ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 discusses the grammatical categories of tense and aspect which act as the basis for the following comparison and as the point of reference when searching for similarities and differences between monolingual and bilingual learners of English. The languages under discussion differ systematically in how location in time and aspectual information are expressed. First, the concepts of tense, aspect, and aktionsart are briefly introduced before discussing the respective languages of this study individually. English will be analyzed with the most detail, because all participants of this study are foreign language learners of English. Second, brief overviews of the remaining languages, German, Russian, Turkish, and Vietnamese, are subsequently presented. These sections are in part based on what had previously been said about English. The main points are summarized in the last section of this chapter.
