This data study concentrates on the past tense marking in the interlanguage (IL) of Chinese speakers of English. Following the assumptions of Hawkins & Lizska, (2003), it is assumed that unlike native speakers of English, Chinese speakers of English have a higher level of optionality within the past tense marking of their grammars. It is claimed that the primary reason for this occurrence is the lack of the functional feature T(ense) [+/-past] in Mandarin Chinese. If a particular functional feature is missing in a learner's L1 grammar, it is thought that it will be absent in one's L2 grammar as well. Three advanced Chinese speakers of English were tested on the past tense marking in their IL production. Both spontaneous oral and reading speech were used for this data analysis.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Mary T. Copple / The formation of English past tense by EFL (or ESL) learners has been the object of much second language acquisition research. This study investigates the production and marking of English past tense verbs by 55 adult Afghan EFL learners who use Pashto or Dari as their first language. The participants were first required to produce the past tense while responding to a questionnaire about their daily activities, and then completed a correction task in which sentences with verb errors appeared. The collected data was analyzed based on verb regularity (Pinker & Ullman 2002, Jaeger et al. 1996, Hoeffner 2000, Housen 2000) and the sequential inflection of events or non-events based on inherent lexical aspect (Vendler 1967, Salaberry 2000, Bardovi-Harlig & Reynolds1995, Tickoo 2001, 2005). Results show that the participants were more accurate in marking and producing regular verbs than irregular verbs for the past tense in both experimental tasks. When examining the role of regularity of the verb in the sequential marking of lexical aspect, it was discovered that past tense production of irregular verbs was influenced by the lexical aspectual verb type as non-events exhibited lower accuracy rates for past tense inflection.

Magister Artium - MA / This research discusses the temporality of Al-Fi’l Al-Moḍāri’ (present tense) in Arabic in terms of structure and case endings. It also focuses on the time of the imperfect tense and how it is affected by the Adawāt (particles) and justification as well as the meaning, context and the purpose of the sentence. The study also investigates the controversial issues on finding a standardized definition of the actual imperfect tense in order to distinguish it from the outwardly one. It also investigates the changes which the imperfect tense undergoes when preceded by particles and how they change the case endings from Mabnī (Indicative) into Mu’rab apocopate (to be Jussive or Subjunctive). Another focus is investigating the reason why the tense of the verb that comes after particles of negation, prohibition, justification and denial is always imperfect not perfect or future, regardless of the context and the purpose of the text, and the reason as to why this rule applies to all Qur'ānic verses which contradict this rule when being parsed. In addition, it uses semiotics to explain the imperfect tense in the Qur'ānic verses and investigates the effectiveness of applying abstention and assembly to distinguish between the tense and it's meaning in the Qur'ānic text. This can help to determine the actual time of the tense in the Qur'ānic text which in turn helps to parse the imperfect tense correctly and to justify why there is a case ending which contradicts the grammar rules. The correct parsing of the imperfect tense, including indicative, subjunctive and jussive, will pave the way for more attempts to rectify the interpretation of the Qur'ānic verses which create controversy. This can be achieved by presenting the verses which contradict the rules of parsing, making hypotheses, analyzing them and then parsing them in a logical way utilizing an analytical approach.

This thesis researches on aspect and tense in Rukai by focusing on their interpretation and interaction. The issues center on two component parts: the association between morphology and eventuality/situation type, and that between morphology and tense. In the domain of eventuality, I establish a connection between determiner morphology (specifically, the case morphemes) and event structuring at the level of verbal formation. It is argued that Rukai case markers correlate with a set of verbal prefixes that form a part of verbal stems in structuring eventualities. A generalized hypothesis of morphological merger is proposed to account for this morphosyntactic correlation and other formational instances. Secondly, I examine the interrelation of nominalization, voice formation and eventuality. It is argued that nominalization is used to construct a third kind of voice in Rukai, the object voice, in addition to the active and passive. The study indicates that derived nominalized and object voice constructions convey derived states, whose interpretation result from an aspectual shift in the domain of eventuality. In the domain of tense, I investigate the interpretation of tense markers and their interaction with aspect. The way how the nonfuture tense gets interpreted shows that it is temporally indeterminate, but aspectually constrained. The future is characterized by its function as a temporal marker in modal constructions. The interaction of the future tense with modals indicates that it can specify temporal posteriority in modal constructions. Furthermore, it is argued that the perfect aspect forms a complex tense with the nonfuture in conveying a past meaning. The nonfuture and future tenses are further examined in sentences with sub-ordinate clauses. The study shows that the nonfuture and the future tense behave differently with respect to their relation with a reference point in complex sentences. The nonfuture is more restricted than the future tense in that it cannot take a future time as its temporal reference, whereas the future can take a past time as its temporal reference. / text

Temporal references in natural language include tenses and other time relations, references to specific times, and a variety of phrases such as "present", "later", "when", "how often", and "never". Their high frequency of occurrence reflects the importance of time to the users of natural language. Although the structure underlying temporal references may appear complicated, it is a working assumption of this thesis that a sound logical explanation of its characteristics can be made. The frequent use of temporal references makes a correct exhibition of their underlying structure vital to a full understanding of natural language. Such an understanding is important in teaching and translating, indeed in all uses of natural language. In addition, understanding language better should aid in the design of computer programs which process natural languages. Chapter 2 of this thesis surveys some relevant work on temporal references, both to show what has been done and to show the scope of the problem. Despite the divergence in terminology and viewpoint, a unified theory can be derived which relates and extends the previous work. The new theory is presented in Chapter 3. It is a formal system which models the intuitive meaning of tenses, time relations, and other references to the time of events. The system precisely defines and shows the interrelationships of concepts which are often only vaguely defined. By its generality and its logical foundation, the system is able to serve as a skeleton for further studies of time in language. To illustrate some of the features of the system a question answering computer program, called Chronos, was written which accepts information in the form of tensed sentences and answers questions about the time of events. This program is discussed in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 discusses a problem which arises when we consider assigning truth values to statements about events occurring at times other than the present. The problem is to define a logic for unknown outcomes which retains the two valued tautologies. A logic is presented which has two kinds of implication: a material implication for which all the classical tautologies hold, and a strict implication defined in terms of logical necessity. The strict implication fragment of this logic is shown to be slightly stronger than the Lewis (1959) system S5, although it avoids many of the so-called paradoxes of material implication. The logic of Chapter 5 is a useful extension of the system for tenses (Chapter 3) to situations in which future (and perhaps past) events may have the truth value "unknown". Chapter 6 is a discussion section which evaluates the tense system, the logic for unknown outcomes, and the program Chronos. Several possibilities for extending the thesis are discussed. / text

published_or_final_version / Speech and Hearing Sciences / Master / Master of Philosophy

This dissertation describes and compares the tense-aspect systems found in three southeastern Bantu languages, viz. Chichewa, Citumbuka and Cisena. For each language, an in-depth description of the tense-aspect categories and their use is given based on the analysis of different sources of data: audio recordings of arranged conversations and narratives, questionnaires in which native speakers of Chichewa, Citumbuka and Cisena translated English sentences into their own language, and parallel corpora of Biblical texts as well as direct elicitation and consultation sessions. The description provides evidence of dialectal variation in the tense-aspect systems in each language that has not been described systematically before. Furthermore, it discusses specific diachronic changes, such as the development of the present progressive marker -ku- into a present tense marker in Chichewa. Remoteness distinctions in the past and future tenses, which are common across Bantu, are also found in the three languages under investigation here. The use of these categories is studied in detail and a certain extent of flexibility in their use is observed. For some varieties of Chichewa, a remoteness distinction is even found for past imperfective forms referring to habits or continuous events in the past, a distinction that has not been described previously. Further emphasis is placed on the comparison of tense-aspect markings in negated as opposed to affirmative clauses. In all three languages, the perfect marker -a- is only found in affirmative clauses while a past tense marker or a particular form only found in clauses of this type, a negative perfect marker, occurs in the corresponding negative. The comparison of the three tense-aspect systems shows that the overall design of the systems and the distinctions that are made in the three languages are, despite certain differences, rather similar while the markers that express these distinctions differ across languages in many respects.

Thesis (M.A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2003. / Bibliography: leaves 159-162.

The main goal of this study is to investigate the difficulties of acquiring tense/lax /i, I/ and /u, U/ contrasts by adult Arabic speakers learning English as a Second Language (ESL). Twenty Saudi ESL subjects, 16 male and 4 female, produced a list of 20 English monosyllabic words in a carrier sentence. Target vowels were preceded and followed alternately by consonant stops (e.g., /bVb/, /bVt/, /bVd/, /bVk/, /bVg/). The productions were analyzed acoustically for vowel quality and length. The results of the study revealed that most subjects had difficulties acquiring tense/lax contrasts. Their realization of the target vowel /i, I/ and /u, U/ were assimilated to their first language (L1) short vowel counterparts /i/ and /u/ respectively. However, advanced second language (L2) learners tended to produce slightly separate spectral contrasts specifically with front vowels, whereas durational differences of tense/lax contrasts were still affected by durational differences of Arabic long-short contrasts. Additionally, target back vowel contrasts were more difficult to acquire for both beginners and advanced learners. The study suggested that L2 participants were focusing on quantity rather than quality to acquire the target vowels. Orthography was observed affecting L2 production of vowel contrasts, especially with beginners. These findings have been found to support Flege's (1995) Speech Learning Model and Eckman's (1977) Markedness Differential Hypothesis.

This diploma thesis compares the Spanish verb system with the Czech one in terms of expressing temporal relations. We use the InterCorp parallel synchronic corpus to examine the Spanish tenses of presente, pretérito imperfecto, pretérito perfecto simple, futuro simple, condicional simple, pretérito perfecto compuesto, pretérito pluscuamperfecto, pretérito anterior, futuro compuesto a condicional compuesto in the indicative mode and also the infinitive verb forms of infinitivo simple, infinitivo compuesto, gerundio simple a gerundio compuesto. We look for the Czech equivalents to the complex temporal meanings of the Spanish verb.