English Inflection Research Articles

STUDENTS’ PRONUNCIATION ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH INFLECTIONAL –S ENDING AT SMA PANGUDI LUHUR

This study focused on the most dominant way of Students' Pronunciation of the English Inflectional “-S” Ending at the Tenth Grade of SMA Pangudi Luhur. The writer used the quantitative content analysis method to know the dominant way students pronounce the Inflectional “-S” Ending that was produced by 43 respondents. The technique of collecting the data was an instrument test consisting of 30 words of inflectional “-S” endings of two paragraphs and observation. Techniques for analyzing the data are coding category, coding material, data display, and analyzing and interpreting the result. Moreover, from the Pronunciation of inflectional “-S” endings, there were three possible inflectional “-S” endings such as /s/, /z/, and/iz/. Based on the findings, the dominant error in students' Pronunciation of inflectional test was uninflected with /iz/ endings 1.131 (37%) words, /z/ endings 1.129 (33%) words, and /s/ 1.057 (30%) words. The most uninflected words made by the students were/iz/ and the “-S” in the third person singular present tense.

English Inflectional Morpheme: Drill to Word Formation

It was found out that the students have difficulties in differentiating English inflectional morpheme, that is suffix /-es/ and /-s/, to indicate tense for verbs, and plurality for nouns. Other inflectional suffix to mention is /-ing/, /-ed/, /-d/, /-er/, and /-est/. The objective of this study is to improve students comprehension on inflectional affixation as one of word formation processes by implementing drill technique that is extended drill, or substitution drill. The drill was supported with practicing inductive and deductive approach. The drill and the approach were administered during two cycles of classroom action research. The participant of the research was 86 students taking the subject of Introduction to English Linguistics. This study found out that the students comprehension on inflectional affixation of word formation improved gradually from cycle 1 to cycle 2 because of the implementation of the substitution drill that alternately practicing inductive and deductive approach.

On the acquisition of tense and agreement in L2 English by adult speakers of L1 Chinese

Abstract This study investigates whether forms associated with verbal inflection can be acquired in relation to two UG-based L2 acquisition hypotheses: the Full Transfer Full Access (FTFA) Hypothesis (Schwartz, Bonnie & Rex Sprouse. 1994. Word order and nominative case in nonnative language acquisition: A longitudinal study of (L1 Turkish) German interlanguage. In Teun Hoekstra & Bonnie D. Schwartz (eds.), Language acquisition Studies in generative grammar, 317–368. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, Schwartz, Bonnie & Rex Sprouse. 1996. L2 cognitive states and the ‘full transfer/full access’ model. Second Language Research 12. 40–72) and the Interpretability Hypothesis (Tsimpli, Ianthi-maria & Maria Dimitrakopoulou. 2007. The Interpretability hypothesis: Evidence from wh-interrogatives in second language acquisition. Second Language Research 23. 215–242). The former captures the insight that convergence on grammars like those of native speakers is possible, whereas the latter argues that a native/non-native divergence results from the inaccessibility of some uninterpretable syntactic features. Ninety adult L1 speakers of Chinese of different English proficiency levels were asked to interpret and produce tense and agreement in various contexts in three tasks. Results suggest that the underlying grammatical representations in the end-state grammar may not be the same as native speakers’. We speculate that the inaccessibility of the uninterpretable [uInfl:] feature of v and the uninterpretable [uInfl:*] feature of be are the potential source of difficulty in acquiring verbal inflection in L2 English.

Investigating the Borrowing of English Inflectional Morphemes Into Chinese Newspapers

Abstract It is controversial whether English inflectional morphemes can be systematically borrowed into written Chinese since English and Chinese are typologically and orthographically different. This paper intends to investigate the borrowing of eight English inflectional morphemes [–’s (possessive), –(e)s (plural), –ed (past tense, past participle), –ing (present participle), –en (past participle),–s (the 3rd person singular), –er (comparative), and –est (superlative)] into Chinese with a corpus of Chinese newspapers collected from 2005 to 2021. The findings of this study suggest a significant presence of the systematically borrowed English inflectional morphemes into Chinese newspapers in terms of borrowability. Based on the analysis of the linguistic features and frequency distribution of the borrowed morphemes into Chinese newspapers, it can be concluded that the English inflectional morphemes borrowed can be well adapted into Chinese.

Dogs Urinating on the 1623 Folio: The Jaggard Press’s Dionysus Ornament in Context

ABSTRACT This case study of the Dionysus ornament illustrates how the 1623 Shakespearean folio carries with it echoes of previous folio works as it reinterprets this image within its own context. The paper establishes the other Jaggard Press titles in which the headpiece appears to explore how these different contexts draw out the image’s semiotic potential. It notes an extreme uptick in use in Crooke’s Mikrokosmographia, an anatomical work in which urination and ejaculation feature prominently. Operating in tandem with the 1623 prefatory materials, the headpiece participates in the visual organisational logic of the Folio, structures the Folio’s establishment of generic variety, and introduces the volume-wide rhetorical strategy of reading Englishness within a global context. The woodcut’s synchronously urinating dogs also suggest a commentary on the communal bodily experience of live theatre. Having noted ways early modern printed folio projects can be mutually citational through ornaments, the paper discusses how the Shakespearean volume positions itself within the English inflection of classical single-author collected drama through the associations with Dionysus, patron god of drama, and Ben Jonson’s 1616 Workes. The conclusion considers the Second Folio’s adoption of the headpiece as part of the 1623 Folio’s iconic look.

No ‘s’ in te reo Māori? Colonisation, orthographic standardisation and a disappearing sibilant

By the 1840s, a substantial degree of orthographic standardisation of te reo Māori had been achieved, despite the fact that the first efforts to convert the language into a written form had only occurred around seven decades earlier. This trend towards greater standardisation accelerated from the mid-1810s, and was led primarily by missionaries. However, this process was occurring in an environment where there was a substantial degree of dialectical variation among speakers of te reo Māori. The ensuing standardisation of the language in text inevitably resulted in the extent of this variation being reduced dramatically. One of the consequences of this was that some distinctive pronunciation features were lost, including the ‘s’ sound which was evidently in use among some Māori communities in the Northland region of New Zealand at least (and possibly elsewhere in the country, although there is insufficient surviving evidence to verify this.By the beginning of the twentieth century, there were practically no texts being published in te reo Māori which contained the ‘s’ sound. However, some words in te reo Māori continued to be pronounced with an ‘s’ sound until around the middle of the century in a few locations in the country among native speakers of the language. It is probable, although not certain, that the standardisation of the language in print by the middle of the nineteenth century, in which the ‘s’ was removed, contributed to the decline of its use in speech (although obviously there was some lag in the effect of this). The argument could therefore be mounted that the standardised orthography of the language was contributing factor to later standardised pronunciation, although obviously, other variables were also at play. Ironically, the only ‘s’ that appeared in connection with te reo Māori, and which persisted (albeit with diminishing frequency) until the end of the twentieth century, was in the pluralisation of Māori nouns. This trend relied on the English inflection of adding ‘s’ to nouns, including nouns from languages other than English (in this case, te reo Māori).This work commences with a survey of this process of pluralisation, followed by an examination of the early history of the standardisation of the orthography of te reo Māori. The concluding section considers the evidence of the ‘s’ sound traditionally appearing in some words in te reo Māori, and the possible influence that an increasingly standardised written form of the language had on diminishing and eventually eliminating the sound from te reo Māori.

Regularized modal verbs in Middle English dialects

The article investigates an overlooked development in the history of the English modals, namely the regularization of their plural inflection in Middle English (e.g. prs.ind.plshulleþ for expected shullen). Using the LAEME and eLALME atlases and a number of electronic corpora, I document the frequency and dialectal distribution of such regularized modal verbs. It is shown that regularized shall was fairly common in Late Middle English, regularized can less so, and regularized may only very sporadically attested. The distribution of these forms shows a clear areal pattern, being most numerous in manuscripts from the southwest Midlands. I suggest that the most likely explanation for the observed patterns is interparadigmatic analogy with the ‘anomalous’ verb will, which in some dialects had developed the same stem vowel as plural shall.

Verb Inflection in English and Arabic: A Contrastive Analysis Study

Inflection, the change of word form to mark grammatical distinctions, occurs in a variety of grammatical classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, etc. The purpose of the present paper is to describe the verb inflectional morphology in English and Arabic and to conduct a contrastive analysis of both of them. The research question which is put forth is: how do the verb inflectional morphology in English and Arabic differ from/resemble each other? To answer this question, a systematic descriptive comparative study is carried out with a unique focus on the verb inflectional categories. Eventually, it was found that the Arabic verb inflectional morphology is richer and varied from that of the English. Such a study has implications in fields like foreign language teaching/learning, translation, electronic dictionaries, natural language processing, and the like.

A Study of Tiv and English Inflectional Morphemes

This paper exploredthe inflectional morphology of Tiv the and English languages. The inflectional affix is an item that performs grammatical function without changing the part of speech of the word to which it is attached. The study is an exercise in Applied Linguistics which adopts contrastive analysis as a tool in the description of the languages. The paper observes that there are some similarities and differences in morphemic distributions of the two languages. It therefore justifies the fact that differences are likely to influence teaching and learning of a language. Unlike English, the inflectional morphemes in the Tivlanguage can also occur by alternation in tone. In other words, there are some rules on the plural formations or pronunciations. There is no set of Tiv morphemes referring to its particular gender as observed in English. Whether plural or past tense, the affixes in Tiv are only affixed at the levels of suffixation, infixation and tone. The study concludes that difficulties in teaching or learning of English language as L2 are often experienced in areas of differences, however, learning difficulties can also be in the areas of similarities. The study, therefore, advocates that language teachers/syllabus planners should make adequate use of the findings of contrastive or error studies as a research tool in designing syllabus for the teaching/learning of a second languages.

ENGLISH INFLECTIONAL ERRORS MADE BY INDONESIAN DEAF PEOPLE IN WRITING COMPOSITION

This paper was conducted to describe the types of English inflectional errors found in Indonesian deaf people in writing composition, identify the sources of the errors in the use of English inflection, and to find out the percentages. The Indonesian deaf people were from Indonesian deaf community groups on Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. This research used a descriptive qualitative approach by applying English inflection theory by Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy. The data collection techniques were conducted by using an online English writing test. The results showed that there were 179 errors in total in Indonesian deaf people’s writings. The most found error was in Third Person Singular Present Inflection with 51 errors (28.5%) and the least was in Present Participle Inflection with 16 errors (9%), and the rest were 18 errors (10%) in Preterite Inflection, 19 errors (10.6%) in Comparative Inflection, 22 errors (12.3%) in Superlative Inflection, 27 errors (15.1%) in Past Participle Inflection, and 26 errors (14.5%) in Plural Inflection. The source of error was Intralingual Error with 156 errors (87.15%) (False Concept Hypothesized with 6 errors (3.3%), Incomplete Application of Rules with 8 errors (4.5%), Overgeneralization with 23 errors (12.85%), and Ignorance of Rules Restriction with 119 errors (66.5%)) and Interlingual Error with 23 errors (12.85%).

Phonological constraints on morphology: Evidence from Old English nominal inflection

AbstractStudying the complex interaction between phonological and morphological developments involved in the extensive reorganisation of nominal inflection in early English, we focus, primarily, on new inflectional endings that emerged by analogy in etymologically suffix-less paradigm forms ofr-stems and root nouns. We argue that the analogical changes were essentially reactive to phonological developments, and to a large extent predictable in statistical terms. Investigating correlations in corpus data, we identify the factors that affected the probability that new analogical endings were adopted. The predictors of the directions of analogical change that we show to be robust include the syllable structure of the root, the salience of inherited and analogical inflectional markers, as well as their absolute and relative frequencies.

Analogy, reanalysis and exaptation in Early Middle English: the emergence of a new inflectional system

From Old English to Middle English inflection is gradually lost. It is assumed that this is mainly due to phonological and syntactic changes. This article, however, argues that the loss of inflection is not a linear process but new systems can emerge, and that morphological changes play an important role. The nominal inflection of the Lambeth Homilies – an Early Middle English manuscript from the southwest Midlands and dated around 1200 – is investigated in detail. It will be shown that analogical changes within and across inflection classes do not simply lead towards a reduction of inflection. The increase in syncretism and decrease in allomorphy result in a new inflectional system. This new system distinguishes singular from plural, feminine from non-feminine (in the singular and plural), and possessive from non-possessive (in the singular and plural). Additionally, the original inflection classes related to different stems are almost lost, except the weak inflection classes. The inflection classes are instead related to gender; that is, gender is the information that best predicts how a noun is inflected.

Acquisition of English Inflectional Phonology by Persian EFL Learners

Acquisition of English Inflectional Phonology by Persian EFL Learners

Morphosyntactic Analysis on English Inflectional Affixes with Special Reference to The Jakarta Post

This study is entitled Morphosyntactic Analysis on English Inflectional Affixes with Special Reference to The Jakarta Post. It is aimed at finding out the types of inflectional affixes and explaining how the inflected words found in The Jakarta Post are represented in tree diagram. The data of this study were taken from 31 articles related to business in The Jakarta Post printed edition published on 14th, 15th, and 16th of June 2017. Observation method was applied in this study for collecting data. Firstly, Articles about business were chosen. Secondly, the articles were read intensively one by one in order to find out the affixes occurring on the articles. Thirdly, every affix was marked and noted down. Lastly, those affixes were classified into inflectional affixes. The data were analyzed descriptively based on the theories of inflectional affixes proposed by Francis Katamba (1993) in his book entitled Morphology as the main theory and the theory of tree diagram by Quirk at al. (1985) in his book entitled A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language presented as supporting theory. Based on the analysis, suffixes found in the articles are the suffix –s in noun, the suffix –s in verb, the suffix –ed, the suffix –ing, the suffix –er, and the suffix –est.The suffix –s in noun and suffix –ed are the most frequent types that appearing in the data. The finding also shows that there are five syntactic functions found in the data; they are subject, predicate, object, complement, and adverbial. The inflected word as predicate appears more frequently than the other syntactic functions.

The iPad as a Research Tool for the Understanding of English Plurals by English, Chinese, and Other L1 Speaking 3- and 4-Year-Olds.

Learning about what young children with limited spoken language know about the grammar of their language is extremely challenging. Researchers have traditionally used looking behavior as a measure of language processing and to infer what overt choices children might make. However, these methods are expensive to setup, require specialized training, are time intensive for data analysis and can have considerable dropout rates. For these reasons, we have developed a forced choice task delivered on an iPad based on our eye-tracking studies with English monolinguals (Davies et al., 2016, under review). Using the iPad we investigated 3- and 4-year-olds’ understanding of the English plural in preschool centers. The primary aim of the study was to provide evidence for the usefulness of the iPad as a language research tool. We evaluated the usefulness of the iPad with second language (L2) learning children who have limited L2 language skills. Studies with school aged Chinese-speaking children show below native performance on English inflectional morphology despite 5–6 years of immersion (Jia, 2003; Jia and Fuse, 2007; Paradis et al., 2016). However, it is unclear whether this is specific only to children who speak Chinese as their first language (L1) or if younger preschoolers will also show similar challenges. We tested three groups of preschoolers with different L1s (English, Chinese, and other languages). L1 Chinese children’s performance was below both English monolinguals and children speaking Other L1 languages, providing evidence that English inflections are specifically challenging for Chinese-speaking children. The results provide further evidence to support previous eye-tracking findings with monolinguals and studies with older bilinguals. The study provides evidence for the usefulness of iPads as research tool for studying language acquisition. Implications for future application of the iPad as a teaching and intervention tool, and limitations for the method, are discussed.

L2 Processing of Plural Inflection in English

This study investigates (1) whether late second language (L2) learners can attain native‐like knowledge of English plural inflection even when their first language (L1) lacks an equivalent and (2) whether they construct hierarchically structured representations during online sentence processing like native speakers. In a self‐paced reading task, native English speakers and advanced Korean learners of English were tested on their (in)sensitivity to plural errors in two different structures. The results indicate that despite the L1–L2 difference, the learners were sensitive to plural errors in both structures, and that their sensitivity to the errors was affected by the structural distance of the feature‐checking dependency related to plural inflection, like the native speakers’ sensitivity. These findings suggest that (1) L2 learners can acquire target‐like L2 inflection knowledge, even if such inflection is not present in their L1, contra the representational deficit account and that (2) they are sensitive to structural distance because they compute hierarchically structured representations during real‐time language comprehension, contra the shallow structure hypothesis.

Error Analysis of English Inflection among Thai University Students

Error Analysis of English Inflection among Thai University Students

Patterns of reorganization of the early English nominal system

The present paper discusses the reorganization process of early English nominal inflection, investigating in detail the mechanism involved. The focus of the study is on the old English minor (unproductive) declensions which testify to a considerable departure from the inherited Proto-Germanic inflectional system, losing their identity as independent inflectional classes in the course of the Old English period. The investigation aims at identifying the patterns of the restructuring process, in particular its distribution with respect to the criteria of case and number. The data analysis shows that the patterns of restructuring were largely determined by the case/number hierarchy as predicted by the theories of markedness. It also reveals the importance of factors such as the morphological and semantic makeup of individual classes and the frequency of occurrence (operating on different levels) with its conserving effect. In a broader context, the study explores some general consequences of the process of the reshaping of the early English inflectional system, especially its theoretical implications for the traditional philological taxonomy of Old English nouns.

A Study on the Development of English Inflectional Morphemes Based on the CHILDES Corpus

A Study on the Development of English Inflectional Morphemes Based on the CHILDES Corpus

Aspects of Francophone Cameroon English Inflectional Morphology: The Case of the –s Inflection

This study examines the use of the –s inflection by Francophone learners of English in Cameroon. Focus is on analysing the use of this inflection in the verbs and nouns that these learners use in their English essays, in order to determine the frequency of its use, the various difficulties faced by learners, and the strategies employed to overcome these difficulties; so as to determine the general trend in the use of this morpheme by these learners. The study is carried out in four schools in Yaounde: the Government Bilingual Primary School Mballa II, Lycée d’Anguissa, College Adventist and The University of Yaounde I. Data is collected from forty scripts equitably selected from these schools using random sampling. The data are analysed based on the Principles and Parameters theory in Second Language Acquisition. The general trends revealed in the findings include: French interference in the morphological parameter settings for the use of this affix, omission of the use of the affix where its use is necessary and over-generalization of the use of the affix to exceptional situations. However, some learners, especially those of Terminale and Level III, succeed in correctly setting the morphological parameter for this affix and thus use it correctly in their written English.