Examines the use of "then"/"after that" by Vietnamese and Chinese learners of English as a Second Language, suggesting that this temporal adverb poses as much of a learning challenge as morphological means of temporal reference. Shows that a learner's usage is monitored by a looser notion of salience, which emerges from the…

This study of the use of "then"/"after that" by Vietnamese English-as-a-Second-Language learners suggests that the temporal adverbial poses a significant learning challenge similar to morphological means of temporal reference. Learner usage is monitored by a looser notion of salience, which emerges from the transference of a salience-marking…

Examines samples of writing by first-language speakers of Vietnamese to show that grounding, rather than lexical aspect, accounts for their selective marking of past tense. The article suggests that the learner-hypothesis governing this use of English past tense derives from the transference of a grounding-marking principle from a tense-free…