Tense/aspect, verb meaning and perception of emotional intensity by native and non-native users of English.

This study is situated within a growing strand of research on second language acquisition and emotion (Dewaele and Pavlenko 2002). It investigates the perception of emotional intensity associated with verb semantics, tense and aspect forms in the English of 20 native speakers and 33 second language users through a written questionnaire containing 36 utterances. Utterances included simple and complex verb forms with different aspectuo-temporal markers. Statistical analyses revealed significant differences in perceived emotional intensity between native speakers and L2 users. It is argued that while learners may comprehend the aspectuo-temporal values of tense-aspect markers, they have yet to learn the elusive "non-temporal" values of these markers (i.e. semantic-pragmatic functions) in specific contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]