a number of researchers, including Jurgen Meisel, have observed the developing ability to use language to locate events in time. the research has shown that learners from difference first language backgrounds and acquiring a variety of second languages, acquire the language for referring to past events in a similar pattern.
like young children, learners with limited language may simply refer to events in the order in which they occurred or mention a time or place to show that the event occurred in the past.
Viet Nam. We work too hard.
My son comes. He work in the restaurant
Later, learners start to attach a grammatical morpheme marking the verb for past, although it may not be the one that target language uses for that meaning.
Me working long time. Now stop.
Past tense forms of irregular verbs may before the regular past is used reliably.
We went to school every day. We spoke Spanish.
After they begin marking past tense on regular verbs, learners may over generalize the regular –ed ending or the use of the wrong past form ( for example, the present perfect rather than the simple
past ).
My sister catched a big fish.
She has lived here since fifteen years.
Kathleen Bordovi- Harlig (2000) and other have found that learners are more likely to mark past tense in sentences such as ‘ I broke the vase’ and ‘ My sister fiwed it with glue’ than in sentences such as ‘She seemed happy last week’ or ‘ My sister 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 swam 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 ( 2002) 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 a form that resembles the present perfect in English. Thus, the equivalent of ‘ Yesterday he ate an apple’ is Hier ila 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 form of a verb. As expected, in places where English speakers would use 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’