Le on the Simple Past in Chinese Interlanguage

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2010 4 Apr. 2010

33 2 Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics (Bimonthly) Vol. 33 No. 2

The Influence of Chinese Aspect Marker leon the

Simple Past Marking in English Interlanguage: AnEmpirical Study of University Students in China1

CJintingLuoyang Foreign Languages University

AbstractThis study investigated how the Chinese perfective aspect marker leaffects the simple past

marking in the English interlanguage of Chinese-speaking learners, based on 120 English

writings and their corresponding Chinese translations. These data were collected from 120 EFL

learners in four universities of P. R. China. Afterwards, they were processed with Crosstabs and

Chi-square test in SPSS. It was found that the aspect marker leis significantly associated with

the simple past variation and significantly affects the simple past marking (p


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The Influence of Chinese Aspect Marker leon the Simple Past Marking in English Interlanguage

In the field of SLA, the acqusition of tense and aspect has received much attention,

especially in the new century (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig, 2000; Li & Shirai, 2000; Salaberry, 2000;

Salaberry & Shirai, 2002; Cai, 2003). Most studies have explored the influence of many

factors on the acquisition and use of tense and aspect in L2 (English in particular). Among

them, only a few touch on cross-linguistic factors, namely the effect of L1 tense and apectsystem (e. g., Sun, 1997; Cai & Zhu, 2006).

Chinese and English differ greatly in their tense and aspect system, though they share

some similarities as well. It is significant to investigate the effects of these differences and

similariteis not only to L2 research but also to L2 teaching. Therefore, we conducted an

empirical study to discern the influence of Chinese aspect markers on the learning of

English tense and aspect (Cai & Zhu, 2006). To understand this issue further, the author

narrows down the scope to the Chinese aspect marker leand English simple past and

examines the effect of the former on the latter.

In the following parts, the author first sets up the research background, then describes

the research design, reports the results and makes corresponding discussions, and finally

draws conclusion.

2. Research background

2.1 The grammatical realizations of past concept in the tense and aspect

system of Chinese and English

It is generally agreed that Chinese and English are different in tense and aspect system.According to Leech & Svartvik (1975), there are basically two tenses, namely present tense

and past tense, and two marked aspects, namely progressive aspect and perfect aspect.

However, the issue of tense and aspect system in Chinese has been controversial. The

traditional view is Chinese has aspect category but no tense category (e.g., Li & Thompson,

1981), although some others hold that Chinese does have tense(e.g.,Zhang, 1998).

In both Chinese and English, pastconcept can be expressed either through

temporal adverbials or tense and aspect system, but only the latter means is of my concern

in this paper. In English, usually the simple past tense is used to describe an action or state

before the speaking time. Whereas in Chinese, two aspect markers leand guoare often

used when referring to past actions.

The Chinese particle le has been most intensively studied so far. Most previous

works on le (e.g. Li & Thompson, 1981) believe that there exist two distinct although

homophonous les. The one immediately following verbs is called verbal leand the other

occurring in the sentence is usually termed sentential le. The first is illustrated in (1) and

the second in (2).

1) Ta chi-le san wan fan.

He eat LE three CL rice.

He ate three bowls of rice.

2) Ta chi san wan fan le.


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He eat three CL rice LE.

He has eaten three bowls of rice.(cited from Huang, 1988)

However, sometimes these two les may be fused into one. In this case, the le is not also

used immediately after the predicate but also at the end of the sentence, so it is difficult tomake a distinction unless speech context is consulted (see sentence (3) as an example).

3) Ta ku le

He cry LE

He cried

He has begun crying

Verbal le(herefrom le1) is a prototypical perfective aspect marker providing an entirety

view rather than locating events in time (Li & Thompson, 1981). In contrast, the sentential

le(hereafter le2) is said to give a change of state/statusmeaning (Li & Thompson, 1981;

Li, Thompson & Thompson, 1982). Sentence (2), for instance, with the sentential le

expresses the idea that before now he hadnt eaten three bowls of riceand now he has

come into that status. This study is concerned with verbal lewhether at the end or in the

middle of a sentence, including the cases like (1) and (3).

The verbal ledoes not locate events in past, but its major function of providing

an entirety view enables it to be used in talking about past events, like the counterpart

of English simple past tense (perfective past). But a deeper exploration reveals that theverbal leand the simple past in English have some substantial differences. The English

perfective past can be used with all verbs, but previous research on Chinese aspect markers

has shown that there are certain aspectual constraints on the occurrence of le. The verbal

lerequires an endpoint or boundary in the situation it presents (Li & Thompson, 1981;

Yang, 1995; Yang et al., 1999). In other words, leonly occurs in bounded situations, namely

achievements and accomplishments.

Chinese uses aspect suffix guo to indicate that an event has been experienced with

respect to some reference time. When the reference to time is left unspecified, guosignals

that the event has been experienced at least once at some indefinite time, which is usuallythe indefinite past (see (4)). When the specified reference time is in the past, then the focus

of the sentence is on the events having been experienced at least once and being over now

(see (5)). In addition, guocan be added to any Chinese verb regardless of its semantic

features.

4) wo chi guo Riben fan

I eat EXP Japan food

Ive eaten Japanese food (before). (Li & Thompson 1981: 226)

5) ta qunian dao Zhongguo qu guo

3sg last :year to China go EXP

S/He went to China last year. (Li & Thompson 1981: 228)


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From the descriptions above, both the perfective aspect marker leand the experiential

aspect markerguocan be used to refer to past actions, while simple past tense is usually

used in English. When the Chinese speakers learn English as an L2, it naturally arouses our

interest whether these Chinese aspect markers affect their learning of the simple past in

the target language.

2.2 L1 transfer in the acquisition of English tense/aspect

Whether L1 transfer operates in the tense/aspect acquisition is a disputed question.

Bardovi-Harlig (2000) seems to hold a negative attitude for the roles of L1 transfer in her

summary of some studies arguing that L1 effect is not evident. For example, Wibergs

(1996) study of Swedish-Italian heritage learners of Italian in Sweden showed no difference

when compared with Giacalone Ramats (1992, 1995) learners of Italian in Italy from

mixed L1 backgrounds. Unfortunately Bardovi-Harlig neglected some studies that had

attested the effects of L1 transfer in the tense/aspect acquisition. Collins (2002) concluded

that L1 transfer and the aspect hypothesis complement with each other based on his own

research.

Notwithstanding some studies that mentioned the L1 transfer in the acquisition

of tense/aspect system in L2, only two studies focusing on L1 transfer in this area have

been conducted. Flashner (1989) examined the influence of Russian as L1 on the use of

aspect in English oral narratives and concluded that transfer is a factor in determining

interlanguage tense/aspect system.

Sun (1997) is the first important study of the influence of mother tongue Chinese onthe acquisition of English tense/aspect. Selecting 12 Chinese-speaking overseas students

from the Mainland of China, Taiwan and Hong Kong as subjects, she analyzed the data

consisting of conversation and story retelling and discussed markedness, occurrence of

errors when English and Chinese are similar, and past tense marking rate. Nevertheless, she

relied too much on personal inference in her discussions. Specifically she imagined source

forms in Chinese and possible English targets in order to compare them with the subjects

produced forms. As her conclusions are based on imaginations to a certain extent, they are

not very convincing.

Recently, Cai & Zhu (2006) investigated the effects of the three aspect markers (zhe,leandguo) on the use of English tense/aspect based on data collected through a Chinese-

English translation test. 60 subjects on two English levels participated in this test. This

study found that Chinese aspect markers have positive effects on the use of tense and

aspect in English. The participants tended to translate the Chinese sentences with leinto

perfect aspect and simple past.

2.3 Connectionism and its relation with L1 transfer

Connectionism is a computational account of human information processing. A

connectionist network is based on the use of massively connected units (or calledneurons) that process information in parallel. Two key assumptions of connectionism

concern two aspects: (a) representationnew knowledge is formed through the

adaptation of the strengths or weights that hold among the connections of multiple


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processing units; (b) learningnew knowledge is among the connections of multiple

processing units (Li & Shirai, 2000: 149). Within connectionist networks, pathways are

strengthened or weakened through activation or use. Learning takes place as the network

(i.e. the learner) is able to make associations and associations come through exposure to

repeated patterns. The more often an association is made, the stronger that associationbecomes. New associations are formed and new links are made between larger and larger

units until complexes of networks are formed.

Connectionism affords to work as a framework for explaining L1 and L2 processing

and acquisition (Gasser, 1990). Although many processes of learning L1 and L2 are largely

the same, SLA may be unique in three ways. One of them is L1 transfer, namely L1 patterns

may transfer to L2 (and vice versa). Transfer is precisely what connectionist models are

good at (Gasser,1990: 189; Wang,2001). According to Gasser, once a network has learned

an association of a pattern P1 with a pattern P2, when it is presented with a new pattern

P3, this will tend to activate a pattern that is similar to P2 just to the extent that P3 is

similar to P1. Wang (2001) elaborates on how connectionism accounts for SLA as follows.

The strength of association may already (right or wrong) be present; that is, a pattern of

connectivity may already have been established. In other words, the L1 is already in place

and, therefore, there is a set of associations with their strengths fixed. In learning an L2,

L1 patterns can be easily activated when encountering elements whose patterns resemble

those in L1, and thus positive L1 transfer occurs and facilitates the learning of L2.

3. Research questions and hypotheses

Eckman (1977: 321) proposed the Markedness Differential Hypothesis (MDH) as follows:

The areas of difficulty that a language learner will have can be predicted on the basis of a

systematic comparison of the grammar of the native language (NL), the target language

(TL), and the markedness relations stated in universal grammar, such that:

Those areas of the TL that differ from the NL and more marked than the NL will

be difficult.

The relative degree of difficulty of the areas of the TL that are more marked than

the NL will correspond to the relative degree of markedness.

Those areas of the TL that are different from the NL, but are not more marked

than the NL will not be difficult.

From the contrastive descriptions in Section 2.1, we can see that two Chinese aspect

markers in question have higher (le) or equal (guo) markedness compared with English

simple past. According to the MDH, the learning of English simple will not pose difficulty

to Chinese speakers. In other words, these two aspect markers may facilitate the learning

of English simple past, as shown in the corresponding hypotheses.

Two research questions:

(1) Does the perfective aspect marker leaffect Chinese speakersuse of English simple

past?

(2) Does the experiential aspect marker guoaffect Chinese speakersuse of English


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simple past?

Two hypotheses:

(1) The perfective aspect marker lefacilitates Chinese speakersuse of English simple

past.

(2) The experiential aspect markerguofacilitates Chinese speakersof English simplepast.

However, as the cases of aspect markerguoseldom occur in the Chinese translations

of English compositions, the second research question and its hypothesis are excluded

from consideration in the following parts.

4. Methodology

This part provides some information about the participants, and then describes in detailhow the data were collected, coded and analyzed.

4.1 Participants

This study involved 120 college participants who had learned English as a foreign

language. At the time of investigation, they were eighteen to twenty years old and had

learned English as a main course for two terms in universities. The participants came from

classes at Dalian Medical University, Qufu Normal University, Shandong University of

Science and Technology, and Laiyang Institute of Agriculture (see Table 1). The average

instruction they received were three hours per week.

Table 1. Narratives and their sources

Writing topics UniversityNumber of

participants

1. writing about a collective activity Dalian Medical University (Cosmetology Medicine Department,

25) Qufu Normal University (Chinese Department, 15)40

2. writing about a regrettable event Shandong University of Science and Technology (Engineering

College of Mechanics and Electronics)40

3. writing about an unforgettable event Laiyang Institute of Agriculture (Majors: Economy Management,

Agriculture)40

4.2 Data collection

The data in the present study were restricted to narratives. The reason why narratives were

chosen is that narratives can provide appropriate context for the use of past tense with

a clear chronological order. In linguistic studies, a narrative is considered to be a text in

which the speaker relates a series of real or fictive events in the order in which they took

place(Dahl, 1984: 116). It is a rich source of instances of simple past use. Therefore,

written narratives were collected for the current research.

The data collection was manipulated by English teachers in these universities. The

author first ensured their full cooperation and explained to them in detail the purpose


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and the requirements for collecting written narrative compositions. The author provided

these teachers a plan for data collection, which specifies the topics, the requirements, data

collection procedures and some suggestions. There were three topics for the participants

to write about (see Table 1). The students at Dalian Medical University and Qufu Normal

University wrote a narrative about a collective activity, those at Shandong Universityof Science and Technology narrated a regrettable event and those at Laiyang Institute

of Agriculture depicted an unforgettable event. In each university, one teacher asked

the students to finish the narrative according to the requirements, then asked them to

translate the English compositions into Chinese. As is known, EFL learners usually think

in mother tongue when writing in English. Therefore, the immediate Chinese translations

of English writings reflect the participantsthinking process of writing in English. The

Chinese version of English narratives is an improved method of thinking-aloud protocol

in uncovering learnersthinking process. On the whole, writing the compositions took

25 minutes or so, and translation cost about 10 minutes. These composition scripts and

translations were posted to the author, who randomly selected 120 pieces from them.

During the course of composition sampling, the writings unqualified as narratives were

excluded. Finally, 120 English compositions together with their Chinese versions made up

the current sample.

When the data were being elicited, care was taken so that the participants would not

intentionally pay attention to grammatical structures. In order to draw their attention

to the content of the writing, the teachers told them that the compositions would be

evaluated on the basis of content rather than grammar. In addition, instructions were givenby the teachers in Chinese, so that the participants fully understood the requirements. This

also ensured that there would be no English expressions in the instructions for that might

be exploited by the participants. Thus, they were compelled to rely exclusively on their

own linguistic resources in writing in English.

4.3 Data coding

The present researcher typed all clauses of the 120 compositions into the Access file of the

Microsoft Office Program. In this file, every finite verb token accompanied by neighboring

elements was put in a different line as a record. As the focus of the study was the simplepast variation, only the obligatory contexts for simple past were taken into consideration.

Thus, the following clauses were eliminated from the coding process according to the

conventional practice of the coding techniques in previous studies.

Direct speech. Excluding direct speech not only follows established practice for

narrative analysis (Tajika, 1999), but also eliminates a potential external influence

on learner production (Bardovi-Harlig, 2000: 293).

Clauses with present tense as obligatory contexts. It is because the present study

focuses on the simple past variation.

Clauses with finite verbs that appear in contexts such as do-auxiliary or modalauxiliary (e.g. didnt agree, must agree). In these cases, only bare forms are possible,

so it is meaningless to talk about the simple past marking.

Clauses with finite verbs that do not conjugate for past tense (e.g. hit, put).


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Because of their characteristic, it is impossible to know whether learners use

simple present or simple past. The elimination of them from consideration can

increase the coding accuracy.

Clauses containing passive voice as predicates (e.g. I was injured in an accident). In

this case, the marking of verbs reflects learners competence in using passive voicenot simple past.

After that, 1951 finite verb tokens were obtained with simple past as obligatory

context. These verb tokens were further coded as below.

The data coding process was carried out in two phases: coding simple past and

coding the Chinese aspect markers. All the obligatory contexts for simple past were coded

into the following categories. We referred to the Chinese translation for the narrative when

it was difficult to determine the time reference in a clause.

marked as in standard English,

a, the simple present form, e.g. Before day I get to know the world

outside, or life expectancy increases [vp6, s-] to 60 years old.

b, be+ bare verbs, e.g. He was go to school immediately.

the present perfect, e.g. countries has raised [vp6, s-] in 30 years.

the past perfect, e.g.So I had said [vp6, 3-4] sorry to my parents.

generalization, e.g.As we growed [fm2, -]up from nursery school

a, other non-targetlike forms of verbs, e.g. When he grown [fm2, -] up, he

killed the

b, verb forms like was/were startedthe progressive

others (including some cases where beis omitted, e.g. I ready to return home.)

In the coding process, sometimes it was hard to judge whether a bare verb expresses

the simple present or simple past, as encountered by Bayley (1991: 31). To resolve this

problem, the researcher made full use of context as a clue, particularly the clauses before or

after the clause where the bare verb was used. In this regard, the Chinese version of English

writings provided a useful aid disambiguating the contexts.

It is generally agreed that EFL learners tend to think in their native language when

writing in English. So this study adopts immediate translation to uncover the learnersthinking in EFL and further investigate the influence of the Chinese aspect markers. A

summary of aspect markers used in Chinese translations only identified 9 tokens of the

experiential guo, but 317 cases of the perfective aspect marker leout of 1951 obligatory

contexts for simple past. Therefore, only le is investigated in this paper, while guo is

disregarded due to its sparse occurrences.

During the course of coding the interlingual factor, the aspect marker le was

identified within the Chinese translations whose English equivalents were obligatory

contexts for simple past. All the other finite verbs were coded as another type. On the

whole, all the finite verb tokens were coded into two types.finite verbs without aspect markers

finite verbs with the aspect marker le


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4.4 Data analysis

The data analysis started with the summary of the variants. A first summary of the

variants of the simple past variation yielded the results in Table 2. In this table, the verb

forms represented by the numbers in the left column have been explained in coding the

dependent variable.

Table 2. Verb forms of the SP variation: First run

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

1

2a

2b

3

4

5

6a

6b

7

8

Total

1424

416

1

9

11

25

13

20

6

26

1951

73.0

21.3

.1

.5

.6

1.3

.7

1.0

.3

1.3

100.0

73.0

21.3

.1

.5

.6

1.3

.7

1.0

.3

1.3

100.0

73.0

94.3

94.4

94.8

95.4

96.7

97.3

98.4

98.7

100.0

This table shows that most variants of the simple past variation are small in number of

occurrence, so those variants with similar quality were then combined to form a new

category with higher frequency. In particular, variant 2b was added to variant 2a; variants3 and 4 merged into a new category perfect; variant 7 was renamed as 4 and variant 8 as 6;

and variants 5, 6a and 6b were combined into a new category since all the three are types

of non-targetlike forms of simple past.

Then a second run of the summary of the variants was carried out, resulting in Table 3.

Table 3. Verb forms the SP variation: Second run

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

AUSP (1)

NTSP (2)

SPr (3)

Perfect (4)

Prog (5)

Others (6)

Total

1424

58

417

20

6

26

1951

73.0

3.0

21.4

1.0

.3

1.3

100.0

73.0

3.0

21.4

1.0

.3

1.3

100.0

73.0

76.0

97.3

98.4

98.7

100.0

From this table, we can see that appropriate use dominates the obligatory contexts of

simple past, accounting to 73.0% in the sampling texts. Among the inappropriate variants,

simple present takes the first place, followed by non-targetlike forms, perfect, progressiveand others. If adding together the first two categories in Table 3, their percentage of the

simple past marking rises to 76%. And the alternation between simple past and simple

present covers 97.4% of the simple past variation, so if we can find out how the simple


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past use varies with the linguistic factors, we can generally determine if the simple past

variation is free or systematic.

In order to answer the research question and test the hypothesis on aspect marker

le, Crosstabs, Chi-square test and Z-test were conducted, which produced results to be

presented below.

5. Results and discussion

At the outset, a Crosstabs analysis was performed to discover how the simple past variation

differs when verbs are followed by leor not in their Chinese equivalents (Table 4). The

results show that the existence of the aspect marker leis significantly associated with the

simple past variation in English narratives (p=.006) (Table 5).

Table 4. The distribution of the simple past variation by the existence of le

Chinese perfective marker

Without aspect markers Perfective aspect Marker le

SP variation

AUSP 71.7(1163) 79.0(252)

NTSP 2.9(47) 3.4(11)

SPr 22.7(368) 14.7(47)

Perfect 0.8(13) 2.2(7)

Prog 0.4(6)Others 1.5(24) 1.2(4)

Total 100.0(1621) 100.0(319)

Frequencies are in the parentheses.

Table 5.Chi-square test of the association between the SP variation and the existence of le

Value df Asymp. Sig (2-sided)

Pearson Chi-Square

Likelihood Ratio

N of Valid Cases

16.311

17.133

1942

5

5

.006

.004

According to Table 4, the finite verbs with the aspect marker leexhibit higher percentages

of the appropriate simple past use (79% > 71.7%) and the simple past marking (82.4%

> 74.6%) than those without aspect markers. Furthermore, a Z-test discovered that these

two pairs of differences are both significant (Z=2.69, p


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the simple past use. The enhancing effects of le can be explained by language transfer theory.

The aspect marker leindicates completed (telic) action. The completion of an action has no

relationship to time. But most completed actions occur in the past, and therefore the aspect

marker leis often translated into English past tense. See the following examples:

6) wo chifan

I eat meal

I have my meals (e.g. everyday). (or I will have the meal.)

7) (zuotian) wo chi le fan

(yesterday) I eat-le meal

I had (my meal) (yesterday).

Sentence (7) with the aspect marker leonly has one possible tense interpretation. The

event it expresses can only be perceived as happening in the past. In comparison, sentence

(6) without the aspect marker lemay express either a present or a future event. These two

sentences comprise a minimal pair with the only difference lying in the presence/absence

of le. This example seems to suggest that leis a past tense marker that derives the past tense

interpretation of sentence (7).

So far we have already answered the research question, and our finding supports the

hypothesis and the MDH. But to further explore why L1 transfer can happen, we should

resort to connectionism.

L2 learners in the present study have L1 Chinese at their disposal before Englishlearning, so the connectionist network of Chinese knowledge is already formed. It has

undergone continuous adaptations since the learners started learning L2 English. This

network has developed so ready to some degree as to comprehend and produce L2 English

by modifying the early existent associations among the neurons. Of course, it works

differently for comprehension and production (Gasser, 1990: 189). In the former, it starts

with most of the formal features of an input pattern and, because of context, usually some

of the content features as well, and the task is to fill in the missing content. In the latter,

it starts with a goal in the form of a set of content features, and the task is to fill in the

features specifying the form.During the process of L2 English writing, the participants were faced of a task of

production. As discussed in Part 4.2, they usually thought in L1 Chinese during the

process of L2 English writing. Each piece of thought came into the language network and

activated the associations among the neurons. When encountering the fixed pattern of

verb+lein L1 Chinese, the association strengthened because of its similarity to expected

pattern of verb+edin L2 English. This resulted in the higher use of simple past in English

composition.

6. Conclusion and implications

To summarize, this study found that the aspect marker le is significantly associated with


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the simple past variation and significantly affects the simple past marking (p


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Le on the Simple Past in Chinese Interlanguage