Native and non-native speakers' perceptions of the meanings of English tense and aspect forms

This paper reports on an investigation carried out at the University of Brunei into what meanings native and non-native speakers of English associate with given English tense and aspect forms. Multiple choice questionnaires were distributed to 106 non-native speakers and 43 native speakers of English. Participants were asked to indicate the meanings of the underlined tense/aspect forms by ticking a maximum of three out of ten available options. The native and non-native speakers' perceptions differed in the saliency of particular form/meaning relationships to the different groups and possible developmental trends emerged