Transcript An Analysis of Verbal Aspect in Native Speaker and Language

Laura Nott
 The
study of spoken, written, and signed
language.
 TEFL
instructors can analyze the
discourse of their students, other
language learners, or native speakers.
A
narrative is a written or oral account of
an event or series of events.
• On the timeline - Foreground
• Off the timeline - Background
 Verb
Tense
 Verb Aspect
• Simple – foreground
• Progressive – background
• Perfect – background
 Eli
Hinkel- 2004
• Analyzed academic writings of native English
speakers and English learners
• Looked at usage of tense, aspect, and voice
 The
NNSs tended to use simple, active,
and past tense verbs.
 The
NSs used more progressive, perfect,
and passive verbs, and were less reliant
on past tense.
“It seems that the conventions of academic
writing and the attendant uses of tenses,
aspects and voice need to be addressed in L2
writing instruction.” (25)
Analyzing the use of verbal aspects in
NS and NNS narrative writing
 The
NNSs narratives would rely more on the
simple aspect than the NSs narratives
I
anticipated the numbers to show the NSs
narratives to have a greater number of
progressive and perfect than that of the NNSs
narratives.
 Native
speaker writing
• End Your Sleep Deprivation – a website where anyone
can write about their dreams
• Unspecified age, education, and writing experience
 Nonnative
speaker writing
• Asao Kojiro’s Learner Corpus - from UCL (Catholic
University of Louvain)
• Japanese student writings from July of 1997
• English majors in a private university near Tokyo
• Retelling the Japanese folktale of Momotaro
I
complied a corpus of:
• 15 NS narratives
• 15 NNS narratives
I
searched the corpus for the three verbal
aspects using AntConc.
L1 Narratives:
arling granddaughters are coming to visit--if you haven’t botched things up with your impatience and b
wn the hill. When I was on the road all the trees had been deep green pine trees. When I rolled down th
ng that truly terrified me. I don't remember if I had seen Satan himself, or just the severed goat head
didn't run at me. I somehow knew that the house I had rolled into belonged to him. He looked at me and
longed to him. He looked at me and I felt like he had asked me to walk with him, but I didn't hear word
dn't hear words, he made no sound. I just knew he had asked me without asking me. I walked with him ar
walked with him around the house. I felt like we had made small talk without speaking, until two boys
boulder. The wolf ran for the first time since I had seen him. He ran toward the two boys, barking. I
back over the small bridge and came to get me. I hadn't moved from my hiding spot until he came for me
eing the wolf again, but he had a human maid that had not been there before. I looked through the fridg
dreams about my son Jeff before, but none of them had ever before been so vivid. His image was so clear
ing a yellow shirt with his image on it, and Mark had not yet started to sprout up to his six-foot heig
Jeff was in remission from leukemia and his hair had come back after falling out during chemotherapy.
bed and went into the bathroom, still shaking. It had been 30 years since Jeff died of leukemia, and fi
in.ۥ
My husband, Sam, was on a bike trip, and I had been dreaming of sleeping in until at least 9 a.m
L2 Narratives:
and. "We shall name Momotaro." "Yes, it is." They had grown the baby since the day. A few years later,
old woman stopped to go to the Onigasima Momotaro had gone to there. When he went out the old woman gave
Table of L1 and L2 Data
L1
L2
Column1
Narratives: Narratives:
# of progressives
29
7
# of perfects
19
2
# of sentences
156
96

To describe the condition of something in order
to create a background for the actions to come:
• L1 narrative: “The house was sitting in a huge clearing.”
• L2 narrative: “They cut the big peach, then a baby was
standing up crying in it.”

To describe an action that is still in progress
when a second action occurs:
• L1 narrative: “I was losing speed and my friends started
leaving without me.”
• L2 narrative: “When she is washing there, the peach
streams from the river.”

The present perfect indicates that at the present
moment something has already been done, while
the past perfect indicates that during the
referenced time, something had already been
done.
• L1 narratives:
 “I’ve had many dreams about my son Jeff before.”
 “I hadn't moved from my hiding spot until he came for
me.”
• L2 narratives:
 “They had grown the baby since the day.”
 “Momotaro had gone to there.”

Perfect-progressives are a combination of the
two aspects. This aspect indicates an action that
began in the past and continued until the present
or a specified past event.
• L1 narratives:
 “So I’ve been having this weird dream for almost a
month.”
 “I had been dreaming of sleeping in until at least 9
a.m.”
 NNSs
were using the aspects in the same
ways as NSs, but not as often.
 90%
of the sentences in the NNSs
narratives contained only simple aspects.
 70%
of the sentences in the NSs
narratives contain only simple aspect.
 In
order to write more like native
speakers, English language learners
need to expand their proficiency in
progressive and perfect aspects.
 Instructors
need to focus, not on the
grammar, but on the communicative use
of aspects within a context.