Creole English speakers' treatment of tense-aspect morphology in English interlanguage written discourse

The study sought to examine the effect of lexical aspect and narrative discourse structure on the pattern of acquisition and use of English verbal morphology exhibited by creole-speaking students. Findings indicated that the emergent pattern of morphology in the creole participants' written interlanguage appeared to be influenced not only by lexical aspect and narrative discourse, but also by a conglomerate of other factors such as the morphosyntactic features of the creoles, the blurring of the distinction between the linguistic system of English-based creoles and that of the standard English varieties, and the constant bidirectional shifting between the creoles and the standard varieties along the creole continuum, as well as the structure of narrative discourse in creole cultures.