Journal of Arts and Social Sciences (J. Arts Soc. Sci.) Moeen, AA. and Jabbari, AA. 20 Journal of Arts and Social Sciences | Volume 01 Issue 01 | Page 20-31 Acquisition Of English Time Markers By Persian Speaking Learners Of English Moeen, A. A. 1 and A. A. Jabbari 2* Affiliation: 1 Lecturer of Applied Linguistics, Azad Islamic University, Mayboad Branch, Iran 2 Associate professor of Applied Linguistics, Faculty of Foreign Languages, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran The name of the department(s) and institution(s) to which the work should be attributed: Applied Linguistics, Azad Islamic University, Mayboad Branch, Iran Applied Linguistics, Faculty of Foreign Languages, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran Address reprint requests to *A. A. Jabbari Associate professor of Applied Linguistics, Faculty of Foreign Languages, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran . or at jabbari@yazd.ac.ir DOI: https://doi.org/10.20936/JASS/160105 ABSTRACT: This research project is a cross-sectional study of the acquisition of tense and aspect by 210 Persian learners of English as the experimental group and 15 advanced students as the control group. This study specifically investigates the hypothesis of Primacy of Aspect (POA) that claims there is: (1) a strong association of past/perfective morpheme with achievement and accomplishment verbs, (2) a strong association of progressive morpheme with activity verbs, (3) no overextension of progressive inflection to stative verbs, and (4) strong association of the present morpheme ‘- s’ with stative verbs. The study also argues for the semantic implications of the present data for the Distributional Bias Hypothesis (Andersen, 1991), that the distinction of verb type in the input is skewed so as to create the acquisitional pattern found in studies of the POA in language acquisition, and for the Language Bioprogram (Bickerton, 1981), that aspectual values are the knowledge a child is born with as the sources of the POA in SLA. The study also examines the syntactic implications of the data for the ‘initial state’ hypotheses in SLA: The Minimal Trees Hypothesis (Vainikka& Young-Scholten, 1994, 1996a, 1996b), The Full Transfer/Full Access hypothesis (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996) and The Weak Parametric Transfer (Valueless Features) Hypothesis (Eubank, 1993/94, 1996). The results supported the findings of the POA and the Minimal Trees Hypothesis. Key Words: Tense, Aspect, Second Language Acquisition, Persian & English Tense. INTRODUCTION Most studies on the second language acquisition of tense and aspect are of English and these data generally support for the POA, that (a) past morphology is associated with achievement or accomplishment verbs (Cushing 1987; Economides, 1985; Flashner, 1982; Robison, 1990 & 1995, Rothstein, 1985; Shirai& McGhee, 1988; Taylor, 1987) and (b) -ing is strongly associated with activity verbs (Cushing 1987; Economides 1985; Kumpf 1982; Rothstein 1985; Taylor 1987). For instance, Robison (1995) analysed English interviews with 26 Puerto Rican university students grouped into four proficiency levels and found an association of verbal inflections with lexical aspect in lower-level groups, while verbal inflections associated with tense in higher-level groups. Some examples of the lower level subjects are provided below: We talking a while ….. they come to our ….. . [Target tense ‘past’, verb type ‘activity’] A baseball player ….. playing …ball. [Target tense ‘present’, verb type ‘activity’] I have … lives … um … fifteen years in Yabucoa. [Target tense ‘present perfect’, verb type ‘stative’] He began … October nine. [target tense ‘future’, verb type ‘achievement’] (ROBISON 1995: 357-361) SEMANTIC VIEW OF INHERENT ASPECT The POA states that verbal inflections that occur with certain types of verbs or predicates encode the properties of verbal aspect with what they affiliate. In other words, the association of morphemes with Original Article