In English, Tense reflects the relations between speech time and the event time by past, present, and future tense. With the help of an aspect, it can further identify whether the event is perfective or progressive. Our focus for the question is the past and perfective tense. The significant difference between the simple past and present perfect tense is that the former involves a specified time. In contrast, the latter involves only an unspecified time, or indefinite time, supplied by the existential quantifier.(Bennett, M., & Partee, B. H., 1978)
We have different perspectives on viewing an event from English to Chinese. For past tense and perfective grammatical markers, we use (了) -le suffix after the verb or the verb phrase to mark the actualization of an event in a time frame. The tense in Chinese is identified in the context. For example, wordings like yesterday and last week imply ing the past event. Unlike the perfective aspect in English, actualization does not equal completion in perfectivity. It is for the realization and actualization of an event or state in real-time. Hence, -le suffix can be found in both past and future contexts. In the sentence, '我要去吃飯了(I want go eat rice-le)' which is 'I am going to have a meal.' that is in the future tense in the sense of English. -le suffix is found in the sentence while the event of having a meal is not completed and terminated in a bounded time, but it is going to be actualized soon. It does not hold realis assertion like in perfective tense. The temporal interpretations of Mandarin Chinese sentences can be accounted for straightforwardly by a pronominal tense system. (Lin, T.-H.J., 2015)
As mentioned above, the tense and aspect marking in English and Chinese are different. English has strict rules and different verb forms on the timeline for tenses. It also marks the event aspect with its perfectivity and progression. In Chinese, tenses are implied in the context, and the –le suffix, which is close to a perfective marker, does not necessarily mark the completion. We aim at marking the actualization of the event or the state. With such differences, Chinese native speakers with English as their L2 may face difficulties in using the past tense (with simple, perfective and progressive) and present perfect tense. They both express realis assertions. The second language learners may use the rules or items from the first language. (Sun, G. 1997)
