Chinese Learners of English Are Conceptually Blind to Temporal Differences Conveyed by Tense

Chinese learners of English often experience difficulty with tense presumably because their native language is tenseless. We showed that this relates to incomplete conceptual representations for rather than poor grammatical rule knowledge. Participants made acceptability judgments on sentences describing two-event sequences were either temporally plausible or misaligned according verb (time clash). Both upper-intermediate and speakers able detect time clashes between events, showing participants could apply rules explicitly. However, a predicted modulation the N400 event-related brain potential elicited by in English-speaking was entirely absent participants. In contrast, same semantically process information when it lexically conveyed both languages. Thus, despite mastery grammar, high-functioning failed meaning tense-conveyed temporal real time.