The semantics of the interlanguage present perfect construction in EFL learners

Abstract

The English present perfect is a grammatical construction that denotes an event happening at a past point of time and relates to the present time in either a continuative manner or implying that the event is relevant to the present. Thus, the present perfect conveys both aspectual and temporal meanings. The present study investigates into the acquisition and development of the English present perfect by Chilean EFL learners as part of their interlanguage aspectual-temporal system. Specifically, the study makes an account of the main semantic characteristics of the Chilean learners’ interlanguage present perfect in order to determine the semantic prerequisites involved in the acquisition of the different meanings of the construction. It also focuses on the semantic negative transfer from the learners’, L1, Spanish, and the development of the following semantic notions: ‘reference time’,’ anteriority’ and ‘current relevance.’ The research methodology comprised the following procedures: a) data collection by means of two writing tasks elicited from 68 intermediate EFL Chilean university undergraduates enrolled in the English teacher-training course programme at Universidad de Santiago de Chile; and b) the classification of instances of the use, underuse or misuse of the target structure. The quantitative results emerging from the data analysis reveal that the present perfect construction is used in the expression of temporality or aspectuality depending on such semantic categories as ‘current relevance’ and ‘recency’. The analysis also demonstrates that Chilean EFL learners do not seem to be able to activate the concept of temporal recency of a past time event. It also reveals that they tend to use the preterite and the present perfect construction as being semantically equivalent constructions mainly because of the operation of the semantic negative transfer from the L1 temporal aspectual verbal system.