The previous chapter on nominal plural marking on the syntax–morphology interface does not reveal any trace of L3–L2 transfer among the L3 French – L2 English participants, as indicated by their performance in the two receptive tasks: the grammaticality judgement-correction task and the multiple-choice cloze task. However, several distinctions were noted between the L3–L2 participants and their L1 Chinese – L2 English (CE) peers in the free production task, leading to speculations about whether their L3 proficiency and the L2 structure concerned might play a role in the learners' L2 in some way. Such differences between the receptive level and the productive level in turn added one more factor to be studied in this chapter, on past tense marking.

English past tense marking, the next phase of the L3 French – L2 English project, has long been challenging to L1 Chinese speakers. Similar to nominal plural marking, tense marking in English requires the use of morphology. However, it is much more complex, in that English past tense marking involves not only tense but also aspect, rendering it a semantic property (Smith, 1997). It is therefore possible that English past tense marking belongs to two different interfaces: syntax–morphology (with the presence of morphological ‘-ed’) and syntax–semantics (with the presence of aspect in the verbal form).

In light of the overall research question and hypotheses stated in Chapter 2, the following subset of hypotheses specific to English past tense marking was suggested:

• • Hypothesis 1a – the syntax–morphology interface (relating to research concern (1) and the possibility of reverse transfer involving an L3). Under the influence of their L3 French, the CEF participants will judge and identify English past tense marking more accurately and will produce fewer ungrammatical past simple forms without inflection than their CE peers.