An optimality-theoretic account of the acquisition of English tenses: The case of Moroccan EFL learners

Abstract The study intends to describe the acquisition of the English tenses among Moroccan EFL learners. The analysis investigates each tense, employing the constraint demotion algorithm (CDA). The belief here is that errors emerging at the initial learning stages are indicators of L1 transfer. Based on the L1 properties, CDA rearranges the constraints to establish a constraint ranking, identical to that of English, based on the hierarchy detected through universal grammar (UG). Two hundred and twenty students, belonging to three different academic levels, participated in the study. The questionnaire they answered tested tenses through three different tasks. The output stemming from the analysis was that students’ mother tongue plays an important role in the acquisition of the tenses of English. The article concludes that the learners reach an intermediate phase in the interlanguage before eventually learning the correct tense form.