The Effects of Chinese Perfective Aspect Marker le on the Simple Past Use in English Interlanguage

Abstract

This study focuses on the effects of Chinese aspect marker le on English simple past use based on 90 English narratives in simple past context, and aims to address three questions: (1) Does Chinese aspect marker le significantly affect the English simple past use for Chinese EFL learners? (2) Does Chinese aspect marker le significantly affect the English simple past use for Chinese EFL learners of different proficiency levels? And (3) Does the effect of le display a balanced development with the increase of the proficiency level of the Chinese EFL learners? Through quantitative analysis of simple past variation, we mainly scrutinized the frequency and distribution features of the simple past, and the influence of Chinese perfective aspect marker le on the simple past forms and marking. The analysis shows that the presence of the aspect marker le can enhance the acquisition of English simple past. And the influence of the aspect marker le displays a balanced development: the influence of le decreases with the increase of the proficiency level of the Chinese EFL learners. This research tries to explain this phenomenon from the perspective of Universal Grammar.