2010 4 33 2

Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics (Bimonthly)

Apr. 2010 Vol. 33 No. 2

The Influence of Chinese Aspect Marker le on the Simple Past Marking in English Interlanguage: An Empirical Study of University Students in China1

Luoyang Foreign Languages University

Jinting

Abstract
This study investigated how the Chinese perfective aspect marker le affects the simple past marking in the English interlanguage of Chinese-speaking learners, based on 120 English writings and their corresponding Chinese translations. These data were collected from 120 EFL learners in four universities of P. R. China. Afterwards, they were processed with Crosstabs and Chi-square test in SPSS. It was found that the aspect marker le is significantly associated with the simple past variation and significantly affects the simple past marking (p<.05). Besides, English verbs with le in their Chinese counterparts are significantly more highly marked by the simple past than those without le (p<.05). Afterwards, this finding is explained with transfer theory and connectionism.

Key words: English interlanguage; perfective aspect marker le; the simple past

1. Introduction
Time and space are two most important categories to human being, and thus have received much attention in linguistics. As for time, there are many linguistic realizations in various languages. Among them, tense and aspect are the most important grammatical means. According to Comrie (1976: 1-3), tense is a deictic category locating situation in time, usually concerning the present moment, though also with reference to other situations; aspect is not concerned with relating the time of the situation to any other time-point, but with the internal temporal constituency of one situation. The difference between these two terms is that aspect reflects situation-internal time and tense reflects situation-external time.
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The Inuence of Chinese Aspect Marker le on the Simple Past Marking in English Interlanguage

In the eld of SLA, the acqusition of tense and aspect has received much attention, especially in the new century (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig, 2000; Li & Shirai, 2000; Salaberry, 2000; Salaberry & Shirai, 2002; Cai, 2003). Most studies have explored the influence of many factors on the acquisition and use of tense and aspect in L2 (English in particular). Among them, only a few touch on cross-linguistic factors, namely the effect of L1 tense and apect system (e. g., Sun, 1997; Cai & Zhu, 2006). Chinese and English differ greatly in their tense and aspect system, though they share some similarities as well. It is signicant to investigate the effects of these differences and similariteis not only to L2 research but also to L2 teaching. Therefore, we conducted an empirical study to discern the influence of Chinese aspect markers on the learning of English tense and aspect (Cai & Zhu, 2006). To understand this issue further, the author narrows down the scope to the Chinese aspect marker le and English simple past and examines the effect of the former on the latter. In the following parts, the author rst sets up the research background, then describes the research design, reports the results and makes corresponding discussions, and nally draws conclusion.

2. Research background
2.1 The grammatical realizations of past concept in the tense and aspect system of Chinese and English It is generally agreed that Chinese and English are different in tense and aspect system. According to Leech & Svartvik (1975), there are basically two tenses, namely present tense and past tense, and two marked aspects, namely progressive aspect and perfect aspect. However, the issue of tense and aspect system in Chinese has been controversial. The traditional view is Chinese has aspect category but no tense category (e.g., Li & Thompson, 1981), although some others hold that Chinese does have tense(e.g.,Zhang, 1998). In both Chinese and English, past concept can be expressed either through temporal adverbials or tense and aspect system, but only the latter means is of my concern in this paper. In English, usually the simple past tense is used to describe an action or state before the speaking time. Whereas in Chinese, two aspect markers le and guo are often used when referring to past actions. The Chinese particle le has been most intensively studied so far. Most previous works on le (e.g. Li & Thompson, 1981) believe that there exist two distinct although homophonous les. The one immediately following verbs is called verbal le and the other occurring in the sentence is usually termed sentential le. The rst is illustrated in (1) and the second in (2).
1) Ta chi-le san wan fan. He eat LE three CL rice. He ate three bowls of rice. 2) Ta chi san wan fan le.

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He eat three CL rice LE. He has eaten three bowls of rice. (cited from Huang, 1988)

However, sometimes these two les may be fused into one. In this case, the le is not also used immediately after the predicate but also at the end of the sentence, so it is difcult to make a distinction unless speech context is consulted (see sentence (3) as an example).
3) Ta ku le He cry LE He cried He has begun crying

Verbal le (herefrom le1) is a prototypical perfective aspect marker providing an entirety view rather than locating events in time (Li & Thompson, 1981). In contrast, the sentential le (hereafter le2) is said to give a change of state/status meaning (Li & Thompson, 1981; Li, Thompson & Thompson, 1982). Sentence (2), for instance, with the sentential le expresses the idea that before now he hadnt eaten three bowls of rice and now he has come into that status. This study is concerned with verbal le whether at the end or in the middle of a sentence, including the cases like (1) and (3). The verbal le does not locate events in past, but its major function of providing an entirety view enables it to be used in talking about past events, like the counterpart of English simple past tense (perfective past). But a deeper exploration reveals that the verbal le and the simple past in English have some substantial differences. The English perfective past can be used with all verbs, but previous research on Chinese aspect markers has shown that there are certain aspectual constraints on the occurrence of le. The verbal le requires an endpoint or boundary in the situation it presents (Li & Thompson, 1981; Yang, 1995; Yang et al., 1999). In other words, le only occurs in bounded situations, namely achievements and accomplishments. Chinese uses aspect sufx guo to indicate that an event has been experienced with respect to some reference time. When the reference to time is left unspecied, guo signals that the event has been experienced at least once at some indenite time, which is usually the indenite past (see (4)). When the specied reference time is in the past, then the focus of the sentence is on the events having been experienced at least once and being over now (see (5)). In addition, guo can be added to any Chinese verb regardless of its semantic features.
4) wo chi guo Riben fan I eat EXP Japan food Ive eaten Japanese food (before). (Li & Thompson 1981: 226) 5) ta qunian dao Zhongguo qu guo 3sg last :year to China go EXP S/He went to China last year. (Li & Thompson 1981: 228)

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The Inuence of Chinese Aspect Marker le on the Simple Past Marking in English Interlanguage

From the descriptions above, both the perfective aspect marker le and the experiential aspect marker guo can be used to refer to past actions, while simple past tense is usually used in English. When the Chinese speakers learn English as an L2, it naturally arouses our interest whether these Chinese aspect markers affect their learning of the simple past in the target language. 2.2 L1 transfer in the acquisition of English tense/aspect Whether L1 transfer operates in the tense/aspect acquisition is a disputed question. Bardovi-Harlig (2000) seems to hold a negative attitude for the roles of L1 transfer in her summary of some studies arguing that L1 effect is not evident. For example, Wibergs (1996) study of Swedish-Italian heritage learners of Italian in Sweden showed no difference when compared with Giacalone Ramats (1992, 1995) learners of Italian in Italy from mixed L1 backgrounds. Unfortunately Bardovi-Harlig neglected some studies that had attested the effects of L1 transfer in the tense/aspect acquisition. Collins (2002) concluded that L1 transfer and the aspect hypothesis complement with each other based on his own research. Notwithstanding some studies that mentioned the L1 transfer in the acquisition of tense/aspect system in L2, only two studies focusing on L1 transfer in this area have been conducted. Flashner (1989) examined the inuence of Russian as L1 on the use of aspect in English oral narratives and concluded that transfer is a factor in determining interlanguage tense/aspect system. Sun (1997) is the rst important study of the inuence of mother tongue Chinese on the acquisition of English tense/aspect. Selecting 12 Chinese-speaking overseas students from the Mainland of China, Taiwan and Hong Kong as subjects, she analyzed the data consisting of conversation and story retelling and discussed markedness, occurrence of errors when English and Chinese are similar, and past tense marking rate. Nevertheless, she relied too much on personal inference in her discussions. Specically she imagined source forms in Chinese and possible English targets in order to compare them with the subjects produced forms. As her conclusions are based on imaginations to a certain extent, they are not very convincing. Recently, Cai & Zhu (2006) investigated the effects of the three aspect markers (zhe, le and guo) on the use of English tense/aspect based on data collected through a ChineseEnglish translation test. 60 subjects on two English levels participated in this test. This study found that Chinese aspect markers have positive effects on the use of tense and aspect in English. The participants tended to translate the Chinese sentences with le into perfect aspect and simple past. 2.3 Connectionism and its relation with L1 transfer Connectionism is a computational account of human information processing. A connectionist network is based on the use of massively connected units (or called neurons) that process information in parallel. Two key assumptions of connectionism concern two aspects: (a) representationnew knowledge is formed through the adaptation of the strengths or weights that hold among the connections of multiple
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processing units; (b) learningnew knowledge is among the connections of multiple processing units (Li & Shirai, 2000: 149). Within connectionist networks, pathways are strengthened or weakened through activation or use. Learning takes place as the network (i.e. the learner) is able to make associations and associations come through exposure to repeated patterns. The more often an association is made, the stronger that association becomes. New associations are formed and new links are made between larger and larger units until complexes of networks are formed. Connectionism affords to work as a framework for explaining L1 and L2 processing and acquisition (Gasser, 1990). Although many processes of learning L1 and L2 are largely the same, SLA may be unique in three ways. One of them is L1 transfer, namely L1 patterns may transfer to L2 (and vice versa). Transfer is precisely what connectionist models are good at (Gasser, 1990: 189; Wang, 2001). According to Gasser, once a network has learned an association of a pattern P1 with a pattern P2, when it is presented with a new pattern P3, this will tend to activate a pattern that is similar to P2 just to the extent that P3 is similar to P1. Wang (2001) elaborates on how connectionism accounts for SLA as follows. The strength of association may already (right or wrong) be present; that is, a pattern of connectivity may already have been established. In other words, the L1 is already in place and, therefore, there is a set of associations with their strengths xed. In learning an L2, L1 patterns can be easily activated when encountering elements whose patterns resemble those in L1, and thus positive L1 transfer occurs and facilitates the learning of L2.

3. Research questions and hypotheses

Eckman (1977: 321) proposed the Markedness Differential Hypothesis (MDH) as follows: The areas of difficulty that a language learner will have can be predicted on the basis of a systematic comparison of the grammar of the native language (NL), the target language (TL), and the markedness relations stated in universal grammar, such that: Those areas of the TL that differ from the NL and more marked than the NL will be difcult. The relative degree of difculty of the areas of the TL that are more marked than the NL will correspond to the relative degree of markedness. Those areas of the TL that are different from the NL, but are not more marked than the NL will not be difcult. From the contrastive descriptions in Section 2.1, we can see that two Chinese aspect markers in question have higher (le) or equal (guo) markedness compared with English simple past. According to the MDH, the learning of English simple will not pose difculty to Chinese speakers. In other words, these two aspect markers may facilitate the learning of English simple past, as shown in the corresponding hypotheses. Two research questions: (1) Does the perfective aspect marker le affect Chinese speakers use of English simple past? (2) Does the experiential aspect marker guo affect Chinese speakers use of English
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The Inuence of Chinese Aspect Marker le on the Simple Past Marking in English Interlanguage

simple past? Two hypotheses: (1) The perfective aspect marker le facilitates Chinese speakers use of English simple past. (2) The experiential aspect marker guo facilitates Chinese speakers of English simple past. However, as the cases of aspect marker guo seldom occur in the Chinese translations of English compositions, the second research question and its hypothesis are excluded from consideration in the following parts.

4. Methodology
This part provides some information about the participants, and then describes in detail how the data were collected, coded and analyzed. 4.1 Participants This study involved 120 college participants who had learned English as a foreign language. At the time of investigation, they were eighteen to twenty years old and had learned English as a main course for two terms in universities. The participants came from classes at Dalian Medical University, Qufu Normal University, Shandong University of Science and Technology, and Laiyang Institute of Agriculture (see Table 1). The average instruction they received were three hours per week.
Table 1. Narratives and their sources
Writing topics 1. writing about a collective activity 2. writing about a regrettable event University Dalian Medical University (Cosmetology Medicine Department, 25) Qufu Normal University (Chinese Department, 15) Shandong University of Science and Technology (Engineering College of Mechanics and Electronics) 3. writing about an unforgettable event Laiyang Institute of Agriculture (Majors: Economy Management, Agriculture) Number of participants 40 40 40

4.2 Data collection The data in the present study were restricted to narratives. The reason why narratives were chosen is that narratives can provide appropriate context for the use of past tense with a clear chronological order. In linguistic studies, a narrative is considered to be a text in which the speaker relates a series of real or ctive events in the order in which they took place (Dahl, 1984: 116). It is a rich source of instances of simple past use. Therefore, written narratives were collected for the current research. The data collection was manipulated by English teachers in these universities. The author first ensured their full cooperation and explained to them in detail the purpose
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and the requirements for collecting written narrative compositions. The author provided these teachers a plan for data collection, which species the topics, the requirements, data collection procedures and some suggestions. There were three topics for the participants to write about (see Table 1). The students at Dalian Medical University and Qufu Normal University wrote a narrative about a collective activity, those at Shandong University of Science and Technology narrated a regrettable event and those at Laiyang Institute of Agriculture depicted an unforgettable event. In each university, one teacher asked the students to finish the narrative according to the requirements, then asked them to translate the English compositions into Chinese. As is known, EFL learners usually think in mother tongue when writing in English. Therefore, the immediate Chinese translations of English writings reflect the participants thinking process of writing in English. The Chinese version of English narratives is an improved method of thinking-aloud protocol in uncovering learners thinking process. On the whole, writing the compositions took 25 minutes or so, and translation cost about 10 minutes. These composition scripts and translations were posted to the author, who randomly selected 120 pieces from them. During the course of composition sampling, the writings unqualied as narratives were excluded. Finally, 120 English compositions together with their Chinese versions made up the current sample. When the data were being elicited, care was taken so that the participants would not intentionally pay attention to grammatical structures. In order to draw their attention to the content of the writing, the teachers told them that the compositions would be evaluated on the basis of content rather than grammar. In addition, instructions were given by the teachers in Chinese, so that the participants fully understood the requirements. This also ensured that there would be no English expressions in the instructions for that might be exploited by the participants. Thus, they were compelled to rely exclusively on their own linguistic resources in writing in English. 4.3 Data coding The present researcher typed all clauses of the 120 compositions into the Access le of the Microsoft Ofce Program. In this le, every nite verb token accompanied by neighboring elements was put in a different line as a record. As the focus of the study was the simple past variation, only the obligatory contexts for simple past were taken into consideration. Thus, the following clauses were eliminated from the coding process according to the conventional practice of the coding techniques in previous studies. Direct speech. Excluding direct speech not only follows established practice for narrative analysis (Tajika, 1999), but also eliminates a potential external inuence on learner production (Bardovi-Harlig, 2000: 293). Clauses with present tense as obligatory contexts. It is because the present study focuses on the simple past variation. Clauses with finite verbs that appear in contexts such as do-auxiliary or modal auxiliary (e.g. didnt agree, must agree). In these cases, only bare forms are possible, so it is meaningless to talk about the simple past marking. Clauses with finite verbs that do not conjugate for past tense (e.g. hit, put).
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The Inuence of Chinese Aspect Marker le on the Simple Past Marking in English Interlanguage

Because of their characteristic, it is impossible to know whether learners use simple present or simple past. The elimination of them from consideration can increase the coding accuracy. Clauses containing passive voice as predicates (e.g. I was injured in an accident). In this case, the marking of verbs reects learners competence in using passive voice not simple past. After that, 1951 finite verb tokens were obtained with simple past as obligatory context. These verb tokens were further coded as below. The data coding process was carried out in two phases: coding simple past and coding the Chinese aspect markers. All the obligatory contexts for simple past were coded into the following categories. We referred to the Chinese translation for the narrative when it was difcult to determine the time reference in a clause. marked as in standard English, a, the simple present form, e.g. Before day I get<vp6,1f5> to know the world outside, or life expectancy increases [vp6, s-]<T1f5> to 60 years old. b, be+ bare verbs, e.g. He was go to school immediately. the present perfect, e.g. countries has raised [vp6, s-] <T3f5> in 30 years. the past perfect, e.g. So I had said [vp6, 3-4] <T7f5> sorry to my parents. generalization, e.g. As we growed [fm2, -]<T5>up from nursery school a, other non-targetlike forms of verbs, e.g. When he grown [fm2, -]<T5> up, he killed the b, verb forms like was/were started the progressive others (including some cases where be is omitted, e.g. I ready to return home.) In the coding process, sometimes it was hard to judge whether a bare verb expresses the simple present or simple past, as encountered by Bayley (1991: 31). To resolve this problem, the researcher made full use of context as a clue, particularly the clauses before or after the clause where the bare verb was used. In this regard, the Chinese version of English writings provided a useful aid disambiguating the contexts. It is generally agreed that EFL learners tend to think in their native language when writing in English. So this study adopts immediate translation to uncover the learners thinking in EFL and further investigate the influence of the Chinese aspect markers. A summary of aspect markers used in Chinese translations only identied 9 tokens of the experiential guo, but 317 cases of the perfective aspect marker le out of 1951 obligatory contexts for simple past. Therefore, only le is investigated in this paper, while guo is disregarded due to its sparse occurrences. During the course of coding the interlingual factor, the aspect marker le was identified within the Chinese translations whose English equivalents were obligatory contexts for simple past. All the other finite verbs were coded as another type. On the whole, all the nite verb tokens were coded into two types. nite verbs without aspect markers nite verbs with the aspect marker le

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4.4 Data analysis The data analysis started with the summary of the variants. A first summary of the variants of the simple past variation yielded the results in Table 2. In this table, the verb forms represented by the numbers in the left column have been explained in coding the dependent variable.
Table 2. Verb forms of the SP variation: First run
Frequency 1 2a 2b 3 4 5 6a 6b 7 8 Total 1424 416 1 9 11 25 13 20 6 26 1951 Percent 73.0 21.3 .1 .5 .6 1.3 .7 1.0 .3 1.3 100.0 Valid Percent 73.0 21.3 .1 .5 .6 1.3 .7 1.0 .3 1.3 100.0 Cumulative Percent 73.0 94.3 94.4 94.8 95.4 96.7 97.3 98.4 98.7 100.0

This table shows that most variants of the simple past variation are small in number of occurrence, so those variants with similar quality were then combined to form a new category with higher frequency. In particular, variant 2b was added to variant 2a; variants 3 and 4 merged into a new category perfect; variant 7 was renamed as 4 and variant 8 as 6; and variants 5, 6a and 6b were combined into a new category since all the three are types of non-targetlike forms of simple past. Then a second run of the summary of the variants was carried out, resulting in Table 3.
Table 3. Verb forms the SP variation: Second run
Frequency AUSP (1) NTSP (2) SPr (3) Perfect (4) Prog (5) Others (6) Total 1424 58 417 20 6 26 1951 Percent 73.0 3.0 21.4 1.0 .3 1.3 100.0 Valid Percent 73.0 3.0 21.4 1.0 .3 1.3 100.0 Cumulative Percent 73.0 76.0 97.3 98.4 98.7 100.0

From this table, we can see that appropriate use dominates the obligatory contexts of simple past, accounting to 73.0% in the sampling texts. Among the inappropriate variants, simple present takes the rst place, followed by non-targetlike forms, perfect, progressive and others. If adding together the rst two categories in Table 3, their percentage of the simple past marking rises to 76%. And the alternation between simple past and simple present covers 97.4% of the simple past variation, so if we can nd out how the simple
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past use varies with the linguistic factors, we can generally determine if the simple past variation is free or systematic. In order to answer the research question and test the hypothesis on aspect marker le, Crosstabs, Chi-square test and Z-test were conducted, which produced results to be presented below.

5. Results and discussion

At the outset, a Crosstabs analysis was performed to discover how the simple past variation differs when verbs are followed by le or not in their Chinese equivalents (Table 4). The results show that the existence of the aspect marker le is significantly associated with the simple past variation in English narratives (p=.006) (Table 5).
Table 4. The distribution of the simple past variation by the existence of le
Chinese perfective marker Without aspect markers AUSP NTSP SP variation SPr Perfect Prog Others Total Frequencies are in the parentheses. 71.7(1163) 2.9(47) 22.7(368) 0.8(13) 0.4(6) 1.5(24) 100.0(1621) 1.2(4) 100.0(319) Perfective aspect Marker le 79.0(252) 3.4(11) 14.7(47) 2.2(7)

Table 5. Chi-square test of the association between the SP variation and the existence of le
Value Pearson Chi-Square Likelihood Ratio N of Valid Cases 16.311 17.133 1942 df 5 5 Asymp. Sig (2-sided) .006 .004

According to Table 4, the nite verbs with the aspect marker le exhibit higher percentages of the appropriate simple past use (79% > 71.7%) and the simple past marking (82.4% > 74.6%) than those without aspect markers. Furthermore, a Z-test discovered that these two pairs of differences are both signicant (Z=2.69, p<.05; Z=3.03, p<.05). Hence it is claimed that the perfective aspect marker le can facilitate the appropriate use of simple past and the simple past marking in the obligatory contexts for simple past. In one word, the use of le in concurrent Chinese version is not only significantly associated with the simple past variation (p<.05), but also significantly facilitates the appropriate simple past use and the simple past marking (p<.05). As a significant factor affecting the simple past variation, the aspect marker le facilitates
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the simple past use. The enhancing effects of le can be explained by language transfer theory. The aspect marker le indicates completed (telic) action. The completion of an action has no relationship to time. But most completed actions occur in the past, and therefore the aspect marker le is often translated into English past tense. See the following examples:
6) wo chifan I eat meal I have my meals (e.g. everyday). (or I will have the meal.) 7) (zuotian) wo chi le fan (yesterday) I eat-le meal I had (my meal) (yesterday).

Sentence (7) with the aspect marker le only has one possible tense interpretation. The event it expresses can only be perceived as happening in the past. In comparison, sentence (6) without the aspect marker le may express either a present or a future event. These two sentences comprise a minimal pair with the only difference lying in the presence/absence of le. This example seems to suggest that le is a past tense marker that derives the past tense interpretation of sentence (7). So far we have already answered the research question, and our nding supports the hypothesis and the MDH. But to further explore why L1 transfer can happen, we should resort to connectionism. L2 learners in the present study have L1 Chinese at their disposal before English learning, so the connectionist network of Chinese knowledge is already formed. It has undergone continuous adaptations since the learners started learning L2 English. This network has developed so ready to some degree as to comprehend and produce L2 English by modifying the early existent associations among the neurons. Of course, it works differently for comprehension and production (Gasser, 1990: 189). In the former, it starts with most of the formal features of an input pattern and, because of context, usually some of the content features as well, and the task is to ll in the missing content. In the latter, it starts with a goal in the form of a set of content features, and the task is to ll in the features specifying the form. During the process of L2 English writing, the participants were faced of a task of production. As discussed in Part 4.2, they usually thought in L1 Chinese during the process of L2 English writing. Each piece of thought came into the language network and activated the associations among the neurons. When encountering the fixed pattern of verb+le in L1 Chinese, the association strengthened because of its similarity to expected pattern of verb+ed in L2 English. This resulted in the higher use of simple past in English composition.

6. Conclusion and implications

To summarize, this study found that the aspect marker le is signicantly associated with
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the simple past variation and signicantly affects the simple past marking (p<.05). Besides, English verbs with le in their Chinese counterparts are signicantly more highly marked by the simple past than those without le (p<.05). This nding is accounted for with transfer theory and connectionism. In learning an L2, L1 patterns can be easily activated when encountering elements whose patterns resemble those in L1, and thus positive L1 transfer occurs and facilitates the learning of L2. Within the coded clauses in the present study, past events are conveyed through similar patterns, verb+le in Chinese and verb+ed in English, so the learners can easily activate their knowledge on the perfective aspect marker and transfer them to English L2 environment. The positive transfer from Chinese L1 to the learning of English L2 in the case of simple past has some theoretical and pedagogical implications. Theoretically speaking, the proved existence of positive transfer has led support for the classification of L1 transfer according to whether it is facilitating or debilitating. This nding also testifies the conceptual linking across different languages in learners mind (Singleton, 2006). With regard to EFL teaching, teachers should at least clarify the facilitating role of the perfective aspect marker le in Chinese and make the students realize that when teaching the simple past to Chinese EFL learners. Besides, the helping effects of other Chinese aspect markers like zhe and guo (as evidenced by Cai & Zhu, 2006) would better be exploited in teaching other types of English tense and aspect. In fact, our findings of the positive transfer, as coincides with Ringbom (2007), correct some biased conceptions of the cross-linguistic inuence and strengthen our condence in utilizing the positive transfer from Chinese in our EFL teaching.

Note
1. The author is a part time researcher in National Key Research Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. He feels grateful for the suggestions provided by the anonymous reviewers and the editors. This paper was adapted from an article written in Chinese published in Research on Foreign Languages, one of the key journals in China.

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Eckman, F. 1977. Markedness and the contrastive analysis hypothesis . Language Learning, 27, 315-330. Flashner, V. 1989. Transfer of aspect in the English oral narratives of native Russian speakers. In H. W. Dechert & M. Raupach (eds.), Transfer in Language Production. Norwood: Ablex. 71-98 Gass, S. & Selinker, L. 2001. Selinker. Second Language Acquisition: An Introductory Course (2nd ed.). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. Gasser, M. 1990. Connectionism and universals of SLA. SSLA, 12, 179-199. Huang, L. M. 1988. Aspect: A General System and Its Manifestation in Mandarin Chinese . Taipei: Student Book Co., Ltd. Li, C. N. & Thompson, S. A. 1981. Mandarin Chinese. Berkerly: University of California Press. Li, P. & Shirai, Y. 2000. The Acquisition of Lexical and Grammatical Aspect. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Ringbom, H. 2007. Cross-linguistic Similarities in Foreign Language Teaching. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Rumelhart, D. E., McClcland, J. L. & the PDP Research Group (eds.). 1986. Parallel Distributed Processing. Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition (Vol. 1): Foundations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Salaberry, M. R. 2000. The Development of Past Tense Morphology in L2 Spanish . Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Salaberry, R. & Shirai, Y. 2002. The L2 Acquisition of Tense-aspect Morphology. John Benjamins. Singleton, D. 2006. Exploring the Second Language Mental Lexicon. Beijing: World Publishing Corporation; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sun, G. Z. 1997. The Acquisition of English Tense and Aspect by Chinese Learners. PhD Dissertation. New York University. Tajika, H. 1999. Variable Patterns of Tense/Aspect Marking in Interlanguage. PhD Dissertation. The University of Minnesota. Yang, S. 1995. The Aspectual System of Chinese. PhD Dissertation. University of Victoria. 2004 1 2006, (pp. 53-61) 19984 20023 20015 1999Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association (1) 19984

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