A contrastive analysis of tense-aspect combinations in English and the Vietnamese equivalents ( with possible applications to teaching and learning English)

Figure 3: Diagrammatic representation of a situation in the past which is referred to from the speech-act time Figure 4: Present tense Figure 5: Past tense Figure 6: Present simple

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

-**0** -

BÙI VĂN TỰ

A Contrastive Analysis of Tense-Aspect Combinations in English and the Vietnamese Equivalents (with Possible Applications to

Teaching and Learning English)

(Phân tích đối chiếu sự kết hợp Thời-Thể trong tiếng Anh và tương đương trong tiếng Việt với ứng dụng trong dạy và học tiếng Anh)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 60.22.15

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

-**0** -

BÙI VĂN TỰ

A Contrastive Analysis of Tense-Aspect Combinations in English and the Vietnamese Equivalents (with Possible Applications to

Teaching and Learning English)

(Phân tích đối chiếu sự kết hợp Thời-Thể trong tiếng Anh và tương đương trong tiếng Việt với ứng dụng trong dạy và học tiếng Anh)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 60.22.15

Supervisor: Nguyễn Hương Giang, M.A

HANOI - 2009

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION……… i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……… ii

ABSTRACT……… iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS……… iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ……… v

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES vi PART 1: INTRODUCTION……… 1

1 Rationale……… 1

2 Hypotheses……… 1

3 Scope of the study……… 1

4 Significance of the study……… 2

5 Methods of the study……… 2

6 Design of the study……… 3

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT……… 5

Chapter 1: Theoretical background……… 5

1.1 Time in language……… 5

1.1.1 Diagrammatic representation of properties of time ……… 6

1.1.2 Deixis and Temporal Reference……… 6

1.2 Tense and Aspect in English: A general outline……… 7

1.2.1 Tense in English……… 8

1.2.1.1 Definitions of tense ……… 8

1.2.1.2 Classifications of tense……… 8

1.2.2 Aspect in English……… 9

1.2.2.1 Definitions of tense……… 10

1.2.2.2 Classifications of tense……… 10

1.3 Tense-aspect combinations in English 12

1.3.1 Present simple……… 13

1.3.2 Present Progressive ……… 14

1.3.3 Present Perfect ……… 14

1.3.4 Present Perfect Progressive ……… 15

1.3.5 Past simple……… 16

1.3.6 Past Progressive……… 17

1.3.7 Past Perfect……… 18

1.3.8 Past Perfect Progressive ……… 19

1.4 Expressions to future time in English ……… 20

Chapter 2: The Expressions of the Equivalents to Tense and Aspect in Vietnamese 22 2.1 Literature review of the equivalents to Tense-Aspect System in Vietnamese ……… 22

2.1.1 Vietnamese- an isolating language ……… 22

2.1.2 The equivalents to tenses in Vietnamese ……… 23

2.1.3 The equivalents to aspect in Vietnamese ……… 23

2.1.4 The use of tense - aspect markers in Vietnamese ……… 24

2.2 Examples of English Tense-Aspect combinations to the Vietnamese equivalents 25 Chapter 3: An empirical study ……… 28

3.1 Subjects……… 28

3.2 Hypotheses ……… 29

3.3 Instruments……… 29

3.4 Research design and procedures ……… 30

3.5 Results and discussion……… 31

PART 3 CONCLUSION ……… 40

REFERENCES……… 41

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

C.A ……… contrative analysis

E A……… error analysis

ET event time

IL interlanguage

INF……… infinitive

L1 the first language

L2 the second language

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure1: Diagrammatic representation of time as a time line

Figure2: Diagrammatic representation of “Mrs Lan cooked”

Figure 3: Diagrammatic representation of a situation in the past which is referred to from the

speech-act time

Figure 4: Present tense

Figure 5: Past tense

Figure 6: Present simple

Figure 7: Present progressive

Figure 8: Present perfect

Figure 9: Present perfect progressive

Figure 10: Past simple

Figure 11: Past progressive

Figure 12: Past perfect

Figure 13: Past perfect progressive

Table 1: Percentages of subjects’ options for items 1, 4, 7 and 15

Table 2: Percentages of subjects’ options for items 5 and 12

Table 3: Percentages of subjects’ options for items 6, 8, 10, 11

Table 4: Percentages of subjects’ choices for items 2, 3, 9, 13 and 14

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

English is the most popular language in the world In Vietnam, English has been more and more important since Vietnam became an official member of the World Trade Organization That is why every Vietnamese desires to master this language to communicate with the rest of the world, which seems to be far from easy for all Vietnamese learners of English as a foreign language

To communicate effectively in English, it involves many aspects in which grammar is one

of the basic and central points This M.A thesis focuses on the acquisition of the English

Tense-Aspect combinations by Vietnamese learners, with the primary aim to what extent it

is possible to achieve competence in the field of Tense and Aspect of English and their combinations

Pursuing this aim the paper concentrates on three major aspects: firstly, a general introduction of time and a general outline of Tense and Aspect are presented; secondly, an overview of the English Tense-Aspect combinations is shown, which will be contrasted with the Vietnamese equivalents; thirdly, an empirical research of error analysis is conducted to find out how the Vietnamese high-school learners deal with the Tense and Aspect system in English in general and the present progressive in particular

2 Hypotheses

In this thesis, two research hypotheses are formulated as followed:

1 The English Tense-Aspect combinations, especially the present progressive may not properly be acquired by the Vietnamese high school learners of English

2 Interference of the first language is significant in the foreign language acquisition of the present progressive of English

3 Scope of the study

Both a primary research and the secondary one are conducted to meet the target of the thesis In the primary research, the author draws out a general outline of tense and aspect system in English and the Vietnamese equivalents Though there exist many opinions of linguists and grammarians in terms of tense- aspect systems in English, the author follows

the ones in which English has two tenses: present and past tenses Therefore, there is no future tense mentioned in the study, but a various expressions to future time are shown For the secondary research, an empirical study is investigated on the errors of applying the English tense-aspect system in written tests This study does not cover all areas discussed

in the primary research but only focuses on the present progressive - one of the verb forms frequently employed in both written and spoken forms in English

4 Significance of the study

Learning a foreign language is different from learning our native language Each language has its own features in terms of phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics Fromkin

(1990, p 68) states that “Learning a second language differs qualitatively from learning a first language because of various factors: psychological, physical and sociological They must be considered in addition to the linguistic structure of the second language and how

it differs from the native language.” The question is why foreign language learning and

teaching raise so many problems Many linguists and methodologists suppose that the main cause is in the differences between the languages in which the characteristic features are

highly complex, productive and arbitrary As Corder (1973, p 102) suggests: "Contrastive comparison of the mother tongue of the learner and the second language will offer an account of the differences between L1 and L2 or predict learning problems or learning items"

In fact, English and Vietnamese have their own structures Vietnamese is typically classified as an isolating language in which all the words are invariable and grammatical relationships are shown through the use of word order English, on the other hand, is classified as partially synthetic and analytical Thus, learning English is so hard for Vietnamese learners

Since Vietnamese learners, especially high school students at my school - Quỳnh Côi high school in Thaibinh province, are confusingly using English tense and aspect systems when they speak English in the class or making quite a lot of mistakes in the written tests It is

my hope that this thesis plays an important role in helping the Vietnamese high school learners systematize this kind of linguistic resources, and acquire a good knowledge of English and Vietnamese grammar, which can help them use English more correctly

5 Methodology of the study

The major method of this research is contrastive analysis The theoretical background for the study is the comprehension of language learning as a cognitive process For this aim, the English Tense-Aspect combinations and the Vietnamese equivalents are analyzed contrastively so as to find out the similarities and the differences in which transfer from the first language knowledge may be used to comprehend and produce linguistic structures in the foreign language acquisition process

To prove whether the hypotheses can be maintained or should be rejected, an empirical research study is carried out by assessing students’ written tests A deductive method is used to find out the sources of errors which help teachers of English at high schools teach English more effectively

* Why Contrastive Analysis (C.A)?

Linguists and language teachers are aware of the importance of C.A O’grady et al (1991,

p 72) says: “ seeking to improve the second language teaching methodologies, early researchers came to believe that by comparing and contrasting the learner’s native language with the second language, new insights could be gained into the language learning process.” James (1980, p 204) states that “C.A is a linguistic enterprise aimed at producing inverted (i.e contrastive) two valued typologies (a C.A is always concerned with a pair of languages) and founded on the assumption that languages can be compared.”

We know that the real purpose of C.A of the two languages is to find out the differences and the similarities in phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics The errors and difficulties occurring in the language acquisition may be caused by the negative interference from the first language Therefore, one way to help learners overcome the difficulties is to study the differences and the similarities carefully

Ellis, Rod (1994, p 17-38) asserts the importance of C.A:

“…the essential source for errors is in the contrastive analysis (C.A) assumed to be transfer from the mother tongue (MT) of the learner towards the target language (TL) Thus, interference from L1 towards a second or foreign language was assumed to take place whenever the habits of the learner’s MT differed from those

of the TL.”

Clearly, the aim of C.A is to predict learner difficulties and make the research results available for language teaching so as to affect study programs and learning outcomes positively Besides, C.A provides an important impetus to the genesis of other theories and research approaches in second language acquisition, such as error analysis (E.A) In EA,

learner language is analyzed first and then attempts are made to find explanations for the

errors, which might include differences between the MT and the TL of the learner Thus

the contrastive approach is incorporated into error analysis as an explanatory element, but

it is not the only possibility to explain learner errors and it is not employed to predict

errors EA pursues the same intention as CA, that is to provide feedback for language

teaching, and additionally seeks to attain insight into how languages are acquired

In short, C.A is an effective method for language teachers We-the English teachers should

pay attention to the points where there are structural differences between the languages,

predicting the difficulties the learners may face We also make the learners aware of the

contrast so that they will understand the causes of the errors and avoid committing them

6 Design of the study

The thesis has three main parts as follows:

The first part - Introduction composes of the rationale, the hypothesis, the scope, the

significance, the methodology and the design of the study

The second part – Development includes three chapters Chapter 1 shows the theoretical

background of English tense and aspect system In chapter 2, the author presents the

English Tense-Aspect combinations which will be contrasted with the Vietnamese

equivalents; In chapter 3, an empirical research of error analysis is conducted to find out

how the Vietnamese high-school learners deal with the present progressive – one of the

verb forms frequently used in written and spoken forms of English Then some conclusions

and implications for instruction strategies are drawn in the last part of the study

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 1: Theoretical background

1.1 Time in language

There are many time definitions and it seems to be difficult to find out the best one “Time

is a component of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations

of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify the motions of objects.” (the free Ancyclopedia) or according to the West’s Ancyclopedia of American law, “time is referred as a non-spatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future.” Even A Einstein had his own opinion about time when he supposed that “The only reason for time is that everything does not happen at once”

In short, time is a crucial concept of humans, since everything we experience is in some way related to time, even though we often do not perceive time intentionally The expression of time in languages is universal, whereas the means of expressing time are language specific Therefore, the acquisition of a foreign language always involves the acquisition of different linguistic means to express time

1.1.1 Diagrammatic representation of properties of time

Time can diagrammatically be represented as a straight time line, on which events, processes and states are located in temporal relation to each other Accordingly, if an event happened in the past relative to a fixed point on the time line, which might be referred to as

a reference point, it would be placed left to the reference point, and if an event is to occur subsequently to the reference point it is placed to the right of it The concept of the time line can thus be seen as representing the frontal axis in the description of space The conceptualization of passing of time can be compared with movement in space Represented in a diagrammatic manner, a time line would look the following way:

time line (t)

PAST PRESENT FUTURE

Figure1: Diagrammatic representation of time as a time line

The utterance “Mrs Lan cooked”, for example, is therefore to be placed left to the present

moment to which it priorily happened

t

Mrs Lan cook now

Figure2: Diagrammatic representation of “Mrs Lan cooked”

Besides, the diagrammatic representation of time as a time line makes the infinity of past and future time as well as the continuity of time visible A fourth property of time should

be mentioned here – density, as Bennet & Michael (1981, p 46) suppose that “time is dense, …given any two moments of time, there exists another moments that lies between them.”

Nevertheless, time is a purely mental concept of humans to make the environment

measurable Klein (1984, 82) says: “Time and space are the basic categories of our

experience and our cognition, and without them, no well-coordinated collective action, hence no human society, would be possible.”

1.1.2 Deixis and Temporal Reference

A central concept in the expression of time is deixis It relates time, place and person references of an utterance directly to the situation in which the utterance is made Consequently, the meaning of such references depends on the context Deictic information

of an utterance can be made lexically such as the personal and locational information in the

sentence “I met him there” (A Thomson & A Martinet, 1991, p.281), or it can be made

grammatically as in the tense of the verb Therefore a more complex definition of deixis is provided by Jaszczolt (2002, p.115):

“Deixis is the phenomenon of encoding contextual information by means of lexical items or grammatical distinctions to provide this information only when paired with this context In other words, it means lexicalizing or grammaticalizing contextual information, that is making it into obligatory grammatical or lexical distinctions.”

Almost all linguists and grammarians declare that tenses are used to locate situations in time, therefore, tenses are deictic categories that occur in most sentences

It is important at this point to clarify that tense is not directly related to physical time, rather it is a grammatical category that expresses temporal relations Hence, in the sentence

like “The sun rises in the east” (L.G Alexander, 1988, p.162), the finite verb does not

express a temporal relationship between the time of utterance and a certain point of time,

“rises” is therefore is not deictic, it is temporal, or “The earth goes round the sun” (L.G

Alexander, 1988, p.162) can be related to from any point of time and would always be true, such utterances are called eternal truths, an other example for this would be the statement

such as “one and two makes three.” (L.G Alexander, 1988, p.162)

Three more concepts have to be introduced at this point, since they stand in direct relation

to deixis: event time, reference time and speech act time These concepts derive from

Reichenbach’s seminal work on temporal logic and allow for a global description of

English tenses First, event time (ET): event time is the time at which an eventuality takes place Second, reference time (RT): reference time at which a situation is evaluated, i.e

assuming that there are different levels of time, a past level on which a situation occurred and a present level, two possibilities arise to evaluate the past situation, either on the past level itself, or on the present level, which is precisely the difference of the simple past and

the present perfect of the English language And third, speech-act time (ST): speech-act

time is the point of time at which a utterance is made ET and RT can refer to punctual situations and similarly to durative situations, the point of speech however is usually conceptualized as a punctual situation on the time line

The relationship between RT and ST defines the prototypical meaning of simple tenses In the case of relative tenses, however, the relation ship between ET, RT, and ST states the meaning of the tenses

The example “Mrs Lan cooked” can diagrammatically be represented as follows:

t

ET, RT ST

Figure 3: Diagrammatic representation of a situation in the past which is

referred to from the speech-act time Here, “Mrs Lan cooked” is an eventuality that happened and was evaluated in the past and

is referred to from ST

1.2 Tense and Aspect in English: A General Outline

There are several ways of expressing time in speech B.Comrie (1985, p.18) distinguishes lexically composite expressions, lexical items and grammatical categories Lexically

composite expressions are adverbials, such as “a minute ago, last century, last year, last week, etc.” This kind of expressions is highly productive, so there is an almost infinite number of adverbials Lexical items are adverbs like “today, tomorrow, yesterday, now, then, etc.” which present a finite number of lexically expressed time references Lexical

expressions of time are non-obligatory The grammatical expressions of time are tense and aspect In this study, tense and aspect system ought to be the main concern

1.2.1 Tense in English

1.2.1.1 Definitions of tense

A lot of linguists and grammarians suppose that tense is a grammatical category referring

to the location of a situation in time B.Comrie (1985, p 36) defines tenses as

“grammaticalised expressions of time” However, there are languages that do not

grammaticalize time as tenses, such as Vietnamese or Chinese and these languages are called tenseless In English, tenses are grammaticalized and formed by morphological marking of the verb and are obligatory in use The morphological boundness and obligatory use differentiate grammaticalized expressions of time from lexicalized expressions, since they are optional in use and adverbials are formed syntactically Since tenses are obligatory in use, finite verb constructions almost always indicate time reference

The fact that tenses are a grammaticalized category requiring morphological marking, implies that time references which are not morphologically marked cannot be called tenses

As a result, English has only two tenses, present and past, since they derive from a

morphological word formation of the base verb According to Crystal (1992), future is “a periphrastic expression of time reference, i.e future time reference is conveyed through syntactic means such as separate words, to express the same grammatical relationship as inflections” English future is formed periphrastically and has a modal character, it cannot

be considered as a proper tense In this thesis, it is important to have the objections against

an English future tense in mind though English has many ways of referring to past, present and future time

1.2.1.2 Classifications of tense

1.2.1.2.1 Present tense Vs Past tense

As already mentioned, tense is a deictic category, or as Comrie (1985, p 39) puts it “tense relates the time of the situation referred to some other time, usually to the moment of speaking,”, nevertheless, there are differences among tenses regarding their deictic center

In past tense ET is prior to ST, and in present tense ET and ST are not distinguishable, they form one single point on the time line Diagrammatically past, present can be represented the following way:

Figure 5: Past tense

These diagrams show explicitly that the deictic center in simple tenses is the present moment, to which every event is related to Examples to illustrate the simple tenses are:

- Present simple tense: The exhibition opens on January 1 st and closes on January

30 th

- Past simple tense: I knew it was dangerous to get there

(L.G Alexander, 1988, p 168) The deictic center in present tense needs some further remarks It is very unlikely that ET,

RT and ST coincide B.Comrie (1985) brought only one type of situation forward that matches this picture exactly, performative speech acts” Crystal (1992, p.176) defines

performative speech acts as “actions that are orally performed in the moment of speaking” To execute this sort of speech act, performative verbs have to be used, such as apologize, promise, despise etc Hence the sentence “I name this ship Titanic” Crystal

(1992, p.187) is a performative action when uttered, since the momentary event of naming the ship happens simultaneously to the utterance

1.2.2 Aspect – definitions and classifications

“Aspect refers to a grammatical category which reflects the way in which the verb action

is regarded or experienced with respect to time.” B.Comrie (1976, p 88) classifies

“aspects as different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation”

What these definitions have in common is the subjective point of view that is attributed to the articulation of aspect, yet only one mentions that aspect is a grammaticalized form of

time reference and one refers to the internal temporal structure It seems that aspect is a field of great discontinuity

The author of this thesis followed Comrie’s definition of aspect because it set aspect apart from tense Tense, as mentioned earlier, is a deictic category, whereas aspect is not deictic However, both tense and aspect are concerned with time The difference between the temporal relations of tense and aspect is that tense relates the reference time of a situation

to the time of utterance, which is usually the deictic center, whereas aspect relates the time

of reference to the event time For that reason Comrie (1976, p 64) refers to tense as

“situation external time”, as it relates eventualities to the present moment or another point

of reference, and to aspect as “situation internal time”, since it is concerned with the

internal temporal constituency of eventualities, and not with its relation to a reference point

1.2.2.2 Classification of Aspect

As to the subjective point of view that aspect conveys and that aspect is a grammatical category, these are only partial truths, since aspect can also be expressed lexically There are languages that do not express aspect grammatically but through lexical means and others use both, lexical and grammatical aspect Moreover, lexical aspect, is independent from the speaker’s point of view in which the aspectual meaning is inherent to the meaning

of the verb, although the choice of the verb is the speaker’s In the range of this thesis, the research focuses on the grammatical aspect A clear distinction between grammatical and lexical aspect should be shown in the further studies relating to the tense and aspect system

1.2.2.2.1 Perfective Aspect Vs Imperfective Aspect

Grammatical aspect is usually expressed through morphological inflection The prototypical representation of grammatical aspect occurs in many languages, where verbs can take different forms according to the characteristics of the situations they refer to The

traditional distinction made between perfective and imperfective aspect, is “overtly and morphologically marked.” (Binnick,1991, p 204) Besides, the perfective aspect of a verb

is the marked, whereas verbs that are non-perfective are the unmarked member of the opposition

Regarding the meaning of the two aspects, according to Comrie (1985, p 192), “the perfective aspect takes a position outside of the situation from which the writer/ speaker retrospectively views an eventuality as an entity”; therefore no distinction is made into

possible phases of the eventuality Conversely, the imperfective aspect views eventualities

from inside and is concerned with the internal temporal structure of the situation, since it can both look backwards the start of the situation, and look forwards to the end of the situation, and indeed is equally appropriate if the situation is one that lasts through all time, without any beginning and without end

Hence it can be said that the imperfective aspect focuses only on a certain point of time inside a situation,not considering the beginning or the end of a situation The temporal relationships between ET and RT in the two aspects are distinct, the perfective aspect locates ET within RT, while ET and RT in the imperfective aspect are overlapping

Comrie (1985, p 194) points out that “the meaning of the perfective aspect does not indicate that situations are not durative, but that it is just the effect of viewing a situation from the outside which makes a situation seem punctual” Furthermore, Comrie states that the outside viewpoint denotes a “complete” situation, not a “completed” situation,

indicating a completed situation would put too much emphasis on the termination of the situation, but the completion of a situation is only one possible meaning of a situation Contrasting the lack of reference to the internal temporal structure of a situation of the perfective aspect, the imperfective aspect gives explicit reference toward the internal temporal structuring of a situation However, the distinction of perfective and imperfective aspect does not affect the compatibility of the two, they may co-occur within the same verb phrase and not contradict each other In case of a co-occurrence the semantic features of imperfective and perfective aspect supplement each other English examples are the present perfect progressive and the past perfect progressive, since the progressive aspect contains an imperfective notion and the perfect aspect may include perfective notion, as in the following sentences:

- Present perfect progressive: It has been raining hard these days in the mountainous areas

- Past perfect progressive: It was the old man, who had been going for miles under the

rain

(Nguyễn Văn Ân, 2003, p 347)

1.2.2.2.2 Progressive Aspect Vs Non-progressive Aspect

The English progressive, as it derived from a spatial location, which developed into temporal location, expresses an activity in progress and duration of a situation, but it may also convey other meaning than that Leech (1971, p 180) summarizes the meaning of the

progressive aspect as “being used to indicate duration, limited duration, lack of certainty about the completion of a situation and the enclosure of an event with a temporal frame”,

additionally he denotes the use of the progressive aspect to refer to inexorable situations

emphasizing the persistence of situations

Examples for the various uses are:

- Duration: They are demanding that richer countries cut back their carbon emissions

to compensate (Vietnam Business Forum, Vol 7, June 6-12, 2009)

This example also illustrates that the process which is going on is not considered to be finished in the near future, rather temporal boundaries are left indistinct

- Limited duration: We are very sensible and talking about this as we should have done last year (Vietnam Business Forum, Vol 7, June 6-12, 2009)

Here the current state of being sensible is emphasized, indicating that it is only temporary

state and additionally contrasted with the characteristic manner of “not being sensible in the past”

- Temporal frame: He looked briefly at his son as he said the last few words, conscious

that the boy was watching everything (L.G Alexander, 1988, p 187)

In this case the father's telling of the last words is framed by the consistent activity by his son of watching him

Leech (1971, p 201) takes the following examples to illustrate the duration of situations “I

am raising my arm” and “The house is falling down”, which in contrast to the

non-progressive form of the sentences indicates an ongoing process of the situation and not sudden eventualities Furthermore, he points out the contrast between unrestricted duration conveyed by the use of the simple forms and the limited duration conveyed by the use of the progressive aspect The following example “I live in Wimbledon” (L.G Alexander,

1988, p.163) denotes a permanent state, and “I am living in Wimbledon” (L.G Alexander,

1988, p 167) denotes a temporary state

An often quoted example to illustrate the incompletion that occurs with the use of the

progressive aspect, is the difference between the sentences “The man drowned” (Tom Hutchinson,1997, p 28) and “The man was drowning”, of which the former indicates that

“the man died”, which is not necessarily the case in the latter sentence, since it just implies

that the man was in the process of drowning at a certain point of time in the past, whereas this process could have been stopped at a later point in the past Another example for the

incompletion of a situation would be the discrimination of the following sentences: “I read a book that evening” (Tom Hutchinson,1997, p 16) indicates a completion of the process of my reading a book and that I actually reached the end of the book, whereas “I was reading a book that evening” (Tom Hutchinson,1997, p 32) does not indicate

completion

1.3 Tense-aspect combinations in English

In English, tenses are grammaticalized and formed by morphological marking of the verb and are obligatory in use The English system of grammatical time references can be described in mathematical terms as an addition of tense and aspect Each grammatical form

of locating an eventuality in time consists of a tense and either none, one or two aspects The table below shows us the overview of the tense-aspect combinations in English

Figure 6: Present simple

The simple present has multiple uses According to Celce-Murcia (1999, p 166-234), there are some basic uses as follows:

- Habitual actions in the present:

He walks to school every day [14;234]

- General timeless truths

Water freezes at zero degree centigrade [17;234]

- Expresse future when scheduled events are involved, usually with a future time adverbial:

I have a meeting next Monday.[3;235]

- Present event or action (usually in demonstrations, procedures, etc.)

Now I add three eggs to the mixture.[15;166]

- In the subordinate clauses of time or condition when the main clause contain a future-time verb:

After he finishes work, he’ll do the errands.[22;171]

- Present speech acts where the action is accomplished in the speaking of it:

I resign from the commission.[19;234]

Figure 7: Present progressive

As mentioned the progressive aspect can be used to express “durativity, limited durativity and incompletion of a situation, and it can provide a frame for another situation.”

Celce-Murcia (1999, p 236-237) presents the basic uses of the present progressive such as:

- Activities in progress:

He is working at the moment [8;236]

- Extended present (action will end and therefore lacks the permanence of the simple present):

I am studying geology at the University of Colorado [11;236]

- A temporary situation:

Phillips is living with his aunt.[15;236]

- Expresses future when events are planned; usually with future-time adverbials:

She is coming tomorrow.[17;236]

- Emotional comment on present habit (usually co-occurring with frequency

adverbs always or forever):

He’s always coming late.[22;236]

Figure 8: Present perfect

Contrasting the past simple, where RT = ET, the present perfect takes the present state of affairs as starting point for a retrospective view on a past event The exact location of ET in the past, however, is indefinite, if the position of ET was definite the simple past would be required According to L.G Alexander (1988, p 172-174), the present perfect is used in such cases as:

- A situation that began at a prior point in time and continues into the present:

This has helped the competent and motivated Vietnamese resources acquire solid skills and in-depth knowledge (Vietnam business forum, vol 7, 2009)

- An action occurring or not occurring at an unspecified prior time that has current relevance:

She has already seen that movie.[12, 172]

- A recently completed action (often with “just”)

He has just finished his homework [23;172]

- An action that happened over a prior time period and that is completed at the moment of speaking:

The value of the Johnson’s house has doubled in the last four years.[26;173]

- With verbs in subordinate clauses of time or condition:

She won’t be satisfied until she has finished another chapter.[5;274]

1.3.4 Present Perfect Progressive

The present perfect progressive overlaps with the present perfect in that it refers to a situation in the past from the present moment, yet the present perfect progressive focuses mainly on the situation being in progress in the past and does not make any reference as to the result of the situation A diagrammatic representation of the present perfect progressive could hence look as the following:

( ) t

ET RT, ST

Figure 9: Present perfect progressive

The present perfect progressive is, according to Comrie (1985, p 159), usually used with

“activity verbs and can thus be viewed as the opposite of the resultative perfect”

Nevertheless, the present perfect progressive can also be used with achievement and accomplishment verbs if emphasis is put on the situation itself and not on the ongoing process of the situation The use of the present perfect progressive is sometimes similar to the use of the present perfect According to A Thomson et al (1991, p 296-297)

- A situation that began in the past (recent or distant) and continues up to the present and possibly into the future time:

I’ve been waiting for an hour and he still hasn’t turned up.[2;296]

- An action in progress that is not completed:

I have been reading that book.[4;296]

- An evaluative comment on something observed over a period of time in the past prior to some other past event or time:

You have been drinking again![11;296]

- A state that changes over time:

The students have been getting better and better.[17;297]

1.3.5 Past simple

The basic meaning of the past simple is the location of a situation prior to the moment of speaking so as to express past time reference It is important that there is a temporal gap between the moment in which the utterance is made and the past situation which is referred

to This is usually the reason to interpret situations, described in the past tense, as completed and thus perfective

t

ET, RT ST

Figure 10: Past simple

According to Kirsten (1987, p 210), the past simple is often used in such situations as

narrations where it is employed to describe subjective experiences and situations in a vivid way or for example the setting of a situation Thus the simple past can in narratives be used

to convey background information for the actual events of a narration Kirsten (1987, p

212 )puts forward the following example: “when Peter walked with me, I asked him some questions… ”

The simple past tense can also be used to refer to present situations, such as the utterance

of a present wish Here the simple past signals a distance between the requester and his request, making the request more polite, since in this way it is easier for the person being asked a favor to deny it Or it can be used to express an unreal situation in the present, such

as in the sentence “If I were rich, I would spend the rest of my life holidaying.” (Tom Hutchinson, 1997, p 29)

Celce-Murcia (1999, p 242-245) adds more uses of the past simple as the following:

- The event can be remote in time:

The Brazilian team won the World cup in 1994

- A definite single completed event in the past:

I attended a meeting of that committee last week [4;243]

- Habitual or repeated action or event in the past:

It snowed almost every weekend last winter.[9;243]

- An event with duration that applied in the past with the implication that it

no longer applies in the present:

Professor Nelson taught at Yale for 30 years.[18;245]

- With states in the past:

He appeared to be a creative genius.[20;245]

1.3.6 Past Progressive

The past progressive is used when it shall be expressed that a situation was in progress in the past It is used to stress the durativity and the ongoing process of a situation in the past, but does not make an explicit statement about the (in)completion of the situation, but due

to the fact that neither the beginning nor the end of the situation taken into contemplation,

it appears to be atelic and incomplete A diagrammatic representation could be like this:

( ) t

RT ET ST

Figure 11: Past progressive

Following the views of L.G Alexander (1988, p 170-171), there are some basic rules of the past progressive as follows:

- An action in progress at a specific point of time in the past:

They were playing football at 3.00 p.m yesterday [20; 170]

- Past action simultaneous with some other events that are usually stated in the simple past:

Karen was washing her hair when the phone rang [22;170]

- Repetition or iteration of some ongoing past action:

Jake was coughing all night long [2;171]

- Social distancing which comes from the past and the tentativeness of the progressive aspect:

I was hoping you could lend me $10 [4;171]

to the simple past in that there is a temporal gap between RT and ST Because of this similarities, the past progressive may be substituted by the simple past if there is a temporal gap between ET and RT, the temporal gap is often described by temporal adverbs

and prepositional phrases (PP), such as “once, on an earlier day, many years before, etc”,

or by conjuncts like “as soon as, when, before, after”

For examples:

He had left before I could offer him a ride (Nguyễn Văn Ân, p 467)

After he had finished his dinner, he phoned me (Nguyễn Văn Ân, p 467)

- The past perfect may also be used with the same temporal references like the present

perfect, when it provides a retrospective view on a past situation, such as “just, already, ever” and with prepositional phrases including “till, by, since, for” such as in the

following example:

Her husband had just finished the day's work at his butcher's shop and they were

settling down to supper (A Thomson & A Martinet, 1991, p 301)

- When the past perfect is used for retrospection it may display causal relationships and give explanations on the source (event time) of a past situation (reference time) in which case it might be possible that the causal situation might continue up to the moment of the situation at RT

- The past perfect can be used in indirect speech when it is applied to the backward information expressed in the simple past or the present perfect Such the sentence as

“Have you finished the letter? said Marry” can be interpreted as “Marry wanted to know whether I had finished the letter” (A Thomson & A Martinet, 1991, p 304)

- The past perfect may express the unreal past situations, where a hypothetical situation in

the past is presented and a temporal reference is made prior to this situation

I wish I had not failed the driving license exam yesterday (Nguyễn Văn Ân, p 469)

1.3.8 Past Perfect Progressive

The past perfect progressive expresses the same temporal reference as the past perfect, however, emphasis is put on the durative quality of ET When there is a temporal gap between ET and RT, ET is implied to be atelic, this feature is used to provide background information on a situation narrated in present perfect

( ) t

ET RT ST

Figure 13: Past perfect progressive

Celce-Murcia (1999, p 120) shows the rules of the past perfect progressive as follows:

- An action or habit taking place over a period of time in the past prior to some other past event or time: