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The Lexical Aspect of English Present Perfect in Advanced L2 Learners' Writing

  • Modern English Education
  • Abbr : MEESO
  • 2008, 9(2), pp.42-57
  • Publisher : The Modern English Education Society
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Language Teaching

Lim Jayeon 1

1서울시립대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the present perfect use in the writings of advanced L2 speakers of English. Although the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic interpretation and use of English present perfect is often in the center of debate in linguistics, not much focus has been given to its learning of this. In the present study, each writing sample was examined for tokens of present perfect forms and their use with adverbials as well as their relationship with the lexical aspect. In addition, relationship with the lexical aspect and adverbial use was investigated. The results of this study suggest that by this stage in the learning process, L2 learners do not always associate the use of present perfect with adverbials or lexical aspect. Learners are more likely to use adverbials with achievements when marking the verb forms with present perfect. However, it is inconclusive as to whether learners have approximated the level of native speakers in using English present perfect. To further answer the question, more studies with additional data are needed.

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