Dissertation project

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.