Abstract

According to Smith’s “two-component theory of aspect”, aspect whether it is situation or viewpoint type, convey information about temporal qualities of an event or state such as beginning, duration and end. While situation type focuses on the inner temporal structure of an event or state, viewpoint type refers to the presentation of an event from the speaker’s perspective. Aspectual meaning interacts with the temporal adverbials. In this research, a judgement test was applied to 220 primary school students including first, second, third and fourth graders. Subjects were supposed to make true/false judgements on the appropriate use of temporal adverbials with verbs having various aspectual features using their intuitional knowledge of native language (Turkish). Fifty-nine sentences were used. While aspectual meaning was compatible with temporal adverbials in some sentences (for example “Canan bazen hasta bazen değil”), it was not in some others (for example “Erol bazen satranç biliyor”). The results showed that percentage of right judgement rises with the age, which means an improvement in aspectual performance. Stative and activity situation type verbs and their agreement with time adverbs were found to be more difficult for the subjects than the other types.

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