Tense shift

Consequently, when writers are making verb form choices there are many aspects that need to be considered, and at times they are likely to make the wrong choice. As argued by Chappell and Rodby (1983:309), in L2 writing tenses sometimes appear to have been chosen arbitrarily and tense shifts to have occurred at random. As a result of this, texts tend to become ambiguous with reduced comprehensibility as a result. They also found that verb errors were more likely to occur in contexts that call for tense shift, such as backgrounding (Chappell & Rodby, 1983:310f). Based on learner narratives, Evensen studied tense shift (Evensen, 1987; Albrechtsen et al. 1991:81f). Having a text perspective where verb forms are analysed on contextual grounds, he distinguished between “unmotivated breaks”, defined as shifts

caused by an arbitrary “mixing of tenses” and “motivated breaks”, defined as coherently motivated shifts (Evensen, 1987:57; Albrechtsen et al., 1991:81f). If, for example, a narrative in the simple past contains a text section that is functionally different from the main text, e.g. a flashback or a piece of dialogue within a narrative, that text section is not bound to be held in the simple past. Such shifts from the original verb form sequence, if made into the correct tense, were considered motivated tense shifts. In a small-scale study (n=9), Evensen studied tense shift in L2 writing (Albrechtsen et al., 1991). He showed that the number of motivated tense shifts was positively correlated with skill level. Shifts that were not made correctly were considered unmotivated and their number was negatively correlated with skill level (Albrechtsen et al., 1991:82). The classification of motivated tense shift used in Albrechtsen at al. is described by Evensen (1987:56ff). Accordingly, motivated tense shifts can occur in the following cases:8

(1) direct speech, e.g.: She said: Yes I will marry you.

(2) hypothetic statements, e.g.: It looks like they might fit together.

(3) the conditional, e.g.: ...he would probably never have seen what was front and back on her if he hadn’t been able to guess that through the direction in which she talked.

(4) “flashbacks”, e.g.: Old Mr. Bond went looking for the spy as soon as he had gulped down his seventh double Scotch.

(5) literary ellipse, e.g.: When they have been married for a couple of weeks, Mr Smith starts to complaining of his wifes long dark hair.

(6) narrative present, e.g.: Ron was a very sad man. He has lost his wife for three years ago. Now he lived in a small town called Bexhill. It’s a very fine day in April. The sun is shining and it’s very hot. Ron is walking on the street, when he suddenly see a girl in front of him with very long hair. 9

(7) generic statements, e.g.: Hayes just resigned. He’s our chancellor.

8

The origin of most examples are pointed out in Evensen (1986: 47, 66): while the origin of (4) remains unclear, (7) is from Mann & Thompson and (8) from Labov. The remaining examples are all from learner texts collected by Linnarud.

9_{In Evensen (1986: 67), it is pointed out that has lost in the second sentence is a result of tense} mixing.

(8) meta-comments, e.g.: And you know the man who picked me out of the water? He’s a detective in Union City. And I see him now and again.

(from Evensen, 1987:56ff)

With a reference to Fleischman (1985), Evensen classifies the switch from unmarked past to marked present that occurs in (6) as narrative present. Indeed, Fleischman (1985:869, 855) does identify foregrounding as being made by means of switches into the narrative present. However, as her study was based on a 13th _{century oral text in Old French, narrative present turns out to}

be a less suitable category for written texts in contemporary learner English. Two reasons for this can be found in Fleischman’s argumentation. Firstly, she points out that grounding, in her opinion, is language exclusive, made according to the structures available in each language (Fleischman, 1985:872, 869). While grounding was not feasible within the past system of Old French, one solution was to achieve the desired effect by means of tense switching instead. In present-time English, however, grounding can be achieved within the system of both the past and the present. Secondly, Fleischman points out that oral texts need not rely on grammar to the same extent as written texts do, since the latter, by necessity, have to be decoded in a solely linguistic context (Fleischman, 1985:864f). In all, it is my opinion that in studies of written texts, the historic present would be a more suitable tense shift classification, referring to past time events in the present tense in order to make a passage more vivid (Biber et al., 1999:454). This also means that classification into a narrative/historic present category cannot be done automatically, but that some kind of judgement about the dramatic effect achieved is called for.

Although tense shifts may be motivated, there can still be differences between the tense shift patterns in learner and native speaker texts. Eriksson (2001:14) saw a tendency towards such a difference in native and non-native writers’ argumentative texts. He noted that in the case of advanced learners, shifts between the past and present time-spheres tended to be between the simple past and the simple present, whereas native speakers tended to make such shifts with the help of the present perfect and would. Eriksson describes the native speaker choices as being less conspicuous, since the preferred forms work as a bridge between the two time-spheres. In the case of the present perfect, the bridge would be its two verb forms, one in the present and one in the past, as in has had. In the case of would, there is only one single verb form, but it works as a bridge in that this form is used in both time-spheres, in the present sphere as the present conditional and in the past sphere as the past

conditional and the future in the past. Eriksson’s results, however, were based on a very small sample of only four essays.

Another difference between learner and native speaker use of motivated tense shift has been found in the use of extra-textual references in the form of meta-comments. Since meta-comments are made in a present-time framework, they involve tense shifts when used in narratives with a simple past foreground. One way of making meta-comments is by introducing them by I think, an approach that quite naturally opens up for the writer’s reflections. Aijmer (2001) compared the occurrence of I think in native and non-native argumentative texts. What she found was an overuse of I think among Swedish learners of English. Aijmer attributed this tendency partly to learners’ intention of being persuasive while not mastering subtler tools for it. Partly, she saw the overuse as being cultural, reflecting a Swedish tendency to allow learners to give voice to their personal opinions. In effect, though, this means that not all motivated tense shifts are necessarily native-like and desirable.

This chapter has given a background to my study on L2 learners’ use of tense shift. The use of tense and aspect as indicators of time references was accounted for, as well as previous studies on the use of tense and aspect in learner language, in context and in discourse.