa Inggeris dan Parsi. Data kajian CA dibandingkan untuk mengetahui persamaan dan perbezaan antara kedua-dua bahasa tersebut dari segi tatabahasa kala dan modus. Tambahan pula, dalam analisis kesalahan bahasa (EA) kesalahan yang dibuat untuk ujian struktural mengandungi seratus item bagi kesemua kata kerja bahasa Inggeris. Kajian ini dilakukan terhadap 60 pelajar ijazah dasar Universiti Shiraz di Iran yang dipilih secara rawak sebagai data kajian. Frekuensi berlakunya kesalahan dan sumber kesalahan dianalisis melalui kajian EA. Kesimpulan dan cadangan bagi kajian ini dibuat berdasarkan dua pendekatan analisis iaitu CA dan EA serta dua kaji selidik. Kaji selidik yang dijalankan merangkumi borang soal selidik dan temubual daripada 30 orang pensyarah bahasa Inggeris dari 10 universiti di Iran. Implikasi pedagogi dapat membantu pelajar dan guru dalam proses pembelajaran dan pengajaran bahasa sasaran. Hasil kajian EA menunjukkan bahawa timbulnya banyak kesalahan yang dilakukan oleh para peserta dalam ujian tersebut berpunca daripada v kesalahan pemindahan/interlingual negatif (negative interlingual transfers). Di samping itu, pelbagai kesalahan lain yang disebabkan kesalahan intralingual (intralingual errors) daripada ‘ignorance of rule restrictions’ atau ‘false concepts hypothesized’. Justeru, ini mengesahkan idea beberapa cendekiawan yang menekankan bahawa pensyarah bahasa Inggeris sebagai bahasa ibunda atau bahasa kedua sepatutnya mepunyai ilmu yang mendalam bagi kedua-dua bahasa tersebut (bahasa Parsi sebagai bahasa utama/ibunda dan bahasa Inggeris sebagai bahasa sasaran/kedua). Bagi menangani masalah ini, para pensyarah bahasa Inggeris disarankan untuk memberi informasi yang mendalam kepada pelajar EFL dengan menerangkan beberapa contoh mengenai pelbagai aspek kata kerja bahasa Inggeris iaitu kata kerja statif , dinamik , pencapaian, duratif, punctual atau instantaneous, perfektif dan progresif. Selain itu, strategi komunikasi yang diperlukan bagi mencorakkan pembelajaran bahasa kedua tidak boleh diabaikan walaupun sikap dan pengalaman pensyarah bahasa Inggeris serta kesuntukkan masa untuk belajar bahasa Inggeris. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Kulwindr Kaur a/p Gurdial Singh for the guidance and advice she had provided through out my time as her student. I would also like to thank my former supervisor Prof. Dr. Choi Kim York who retired in the middle of my Ph.D period. I must express my gratitude to Dr. Jawakhir Mior Jaafar as the Deputy Dean of the faculty of languages and linguistics who were always helpful and courteous, and also to the penalist of my candidature defence and seminar presentations Prof. Dr. Maya Khelmani David and Dr. Kais Amir Kadhim for their good suggestions. Last but not the least, I would like to thank my family. Particularly, I wish to express my sincer appreciation to my brother Manouchehr who without his financial support I could not afford to stay in Malaysia for 4 and a half years. vii Contents List of Tables ………………………………………………………………………… xiii List of Figures………………………………………………………………….…….…xv List of Symbols…………………………………………………………...….….….…xvi List of Abbreviations…………………………………………………….…...……….xvii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION……………………………………………..…………1 1. 0 Background to the Study……………………….………...………………………1 1.1 Statement of the Problem……………………………………………………...….2 1.2 Objectives of the Study……………………………………………………...……3 1.3 Research Questions…………………………………………………………….…3 1.4 Significance of the Study……………………………………………………...….4 1.5 Scope and Limitation………………………………………...……………...……5 1.6 The English Situation in the Schools of Iran…………………………….……….5 1.7 Persian Language……………………………………………………………...….7 1.7.1 Short History of Persian Language……………………………………...……7 1.7.2 Persian Writing Style…………………………………………………………8 1.7.3 Basic Features of Verb Morphology and Syntax………………………..……9 1.7.4 Persian Grammar…………………………………………………………….13 1.8 Definition of Terms…………………………………………………….………..15 1.8.1 Tense……………………………………………………………………..….15 1.8.2 Aspect……………………………………………………………………..…17 1.8.3 Mood……………………………………………………………………...…18 1.8.4 Standard