Author:Rofiat Omotayo Abdulkareem-Seidu
Date: 05/07/2026
Tense and aspect are fundamental grammatical categories that enable speakers to express temporal relations and the internal structure of events. This study carried out a contrastive analysis of tense and aspect in Jula and English to identify structural similarities and differences between the tense and aspect systems of the two languages. This was achieved by describing the tense and aspect systems of Jula and English; comparing how both languages express temporal and aspectual relations; and identifying potential areas of difficulty for Jula speakers learning English as a second language. The study adopted a qualitative descriptive approach and data were selected using Purposive Sampling Technique. The data consisted of group A and group B which are non-educated native speakers of Jula who cannot speak English, and educated native speakers of Jula who are fluent in English and can translate Jula words and expressions into English Language. The analysis was carried out on the tenets of Noam Chomsky’s Universal Grammar (UG) and Robert Lado’s Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH); and focused on key tense and aspect categories. Findings revealed that while English has a more morphologically complex tense system with clear grammatical markers for tense and aspect, Jula relies on particles and context-dependent constructions to express temporal reference and aspectual distinctions. The study concluded that these differences may result in negative-transfer and pose challenges for Jula learners of English and thus should be given attention during teaching and learning to enhance learners’ mastery of tense and aspect in English.
Keywords: Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis, Universal Grammar, second language learning, language pedagogy.
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