Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig and others have found that learners are more likely to mark past tense on some verbs than on others. For example, learners are more likely to mark past tense in sentences such as ‘I broke the vase’ and ‘my sister fixed it with glue’ than in sentences such as ‘She seemed happy last week’ or ‘My father swam in that lake’. These differences appear to be due to the ‘lexical aspect’, that is, the kinds of meanings expressed by the different verbs. Learners seem to find it easier to mark past tense on verbs that refer to something whose end point can easily be determined. These are referred to as ‘accomplishments’ and ‘achievements’ (‘I ran three miles. My brother took an aspirin and went to bed’) For ‘activities’ that may continue for some period (‘I sam all afternoon’) or ‘states’ that may be perceived as constants (‘He seemed happy to sit by the lake’). learners use simple past markers less frequently.
First language can have an influence here too. Laura Collins investigated the different English verb forms used by French speakers. The past tense that is most commonly used in spoken French and that is usually a translation of a simple past form in English is form that resembles the present perfect in English. Thus, the equivalent of ’Yesterday he ate an apple’ is Hier il a mange une pomme—literally, ‘Yesterday he has eaten an apple’. Teachers often comment on French speakers’ tendency to overuse the present perfect. In Collins’ study, learners completed passages by filling in blanks with the appropriate from of a verb. In places where English speakers would have used the simple past, French speakers did sometimes use the perfect (either present perfect or past perfect) forms. Furthermore, they used them more frequently than a comparison group of Japanese speakers. However, the French speakers were more likely to use perfect forms for achievement and accomplishment verbs than for the states and activities. Collins observes, ‘The [first language]’ influence does not appear to override the effect of lexical aspect; rather it occurs within it’