L1 Transfer in Recognition and Production of A/Telic Sentences

Abstract

This study investigates L2 acquisition of telicity, in particular, how the Persian EFL learners interpret a/telic sentences comparing with English native speakers. To the mentioned aim, 70 EFL learners of English assigned to four groups of elementary, low intermediate, high intermediate and advanced speakers were asked to contribute to the present study. In task one the participants were to judge whether some telic and atelic sentences in Persian were compatible with the given context or not. Task 2, was a task of translation to evaluate the participants’ production power and task 3 was a task of telicity in English based on Persian. The results revealed that Iranian EFL learners were more successful with telic structures both in translation and recognition task comparing with the atelic ones. The results on telicity in Persian revealed that the markers of telicity in English and Persian are different. Where languages had different markers of telicity, participants were influenced by L1 in all groups but advanced.