The Interaction of Lexical and Grammatical Aspects in English as a Foreign Language for Iranian Farsi Speaking Learners
Year: 2012
Type: article
Abstract: This study aims to investigate the claims of Aspect Hypothesis which holds that in the past tense, perfective verbs precede imperfective verbs, having a different pattern of acquisition based on their lexical aspect, i.e., learners initiate using perfective past marks from the prototypical verbs which contain the achievement and accomplishment lexical aspects, while they start using imperfective past marks from the verbs whose lexical aspects are stative and activity. In this study, ten Iranian (from Mashhad) Farsi speaking learners of English were given a film to watch and retell the story in impersonal narrative in past tense. The verbs which they applied were classified into 4 lexical aspect categories with different semantic features like telicity, durativity, and dynamicity; these categories include: state, achievement, accomplishment and activity. The results suggest that atelic verbs like state and activity verbs were easier for the students to produce in past perfect and the atelic durative verbs-activities- were produced with higher accuracy in past imperfective.
Authors: Reza Pishghadam, Sima Ziaei
Institution: Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W573599587