This dissertation has two main purposes: (a) to provide an analysis of the past tenses in Nepali and compare them with those of English from a discourse pragmatic perspective; and (b) to investigate how Nepali learners of English use the English past tenses in terms of forms, meanings, and functions.A major claim of the dissertation is that tenses and aspects play various discourse functions in Nepali. Although Nepali has various past tenses as in English, their actual use is different from those of English. A significant difference between the use of the past tenses in English and Nepali is revealed in the use of the past perfect tense. In Nepali, unlike in English, the past perfect does not always require the existence of the past reference point between the event time and the speech time. Although used in similar as well as different contexts, the past perfect in both languages is found to express background information. In the analysis of the Nepali past tenses, one of the major arguments is that the traditionally termed `unknown past' does not have `past' as part of its basic meaning. The main function of this verb form is to express the speaker's unawareness of a situation at the time of its happening, whether in the past or the future.After the discussion of the Nepali past tenses in comparison with the English past tenses and aspects, an error analysis of Nepali EFL learners' use of the English past tenses in written essays is carried out. It was hypothesized that Nepali learners would make a wide variety of errors in the use of the English past tenses. Because of differences in the use of the past perfect and the past tense in the habitual sense between Nepali and English, it was expected that Nepali ESL learners would make errors in those areas. However, overgeneralization due to difference in the use was found only in a very few cases. Most of these errors cannot be traced to Nepali influence. One area, however, where Nepali has a clear effect on the students' use of English is in indirect speech. I argue that Nepali speakers do not change tenses in English indirect speech appropriately because verb tenses in Nepali are not changed from direct speech to indirect speech as in English.It is hoped that this dissertation will enhance the understanding of grammatical categories such as tense and aspect in general and of Nepali tense and aspect systems in particular. In general, this dissertation showed contribute to several areas of study in discourse analysis, second language acquisition, language transfer and contrastive analysis. A major significance of this dissertation is its demonstration of the role of tense and aspect in Nepali in the expression of various discourse functions. / Department of English

This thesis has dealt with the area of tense in both Arabic and English. First, a contrastive analysis between the two languages was made. The areas of similarities and differences were discussed. Second, an error analysis was made to examine the validity of the predictions of the contrastive analysis. The errors committed by thirty Arab Palestinian students were analysed and discussed.To examine the validity of the results and to measure the frequency count and the correlations among the categories of errors, a statistical analysis was made.

Nous avons argumenté, dans cette thèse, en faveur de l’idée selon laquelle l’anglais et l’arabe, deux langues très différentes, possèdent, l’une et l’autre, un système temporel et aspectuel. Ce point de vue a nécessité l’étude d’autres aspects des deux langues. C’est pour cela que nous ne nous sommes pas limitée à étudier uniquement les deux formes perfective (FP) et imperfective (FI) en arabe et les formes équivalentes en anglais. Nous avons également traité, pour les deux langues, la forme participiale, le système négatif, les adverbes temporels, le mode, et la modalité. Nous avons conclu que le temps et l’Aktionsart restent invariables d’une langue à l’autre et que seul l’aspect grammatical varie selon les langues. De fait, l’aspect morphologique détermine le temps en arabe. Nous avons essayé d’expliquer pourquoi Neg sélectionne FI et proposé que FI apparaît en bas de la structure et qu'elle est bloquée par Neg. FI est marquée pour [+Asp], contrairement à FP qui est [+ T]. Nous avons suggéré, finalement, que l’imperfectif en arabe fonctionne comme un infinitif, marqué pour les traits [-T] et [+Agr]. / Although English and Arabic are typologically two very different languages, we have argued in this thesis that both possess a temporal and an aspectual system. This view required the study of other aspects of these two languages. That's why we have not limited our study to only perfective (PF) and imperfective (IF) forms in Arabic and their equivalent in English. We also studied the participial form, the negative system, temporal adverbs, mood and modality. We concluded that tense and Aktionsart remain unchanged from one language to another and only the grammatical aspect varies according to the different languages. In fact, morphological aspect determines tense in Arabic. We tried to explain why Neg selects IF and proposed that IF appears at the bottom of the structure and it is blocked by Neg. IF is [+Asp], contrary to PF which is marked for [+T]. We suggested, finally, that the imperfective in Arabic functions like an infinitive with the ! features [-T] and [+Agr].

Anscombe (1964) presents influential arguments that 'before' and 'after' cannot denote converse relations, despite intuitions to the contrary. These arguments, I claim, rely on ambiguity of certain 'before'- and 'after'-sentences, ambiguity that arises from the interaction of tense and aspect with the temporal ordering relations denoted by 'before' and 'after'. To account for this ambiguity, I adopt a Discourse Representation Theory-based analysis of tense and aspect (Kamp & Reyle 2011) and apply it to a set of examples that exhibit the variety of readings available for 'before'- and 'after'-sentences. I argue that certain readings of stative 'after'-sentences support the existence of an inceptive coercion operator, equivalent in effect to the aspectual verb 'begin'. This operator has much in common with 'earliest', an operator proposed by Beaver & Condoravdi (2003), but it is motivated by independent aspectual considerations. I conclude with a discussion of areas for future research. / text

This thesis introduces of a system of tense logic called nominal tense logic (NTL), and several extensions. Its primary aim is to establish that these systems are logically interesting, and can provide useful models of natural language tense, temporal reference, and their interaction. Languages of nominal tense logic are a simple augmentation of Priorean tense logic. They add to the familiar Priorean languages a new sort of atomic symbol, nominals. Like propositional variables, nominals are atomic sentences and may be freely combined with other wffs using the usual connectives. When interpreting these languages we handle the Priorean components standardly, but insist that nominals must be true at one and only one time. We can think of nominals as naming this time. Logically, the change increases the expressive power of tensed languages. There are certain intuitions about the flow of time, such as irreflexivity, that cannot be expressed in Priorean languages; with nominals they can. The effects of this increase in expressive power on the usual model theoretic results for tensed languages discussed, and completeness and decidability results for several temporally interesting classes of frames are given. Various extensions of the basic system are also investigated and similar results are proved. In the final chapter a brief treatment of similarly referential interval based logics is presented. As far as natural language semantics is concerned, the change is an important one. A familiar criticism of Priorean tense logic is that as it lacks any mechanism for temporal reference, it cannot provide realistic models of natural language temporal usage. Natural language tense is at least partly about referring to times, and nowadays the deictic and anaphoric properties of tense are a focus of research. The thesis presents a uniform treatment of certain temporally referring expressions such as indexicals, and simple discourse phenomena.

A remarkable thing about natural language is that we can use it to share our beliefs and thoughts about the world with other speakers of our language. In cases of successful communication, beliefs seem to be transferred from speakers to hearers by means of the hearer recovering the contents of the speaker’s utterances. This is so natural to us that we take it for granted in our everyday life, and rarely stop to think about how it's is possible. Nevertheless, it's a phenomenon that calls for explanation. It is natural to expect that natural language semantics has a key explanatory role to play here. In order to understand this role, we must relate the semantic values assigned to sentences by semantic theories with the contents of our speech acts. The simplest possible relation would be identity; the meaning of a sentence is simply the belief expressed by an assertion of the sentence in a given context of utterance. However, a number of problem cases in the literature suggest that this cannot be the case. This dissertation offers a critical assessment of the arguments for distinguishing the semantic value of a sentence from its so-called assertoric content, focusing on problems arising from the analysis of tense and temporal expressions. I conclude that they are indeed distinct, and offer a constructive account of how they must be related in order to allow for an explanation of communicative success.​

Esta tese investiga a expressão do Tempo e do Aspecto nas línguas árabe e portuguesa, a fim de estabelecer uma discussão de como as duas formas que compõem o seu sistema verbal - /almāḍī/ e almuḍāriᶜ/, aqui denominadas perfectivo e imperfectivo, respectivamente -, podem ser representadas no português do Brasil. O método de análise partiu da leitura e tradução do texto tomado como corpus, o conto \"O tapete persa\" de Hanan Aššayḫ, seguidas da identificação das formas verbais a serem analisadas, para lançar uma proposta de tradução de acordo com a divisão temporal do quadro do sistema verbal do português. Foi feita, para cada tempo (ou modo) que traduziu as formas árabes, uma discussão da decisão, levando em conta o contexto, sua interpretação temporal/aspectual, e, também, a Aktionsart de cada item verbal. O que se descobriu nesta pesquisa coincidiu com as conclusões apontadas nos trabalhos discutidos, como Cuvalay-Haak (1997), Holes (2004) e Bahloul (2008), sobre a língua árabe de que o perfectivo é mais comumente empregado na indicação de tempo passado, em ambientes neutros, onde outras interpretações não são possíveis, e, ao mesmo tempo, o aspecto perfectivo. O imperfectivo comporta-se semelhantemente ao tempo flexional presente do português e expressa o tempo simultâneo ao momento da fala, o futuro, o passado ou não apresenta nenhuma ligação com o tempo; pode ainda ser traduzido pelas três formas nominais, quando em perífrase. Na área aspectual, expressa o imperfectivo com verbos durativos ou, com verbos pontuais, o perfectivo ou o iterativo; precedido do verbo ﮐﺍن /kāna/ indica a continuidade do evento no passado, com uma leitura de situação habitual ou iterativa; ocorre, também, com ﻤﺎ ﺯﺍﻝ /mā zāla/ para indicar a continuidade no presente. / This thesis investigates Tense and Aspect expression in Arabic and Portuguese language, in order to establish a discussion of how both forms that composes its verbal system - /almāḍī/ and almuḍāriᶜ/, here named as perfective and imperfective, respectively -, can be represented in Brazilian Portuguese. The analysis method started from the reading and translation of the text took as corpus \"The Persian Carpet\", a Hanan Aššayḫ\'s short story following the verbal forms identification to be analyzed in order to propose a translation according to the temporal division of the Portuguese verbal system structure. That was a discussion of the decision for each tense (or mood) that translated the Arabic forms, taking into account the context, it\'s temporal/apectual interpretation and also the Aktionsart of each verb. This research finding coincided with conclusions pointed out by studies about Arabic language, such Cuvalay-Haak (1997), Holes (2004) and Bahloul (2008), that the perfective is generally used in the past tense indication, in neutral situations, where others interpretations are not possible or, at the same time, the perfective aspect. The imperfective (tense and aspect) behaves like the portuguese\'s present tense and also expresses the simultaneous time at the moment of speech, the future, the past or have no temporal link; it can even be translated by the three nominal forms, when in periphrasis. In the aspectual area, it expresses the imperfective with durative verbs, or with pontual verbs, the perfective or the iterative; preceded by the verb ﮐﺍن /kāna/ it indicates the event continuity in the past, with an habitual or iterative situation reading; it occurs also with the verb ﻤﺎ ﺯﺍﻝ /mā zāla/ to indicate the continuity in the present.

José Luiz Fiorin, em suas Astúcias da Enunciação (2001), analisa as categorias da enunciação de tempo, pessoa e espaço na língua portuguesa. Esse é o fundamento teórico no qual se baseia o presente trabalho. Nossa pesquisa concentra-se na língua francesa e nela trabalhamos somente a categoria de tempo, verificando a maneira pela qual a sua colocação estabelece referências temporais no discurso por meio das categorias concomitância vs. não-concomitância (anterioridade e posterioridade). É possível basearse em uma teoria para a língua portuguesa pelo fato de que há muita correspondência entre o francês e o português no que concerne as classes de palavras que expressam tempo em francês (verbo, advérbio, preposição e conjunção), embora haja também alguns pontos em que não existem equivalências, como veremos. O corpus utilizado para a realização desse trabalho é o jornal de maior referência na França: Le Monde; ele tem várias versões, mas utilizamos a mais lida: o quotidiano. Foram lidos somente jornais dos primeiros cinco meses de 2006. Na pesquisa, primeiramente, conceituamos o tempo, em seguida o sistematizamos, considerando os sistemas enuncivo e enunciativo e as categorias topológicas de concomitância e não- concomitância em relação aos momentos de referência presente, pretérito e futuro. Reconhecemos alguns tempos verbais franceses sem equivalentes no português e especiais na língua francesa: passé simple, passé antérieur e passé surcomposé. Ainda estudamos a debreagem de segundo grau e o modo subjuntivo. Culminamos na ação intencional do enunciador e suas neutralizações verbais, isto é, as embreagens temporais. Esperamos contribuir para a conceituação da categoria de tempo da língua francesa, auxiliando no ensino/aprendizagem dessa língua / Jose Luiz Fiorin, in his Astucias da Enunciação, analyses the categories of the expression of time, space and person. This is the theoretical basis of this study. The dissertation analyses the French language and deals only with the tense category, verifying how its collocation establishes temporal references in discourse by means of concomitance vs non-concomitance categories (anterior/posterior). It is possible to use this as a basis for the Portuguese language because there are many parallels between French and Portuguese in terms of the word classes which express tense (verb, preposition and conjunction), although there are also some points that do not have parallels , as we shall see. The corpus used in carrying out this work is the most quoted newspaper in France: Le Monde, and the daily newspapers of the first five months of 2006 are the basis for the corpus. Firstly, time is considered, and then systematized, examining the enuncive and enunciative systems and the topographical categories of concomitance vs nonconcomitance in relation to the present, past and future. Certain tenses with no equivalents in Portuguese have been recognised, such as the passé simple, passé antérieur and passé surcomposé. Second degree \"debreagem\" and the subjunctive mood are also analysed, and the dissertation ends with an analysis of the writer\'s intentional action and his verbal neutralizations. Hopefully, this study will contribute to the conceptualisation of the tense category in French, helping the teaching and learning of this language

José Luiz Fiorin, em suas Astúcias da Enunciação (2001), analisa as categorias da enunciação de tempo, pessoa e espaço na língua portuguesa. Esse é o fundamento teórico no qual se baseia o presente trabalho. Nossa pesquisa concentra-se na língua francesa e nela trabalhamos somente a categoria de tempo, verificando a maneira pela qual a sua colocação estabelece referências temporais no discurso por meio das categorias concomitância vs. não-concomitância (anterioridade e posterioridade). É possível basearse em uma teoria para a língua portuguesa pelo fato de que há muita correspondência entre o francês e o português no que concerne as classes de palavras que expressam tempo em francês (verbo, advérbio, preposição e conjunção), embora haja também alguns pontos em que não existem equivalências, como veremos. O corpus utilizado para a realização desse trabalho é o jornal de maior referência na França: Le Monde; ele tem várias versões, mas utilizamos a mais lida: o quotidiano. Foram lidos somente jornais dos primeiros cinco meses de 2006. Na pesquisa, primeiramente, conceituamos o tempo, em seguida o sistematizamos, considerando os sistemas enuncivo e enunciativo e as categorias topológicas de concomitância e não- concomitância em relação aos momentos de referência presente, pretérito e futuro. Reconhecemos alguns tempos verbais franceses sem equivalentes no português e especiais na língua francesa: passé simple, passé antérieur e passé surcomposé. Ainda estudamos a debreagem de segundo grau e o modo subjuntivo. Culminamos na ação intencional do enunciador e suas neutralizações verbais, isto é, as embreagens temporais. Esperamos contribuir para a conceituação da categoria de tempo da língua francesa, auxiliando no ensino/aprendizagem dessa língua / Jose Luiz Fiorin, in his Astucias da Enunciação, analyses the categories of the expression of time, space and person. This is the theoretical basis of this study. The dissertation analyses the French language and deals only with the tense category, verifying how its collocation establishes temporal references in discourse by means of concomitance vs non-concomitance categories (anterior/posterior). It is possible to use this as a basis for the Portuguese language because there are many parallels between French and Portuguese in terms of the word classes which express tense (verb, preposition and conjunction), although there are also some points that do not have parallels , as we shall see. The corpus used in carrying out this work is the most quoted newspaper in France: Le Monde, and the daily newspapers of the first five months of 2006 are the basis for the corpus. Firstly, time is considered, and then systematized, examining the enuncive and enunciative systems and the topographical categories of concomitance vs nonconcomitance in relation to the present, past and future. Certain tenses with no equivalents in Portuguese have been recognised, such as the passé simple, passé antérieur and passé surcomposé. Second degree \"debreagem\" and the subjunctive mood are also analysed, and the dissertation ends with an analysis of the writer\'s intentional action and his verbal neutralizations. Hopefully, this study will contribute to the conceptualisation of the tense category in French, helping the teaching and learning of this language

Cai, Jing. / "August 2010." / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-161). / Abstracts in English and Chinese; some appendixes in English and Chinese. / Chapter CHAPTER ONE --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter CHAPTER TWO --- p.4 / Chapter 2.1 --- Introduction --- p.4 / Chapter 2.2 --- What is transfer? --- p.4 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- History and development of transfer research --- p.4 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- The problem of definition-transfer or CLI? --- p.7 / Chapter 2.2.3 --- Interlanguage transfer --- p.9 / Chapter 2.3 --- What can be transferred? --- p.10 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Different types of transfer --- p.10 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Transfer in comprehension- an ignored area in the transfer study --- p.13 / Chapter 2.4 --- The study of third language acquisition (TLA) and CLI in TLA --- p.15 / Chapter 2.4.1 --- Factors that influence transfer in the multilingual context --- p.15 / Chapter 2.4.2 --- The role of (psycho) typology in the cross-linguistic influence of TLA --- p.18 / Chapter 2.4.3 --- The role of L2 proficiency --- p.21 / Chapter 2.5 --- Methodological considerations in the study of transfer --- p.23 / Chapter 2.5.1 --- Research using think-aloud protocol in reading comprehension --- p.25 / Chapter 2.5.2 --- Think-aloud protocol in the study of transfer --- p.26 / Chapter 2.5.3 --- Controversies and limitations in using the think-aloud method --- p.27 / Chapter 2.6 --- "A contrastive analysis of tense and aspect in Chinese, English and French" --- p.29 / Chapter 2.6.1 --- Tenses in French and in English --- p.29 / Chapter 2.6.2 --- Aspectual systems of French and English --- p.30 / Chapter 2.6.3 --- Tense and aspect in Mandarin Chinese --- p.34 / Chapter 2.6.4 --- Passe compose in French --- p.35 / Chapter 2.7 --- "Pilot studies: findings, implications and modifications" --- p.38 / Chapter 2.7.1 --- "The first pilot study (June, 2009)" --- p.38 / Chapter 2.7.2 --- "The second pilot study (July, 2009)" --- p.39 / Chapter 2.7.3 --- "The third pilot study (July, 2009)" --- p.40 / Chapter 2.8 --- Research questions --- p.43 / Chapter CHAPTER THREE --- METHODOLOGY --- p.44 / Chapter 3.1 --- Participants --- p.44 / Chapter 3.2 --- Sampling procedure --- p.44 / Chapter 3.3 --- Data collection technique: The think-aloud protocol --- p.46 / Chapter 3.4 --- The warming-up (training) session of TAP --- p.47 / Chapter 3.5 --- Research design --- p.48 / Chapter 3.5.1 --- Task one: On-line comprehension task --- p.48 / Chapter 3.5.2 --- Task Two: a test on English past and perfect tenses --- p.51 / Chapter 3.5.3 --- Task three: a follow-up interview --- p.52 / Chapter 3.6 --- Materials --- p.53 / Chapter 3.7 --- Data processing --- p.54 / Chapter 3.8 --- Data analysis --- p.55 / Chapter CHAPTER FOUR --- GENERAL RESULTS --- p.57 / Chapter 4.1 --- Introduction --- p.57 / Chapter 4.2 --- General results on how the tasks were completed --- p.57 / Chapter 4.3 --- Describing the coding scheme --- p.60 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- The criterion for judging the case of transfer and its category --- p.64 / Chapter 4.4 --- Answers to Research Question 1 --- p.67 / Chapter 4.5 --- Answers to Research Question 3 --- p.71 / Chapter 4.5.1 --- Some general descriptive analysis of transfer in tense and aspect --- p.71 / Chapter 4.5.2 --- Relationship between transfer (in tense and aspect) and other variables --- p.73 / Chapter 4.6 --- Answers to Research Question 4 --- p.80 / Chapter 4.6.1 --- Different causes for errors in tense and aspect- ProE and ProF --- p.82 / Chapter 4.7 --- General results of Research Question 2 --- p.84 / Chapter 4.8 --- Conclusion --- p.97 / Chapter CHAPTER FIVE --- DISCUSSION --- p.99 / Chapter 5.1 --- Introduction --- p.99 / Chapter 5.2 --- Research questions readdressed --- p.99 / Chapter 5.3 --- Discussion of Research Question 1 --- p.100 / Chapter 5.4 --- Discussion of Research Question 3 --- p.104 / Chapter 5.4.1 --- General descriptive analysis --- p.104 / Chapter 5.4.2 --- Discussion of the relationship between transfer in tense and aspect and other variables related to L2 proficiency --- p.104 / Chapter 5.5 --- Discussion of Research Question 4 --- p.111 / Chapter 5.6 --- Discussion of Research Question 2 --- p.114 / Chapter 5.6.1 --- System transfer from Chinese in tense and aspect --- p.115 / Chapter 5.6.2 --- Patterns of transfer from English in tense and aspect- a dynamic system --- p.117 / Chapter 5.6.3 --- Cross-linguistic interaction in third language acquisition --- p.126 / Chapter 5.7 --- Conclusion --- p.129 / Chapter CHAPTER SIX --- "IMPLICATIONS, LIMITATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH" --- p.132 / Chapter 6.1 --- Introduction --- p.132 / Chapter 6.2 --- Implications for L3 instructions --- p.132 / Chapter 6.3 --- Limitations of the current study --- p.136 / Chapter 6.4 --- Suggestions for future research --- p.140 / BIBLIOGRAPHY / APPENDICES