A corpus-driven study of the English present perfect in general and textbook corpora

Abstract

Corpus linguistic research has consistently shown that there is an interconnectedness between patterns and meanings in language use (Hunston and Francis, 2000; Römer, 2006). With regard to the present perfect, little attention has been paid to the relationship between verb patterns and meanings expressed through the tense. This may be one of the reasons why second language learners frequently encounter difficulties in mastering the English present perfect. As Yoshimura et al. (2014) argue, language learners are likely to have a problem with the form/pattern-meaning mapping in the use of the present perfect. To fill this gap, the present study takes a corpus-driven approach to the pattern-meaning relationship of the present perfect through an investigation into British and American English general corpora. It is found that there are seven meanings of the present perfect, namely ‘accomplishment with relevance to the present’, ‘continuing from the past to the present’, ‘change of condition’, ‘experience’, ‘recency’, ‘discovery’, and ‘possession’. These meanings are found to be associated with specific distinctive patterns. The corpus-informed insights were then applied to an analysis of textbooks used in Thailand’s universities. This relationship between patterns and meanings can also be found in the sampled textbooks, but with different ratios. That is, the groups ‘continuing from the past to the present’ and ‘experience’ are found to occur significantly frequently in the sampled textbooks while such a core group as ‘accomplishment with relevance to the present’ shows a significantly lower frequency than that in the general corpora. The study offers a new light on the description of English present perfect and also provides empirical evidence to EFL pedagogical concerns in the development of textbooks and teaching materials.