Avoidance of the English Present Perfect by L1 Thai Learners
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Abstract
This study investigated avoidance behavior in the use of the English present perfect among intermediate-level Thai learners of English, employing a mixed-methods approach. Two contrasting theoretical frameworks were explored: the Avoidance Behavior Hypothesis (ABH) (Laufer & Eliasson, 1993; Schachter, 1974), which attributes avoidance to L1–L2 differences or the absence of a corresponding L1 form, and the Factors of L2 Non-avoidance Hypothesis (FNAH) (Thiamtawan & Pongpairoj, 2013, 2019; Wang & Pongpairoj, 2021), which suggests that avoidance is not always observed in L2 learners due to some contributing factors. Thirty participants were recruited from a tertiary-level institution, with data collected through a comprehension task, an Indirect Preference Elicitation (IPE) task, and semi-structured interviews. The results indicated that the learners did not exhibit avoidance behavior with the continuative and resultative perfects. However, they showed avoidance specifically toward the experiential perfect, despite the presence of the aspectual marker kʰɤɤj in Thai, semantically encoding the English experiential perfect. The findings therefore confirmed FNAH. It was assumed that the Thai learners’ (non-)avoidance behavior could be accounted for by intralingual transfer (Mahmoud, 2011), which stems from the syntax-semantics interface of the English present perfect, differences in L1–L2 semantic mappings, and transfer of training (Selinker, 1972).
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