| Feixue Zhao
Feixue Zhao
© Feixue Zhao

Dissertationsprojekt:

How to time talk in a second language
– A shift from aspect to tense in Chinese (L1) – German (L2) interlanguage

  • Vita

    Universitäre/Berufliche Tätigkeiten

    Seit 12/2022

    Koordinatorin, Zertifikat DaFZ, Germanistisches Institut, Universität Münster

    05/2021-09/2022

    Studentische Hilfskraft, Abteilung Sprachwissenschaft am Lehrstuhl von Prof. Dr. Christine Dimroth, Germanistisches Institut, Universität Münster

    Akademischer Werdegang

    10/2022

    Aufnahme in das Promotionskolleg Empirische und Angewandte Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Münster

    10/2020 – 08/2022

    Master of Arts (Angewandte Sprachwissenschaft), Universität Münster

    10/2019 – 04/2020

    Erasmus-Auslandssemester (Anglistik) in den Niederlanden, Utrecht Universität

    10/2016 – 10/2019

    Zwei-Fach-Bachelor (Deutsch und Anglistik), Universität Münster

  • Dissertationsprojekt

    How to time talk in a second language
    – A shift from aspect to tense in Chinese (L1) – German (L2) interlanguage

    Time represents a “basic category of our experience and cognition” and plays an indispensable role in human communication. And languages have various ways to do “time talk”. Since tense and aspect are one of the most essential devices in our time talk, investigations towards the second language acquisition of tense and aspect have gained increasing attention in the last three decades. However, only one qualitative study has examined the SLA of tense in German by speakers of an aspect-prominent L1 (Chinese).
    The German tense system and the Chinese aspect system represent radically different resources for the expression of temporality. These differences would have an immerse influence on the interlanguage of the L2 German speakers. Assumingly, these cross-linguistic differences would contribute to the difficulties of learners mastering the target languages specific forms on the one hand, and function-form mappings, on the other hand. Von Stutterheim suggested a conceptual and structural transfer from the learners L1. The present study aims to examine the time talk of speakers with L1 Chinese (+aspect, -tense) and L2 German (+tense, -aspect) and find out if there is any cross-linguistic influences.
    The hypothesis is that the Chinese L2 speakers of German tend to express the aspectual characteristics of events more frequently through different means for example different tense choices and or temporal adverbials than German L1 speakers. This is due to the cross-linguistic influence that their aspect L1 Chinese has on their interlanguage. In order to test the hypothesis, a mixed methods design is chosen in which an elicited production experiment is combined with a qualitative interview and a comprehension experiment.