1

Xuan Liu

Draft 1

Dr. Strauss

Simplifying Tense and Aspect for Chinese EFL learners

Compared with English, Chinese is an aspect language without morphological

tense markers. Therefore, it is inevitable that Chinese EFL learners struggle with

acquiring the usage and complex concept of English tense and aspect. By

examining ten stories from Grimm’s fairytale in both Mandarin Chinese and

English and also ten mandarin blog entries, this paper aims at finding a way to

simplify English tense and aspect for Chinese EFL learners. Particularly, it

examines the interaction of temporal adverbial clauses, aspectual markers and

lexical aspect in mandarin Chinese. At the end, some pedagogical suggestions for

both Chinese EFL learners and the teaching of tense and aspect are made.

1. Introduction
Compared with English, Chinese has no morphological tense markers (Li and Thompson,

1981, p. 13). Instead, time adverbials are extensively used to indicate tense. Besides, as an aspect

language, Chinese also depends on aspectual markers and inherent meaning of verbs to

determine temporality. Obviously, the temporal system in Mandarin is extremely different from

the one in English, no wonder Chinese EFL learners usually struggle with acquiring the usage

and complex concept of English tense and aspect. Therefore, a great deal of attention has been

paid by many researchers to investigate temporal reference in mandarin in order to assist those

EFL learners. However, most of those studies focus on understanding aspectual markers and
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lexical aspect respectively, few studies look into the function of time adverbials and how it

interacts with aspectual markers and inherent meanings of verbs.

This study aim at simplifying the learning of complex tense and aspect system in English

for Chinese EFL learners by examining the interaction between aspectual markers, time

adverbials and inherent meanings of verbs. It uses ten stories from Grimm’s fairytale in both

English and Chinese and as well ten blog entries in Chinese as data and examines sentences with

time adverbial clauses in particular. And, the paper is organized as follows: it starts with a brief

literature review about notions of tense and aspect, the concept of grammatical aspect and lexical

aspect, as well studies concerning temporal reference in mandarin Chinese. Then it explains the

study aim, data and methodology. After that, it presents a detailed data analysis of the study and

tries to identify some patterns of temporal reference in mandarin. And, the paper ends with

pedagogical suggestions for both Chinese EFL learners and teachers.

2. Review of the Literature

2.1. Notions of tense and aspect

All languages have their own ways of locating time. The differences exist in the accuracy

of temporal location achieved in every language and as well the ways in which temporality is

located (Comrie, 1985, p.7). It is commonly acknowledged that tense and aspect are two notions

closely related to temporality. As Comrie (1976) said, both tense and aspect are concerned with

time, but in very different ways: tense indicates “situation-external time” while aspect indicates

“situation-internal time”. To be explicit, tense is a “deictic category” which “locates situations in

time, usually with reference to the present moment, though also with reference to other

situations”. And, aspect is a non-deictic category and is concerned with “the internal temporal
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constituency of the one situation” (p.5). Many scholars argue that aspect is compositional in

nature, involving two important components: grammatical aspect and lexical aspect.

2.2. Grammatical aspect and Lexical aspect

Grammatical aspect, also known as viewpoint aspect, refers to “aspectual distinctions

which are marked explicitly by linguistic devices, usually auxiliaries and/or inflectional and

derivational morphology” (Li and Shirai, 2000, p. 3). Xiao and Mcenery (2004) argue that

grammatical aspect is grammatical in nature and tends to be language specific. However, the

perfective/imperfective opposition is generally accepted as grammatical aspect (Comrie, 1976).

Figure 1 shows the classification of aspectual oppositions:

Figure 1

Perfective Imperfective

Habitual Continuous

Non-progressive Progressive

(Cited from Comrie, 1976, p. 25)

Lexical aspect refers to “the semantic characteristics inherent in the lexical content of

words, usually verbs or verb phrases that are defined in terms of the temporal properties of given

situations that the verb describe” (Li and Shirai, 2000, p.14). According to Xiao and Mcenery

(2004), lexical aspect is semantic/conceptual in nature and is supposed to be shared by all

languages. Three types of lexical aspectual oppositions are identified by Comrie (1976, p. 41-

51). They are punctual/durative, telic/atelic and state/dynamic. Depending on such kinds of

inherent aspectual meaning oppositions, verbs are divided into four categories by Vendler
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(1967): activity, accomplishment, achievement and state. Table 1 illustrates Vendler’s

classification of verbs based on their inherent lexical aspect:

Table 1

State Activity Accomplishment Achievement

Punctual - - - +

Telic - - + +

Dynamic - + + +

(Cited from Andersen and Shirai, 1994, p. 134)

2.3. Studies about temporality in mandarin Chinese

The expression of tense and aspect is not universal among languages. For example, In

English, both tense and aspect are realized grammatically by using overt morphological

inflection. However, mandarin Chinese is another case. Aspect exists as a grammatical category

while tense does not. In order to locate in time, mandarin Chinese depends on aspectual markers

and lexical means such as temporal adverbials. A wealth of research has been done to look into

aspectual markers used in mandarin Chinese, mainly the perfective “le” and “guo” and

progressive “zai”, “zhe” and “zheng”. There is also a large amount of research concerning

lexical aspect However, little research has been done to examine the function of time adverbials

in mandarin Chinese and how it interacts with the other two components. It is important to

understand whether and how these three components work simultaneously at both lexical and

sentential levels. That will be the focus of this study.

3. Present Study

3.1. Data and method

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The author collects data from a certain genre of writing: narratives. In order to get a large

variety of temporal expressions, both fairytales and blog entries are used. In detail, ten stories

from Grimm’s fairytale in both English and Chinese and as well ten Chinese blog entries are

collected and analyzed. Due to the space limit, the current analysis is confined to sentences with

temporal adverbials, especially with temporal adverbial clauses.

3.2. Research Questions

The following research questions are formulated:

1. In the examined sentences, what are the forms and structures of time adverbials?

2. Does time adverbial clause interact with aspectual markers and the inherent meanings of

verbs in the main clause? If yes, how do they interact with each other?

3. If there is a clash among these three factors, which factor will override? Under what kind

of situations?

4. Can this interactive relationship explain the difficulties that Chinese EFL learners have in

acquiring tense and aspect in English?

3.3. Data analysis and findings

3.3.1 Forms of Time adverbials

It is found that time adverbials are frequently used in these data. And, there are three

levels of temporal adverbials. Table 2 shows the number and percentages of each level of

temporal adverbials found.

Table 2

Categories Example
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Word level zhi (just),{yi, yijing,zao,zaoyi}(already), jiu(will), xian(first), cai

(just), like (immediately),yixiang(always), gang (just), cong lai
(never), {xinjin,jinlai}(recently), {yizao,ceng} (once),
jin tian (today)，zuo tian(yesterday)，ming tian (tomorrow)

Phrase level Qian jige yue（the first few months）

Di er tian zaoshang (the next morning)
Dao shihou （by that time）
zai/dang。。。de shihou/shi，chenzhe。。。de shihou (when…,
as…)
Sentence level zhiqian/yiqian (before)
zhihou/yihou(after)
zicong/cong(since)
cong。。。dao。。。(from…to)
yi (no sooner than)

3.3.2. Structure of sentence level time adverbial

Since the focus of this study is to examine the function of time adverbial clause and how

it interacts with grammatical aspect and lexical aspect in the main clause, it is important to

understand the structure of time adverbial clauses in mandarin Chinese first. Figure 2 shows the

structure:

Figure 2

With verb + aspectual marker (category 1)

Time adverbial clause

Without verb (category 2)

Here are some examples found in this study:

1. (a) zai tongshi mang zhe (aspectual marker “zhe”) pai (verb “shoot”) waijing de shihou
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(b) gang (temporal adverb “just”) ru (verb “start going”) tuo de shihou

(c) mama yao (modal verb “yao”) likai (verb “leave”) de shihou

(d) dao (verb “arrive”) le (aspectual marker “le”) menkou shi

2. (a) zai tian re (warm/hot) de shihou

(b) zai women kunnan (be in trouble) de shihou

As shown above, examples in group one all have verbs. As for the use of aspectual marker,

temporal adverb and modal verb, it is not obligatory. On the other hand, examples in group don’t

use verbs but adjectives.

3.3.3. Structure of the examined complex sentence

We’ve mentioned before that complex sentence with time adverbial clauses were

extracted from the data and analyzed. Figure 3 shows the structure of the complex sentence in

general.

Figure 3

With verb 1
+ aspectual marker 1

Time adverbial clause

With copula +
adjective

Complex sentence

Main clause verb 2 + aspectual marker 2

Here is an example to illustrate the structure:

Zai tongshimen mang zhe pai waijing de shihou, women zai xiaomen qian paizhao liunian.
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Aspectual marker “zhe” Verb 1 “shoot” Verb 2 “take”

3.3. 4. Interaction

All the complex sentences extracted from the data are analyzed according to the structure

mentioned above. The results show that time adverbial clauses, aspectual markers and inherent

meanings of verbs involved work simultaneously at both lexical and sentential levels. Sometimes

they work in the same direction. However, in some other situations, there might be a clash. And,

under that kind of circumstance, which factor overrides is situation-specific. I’ll discuss them in

turn.

I. Time adverbial clause without a verb

Within the data, the frequency of time adverbials without verbs is much lower than time

adverbials with verbs. For time adverbial clauses without verbs, it is usually translated into

English as copula plus adjective. It is more like a generic description of a situation rather than an

inference of a specific time point. In this situation, if there is an aspectual marker in the main

clause, it will dominate the temporality in the whole sentence. Let’s look at one example first.

3(a)

Ta zai women kunnan d shihou bangzhu guo women

e
他 在 我们 困难 的 时候 帮助 过 我们
He us In trouble When Helped Aspectual marker “guo” us
He helped us when we were in trouble.

In this example, the time adverbial clause contains neither an aspectual marker nor a

verb. And, it describes a tense-less situation. It could have a past, present or future interpretation.

However, the main clause has a past interpretation because the use of experiential aspectual

marker “guo”. Therefore, a past interpretation has been assigned to the time adverbial clause as

well. As for the lexical aspect of the verb “help” in the main clause, it is an activity verb, which
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means it is atelic, dynamic and durative. If there is no aspectual marker following this verb, it

can indicate either perfective or imperfective aspect. However, the experiential “guo” adds

perfective aspect to the verb “help”. To summarize, in this sentence, the aspectual marker “guo”

in the main clause assign a past interpretation to the time adverbial clause and a perfective

meaning to the verb. In other words, the aspectual marker dominates in this sentence. In order to

test whether this conclusion works, I change the aspectual marker “guo” to several other ones to

see what happens. Here is example 3 (b):

3 (b)

Ta zai women kunnan d shihou hui Bangzhu women

e
他 在 我们 困难 的 时候 会 帮助 我们
He us In trouble When Modal verb “hui” Help us
He will help us when we are in trouble.

In 3(b), everything is the same as 3(b) except the aspectual marker “guo” is changed into

“hui”. hui can be understood as a model verb in mandarin Chinese and it has a future

interpretation. Similar as “guo” in 3(a), “hui” here assigns a future interpretation to the time

adverbial clause. However, there is “a general principle of historical linguistics that holds that

historically older inflectional/grammatical forms and word orders are preserved in subordinate

clauses longer than in independent clauses” (Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1999, p. 136).

Therefore, even though the future meaning is assigned to the time adverbial clause, the present

tense is used instead. Moreover, “hui” also assign an imperfective meaning to the verb “help”.

To be more specific, the imperfective meaning that “hui” assigns here is habitual (see figure 1)

because the action of helping here is “characteristic of an extended period of time, so extended in

fact that the situation referred to is viewed not as an incidental property of the moment but,
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precisely, as a characteristic feature of the whole period” (Comrie, 1976, p. 27-28). As a result,

simple aspect is used in this sentence.

Actually, in both 3(a) and 3(b), even though the time adverbial clause does not exist, the

tense and aspect will not be changed at all as long as the aspectual markers “hui” and “guo”

exist. For example, if time adverbial clauses are taken away from 3(a) and 3(b):

Ta hui Bangzhu women

他 会 帮助 我们
He Modal verb “hui” Help us
He will help us.

Ta Bangzhu guo women

他 帮助 过 我们
He Helped Aspectual marker “guo” us
He helped us.

As shown above, it is easy to see that nothing changed after the time adverbial clause is

taken. Therefore, in 3 (a) and 3 (b), the grammatical aspect of aspectual marker overrides the

semantic meaning of the time adverbial clause and the lexical aspect of the verb in the main

clauses.

II. Time adverbial with a verb

For time adverbial clauses with a verb, sometimes an aspectual marker, a modal verb, or

a temporal adverb will be involved in the clauses as well. Under this circumstance, the

interaction of time adverbial clause, aspectual marker and inherent meaning of the verbs will be

more complicated since it is entirely possible that two verbs and two aspectual markers are

working at the same time. We will examine these different situations in turn.

Let’s look at example 4 (a) first.

Time adverbial in 4 (a):

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zai tongshi mang zhe pai waijing de shihou

在 同事 忙 着 拍 外景 的 时候
colleague busy Progressive marker shoot Outdoor when
When my colleagues were busy shooting the outdoor scene

Main clause in 4 (a):

Women zai xiaomen qian paizhao liunian

我们 在校门前 拍照 留念
We At the gate Take pictures
We were taking pictures at the gate.

As we can see, in this example, the time adverbial clause includes an activity verb

“shoot” and a progressive aspectual marker “zhe” while the main clause includes an activity verb

“take” without any other aspectual markers or model verbs. It is easy to understand that the time

adverbial clause adopts past progressive tense due to the progressive marker “zhe”. Since activity

verbs are intrinsically durative, there is no clash between the aspectual marker and the lexical

aspect of the verbs in this case. It is also noteworthy that the main clause uses past progressive

tense, too. Therefore, we hypothesize that if there were no aspectual markers in the main clause,

the aspectual marker in the time adverbial determines the tense and aspect in the main clause.

Now we will look at example 4 (b) which has an aspectual marker in the main clause and

no aspectual marker in the time adverbial clause.

4 (b)

Wo Tingshuo guo taiduo xiaohai gang ru tuo bushiyin de gushi

g
我 听说 过 太多 小孩 刚 入 托 不适应 的 故事
I hear many kids just go nursery misfit story
I have heard too many stories about the misfit of the kids when they just start going to the nursery.

In this example, the main clause includes a state verb “hear” and a perfective marker

“guo” while the time adverbial clause has an activity verb “go” and no aspectual marker. State

verbs are atelic, durative and stative. Simple present are usually associated with state verbs.
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Besides, the perfective marker “guo” indicates the completeness of this state. The interaction

between the lexical aspect of the state verb and the perfective marker “guo” makes the main

clause adopt present prefect tense. However, the perfective marker “guo” does not exert an

influence on the time adverbial clause. The time adverbial clause just uses simple present tense.

Taken together, 4 (a) and 4(b) suggests that if there were no aspectual markers in the main

clause, the aspectual marker in the time adverbial will affect the tense and aspect in the main

clause. However, if there were no aspectual markers in the time adverbial clause, the aspectual

marker in the main clause does not have an impact on the time adverbial clause.

Things will get more complicated if aspectual markers exist in both the time adverbial

clause and the main clause. Let’s look at 5 (a) now.

Time adverbial in 5 (a):

Wo yao zou de shihou

我 要 走 的 时候
I Model verb “will” leave When
When I was leaving

Main clause in 5 (a):

Tamen zheng gen xiaopengyou wan zhe ne
他们 正 跟 小朋友 玩 着 呢
They with friends play
They were playing with their friends.

As shown above, there is a model verb “yao” in the time adverbial clause in 5 (a). This

model verb is similar as the model verb “hui” in 3 (b). It serves as an imperfective marker and

thus assigns an imperfective meaning to the achievement verb “leave”. It implies that the action

of “leaving” has not been completed. Since “leave” is an achievement verb which is intrinsically

dynamic, telic and punctual, the time adverbial clause uses past progressive tense but still

conveys the meaning of future. As for the main clause, there are two progressive markers
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“zheng” and “zhe”. It seems that there is no clash between the aspectual markers in the time

adverbial clause and the main clause, respectively. Each of them operates individually.

Here is another example 5 (b).

Time adverbial in 5 (b)

qingwa dedao le gongzhu de xunuo zhihou

青蛙 得到 了 公主 的 许诺 之后
frog receive princess promise after
When he had received this promise

Main clause in 5 (b)

jiu qianru le shuitan
就 潜入 了 水潭
sink pond
The frog sank down.

It is noteworthy that the time adverbial in this example uses the past perfect tense. As far

as I know, past perfect tens is one of the most difficult ones for Chinese EFL learners to acquire.

The core meaning of past perfect in English is “an action completed in the past prior to some

other past event or time” (Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1999, p. 116). In this time adverbial,

the perfective marker “le” indicates the completeness and the verb “receive” is an achievement

verb. Besides, there is the word “after”. Combined together, these three suggest that the action of

“receiving” has already been completed before the frog sank down. With respect to the main

clause, there is also a perfective marker “le” and an action verb “sink”. By simply using present

tense, the sense of completeness is conveyed.

Though there are many more examples, we will not examine them individually due to the

space limit. Four generalizations can be drawn from the analysis so far. First, if the time

adverbials were without verbs, the grammatical aspect of the aspectual marker and the lexical

aspect of the verbs in the main clause override the lexical meaning of the time adverbial. Second,
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If the time adverbial were with verbs but without aspectual markers and the main clause were

with aspectual markers, the grammatical aspect of the aspectual marker and the lexical aspect of

the verbs are only effective within the main clause. Third, if the time adverbial were with verbs

and aspectual markers as well while the main clause has no aspectual marker, the grammatical

aspect of the aspectual marker in the time adverbial will have an impact on both the time

adverbial clause and the main clause. Fourth, if both the time adverbial clause and the main

clause have verbs and aspectual markers, each aspectual marker and verb performs its own

functions within their own territory. No evidence of clash is shown in the data.

4. Conclusion and Pedagogical implications

This study looks at how the aspect system in Mandarin works and how it can be

associated with the tense and aspect system in English. More importantly, this study aims at

providing some pedagogical suggestions for teaching Chinese EFL learners the tense and aspect

system in English. The findings so far suggest that time adverbial clauses and aspectual markers

are extremely important elements in shaping Chinese EFL learners’ understanding of the whole

concept of tense and aspect. As a result, it would be helpful if the classroom instruction could

use these two elements as an assistant tool to help Chinese EFL learners.

Studies in SLA already prove the effectiveness of providing positive evidence and

negative evidence. The traditional grammar teaching in China oftentimes use the way of

providing negative evidence. Here the first pedagogical suggestion I would made is based on

providing positive evidence. Instead of always giving corrective feedback to the students’

production of tense and aspect, teachers could provide the students with more contextualized

examples of tense and aspect use in authentic language. For example, teachers could show the

students that certain time adverbials frequently occur with particular tenses. Only providing these

examples and improving the input is not enough, teachers should also explain every example to
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the students and resort to the concept of time adverbial clause and aspectual markers in Chinese

when necessary.

If positive evidence is provided but the students do not notice it at all, it would be useless.

Therefore, the second suggestion I want to make is to increase the students’ awareness of the

difference between their own grammar and the target grammar. Each presentation of positive

evidence should go with a corresponding noticing exercise. For example, in order to help

students understand the concept of past perfect in English, teachers could first give an example

as “He had already left before I came” and as well explain it in detail to the students. Then,

teachers could give another sentence and ask the students to identify whether the use of past

perfect is correct or not.

In a closing, this study provides some observations and findings about the differences in

temporality between Mandarin and English. It also gives some pedagogical suggestions with

regards to teaching Chinese EFL learners the complicated tense and aspect system in English.

Hopefully it will make a contribution in both research area and real teaching.

References

Comrie, Bernard. (1976) Aspect. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Comrie, Bernard. (1985) Tense. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Li, Charles and Sandra Thompson. (1981). Mandarin Chinese: A functional reference grammar.

Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Li, P. and Shirai, Y. (2000). The acquisition of lexical and grammatical aspect. Mouton de

Gruyter.
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Richard Xiao & Tony McEnery. (2004). Aspect In Mandarin Chinese: A Corpus-based Study.

Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Vendler, Zeno. (1976). Linguistics and philosophy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.