Inflection Research Articles

The Impact of Morphological Processing-Based Predicate Inflection Intervention on Spelling Accuracy in School-aged Children with Borderline Intellectual Functioning

Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a morphological processing-based intervention on spelling accuracy in children with borderline intellectual functioning (BIF). Specifically, the intervention focused on facilitating the acquisition and application of predicate inflection rules to enhance spelling accuracy. Methods: Participants included three third-grade students with BIF who met specified selection criteria. A multipleprobe design across participants was employed, encompassing baseline and pre-tests (3 sessions), an intervention phase (12 sessions, including 4 sessions for generalization test), a follow-up test (1 session), and maintenance test (3 sessions). Dependent variables included spelling accuracy and error types. The intervention program was structured with visual aids and contextual examples to provide explicit instruction and guided practice in predicate inflection rules. Results: The morphological processing-based intervention produced significant improvements in spelling accuracy and reductions in spelling errors among the BIF students. Additionally, the intervention demonstrated generalization effects, with students successfully applying learned rules to untrained predicates. Enhanced spelling skills were also maintained in the follow-up phase, indicating the lasting impact of the intervention. Conclusion: This study highlights the potential of morphological processing-based interventions as an effective approach to improve spelling skills in children with BIF, as evidenced by observed performance gains. Further investigation is needed to assess the intervention’s long-term efficacy and applicability across diverse educational contexts and populations.

Case Marking in Pashto Nouns: Word and Paradigm Approach

The present study investigates the case marking of nouns in the Marwat dialect of the Pashto language, spoken in many regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan by using the Word-and Paradigm (WP) approach of Haspelmath & Sims (2010). The study attempts to analyze and describe morphological processes of case marking of nouns in the Pashto language. The data was collected from different villages of district Lakki Marwat, located in the south of KPK, in the form of audio recordings of eight willing and preferably old uneducated rural participants. The analysis of the data showed that Pashto nouns shared a number of morphological features with other IA (Indo-Aryan) languages like Rangri vis-à-vis the presence of grammatical gender marking. The data also shows that Pashto nouns are morphologically rich. Nouns carry these case inflections i.e. ergative, nominative, accusative, oblique, and vocative. The study finds the WP approach suitable for the analysis of the morphologically complex Pashto language due to its ability to deal with cumulative, extended, and zero exponents.

Common Linguistic Mistakes Made by Yemeni EFL Arabic-Speaking Learners in Their Writing

Yemeni EFL students use a variety of communication skills, including writing, to interact with others. But because English is not their first language, many have difficulty writing. Provided that teaching English requires a variety of abilities, including writing. Since merging knowledge has made it more difficult for Yemeni EFL Arabic-speaking learners to succeed, this study aims to address common linguistic errors produced by these learners in their writing. Using surface approach taxonomy and mistake analysis, the study looks at linguistic errors made by Hodeidah University undergraduate students in order to provide writing skills recommendations. The study employs qualitative analysis, evaluating essay data from twenty Yemeni EFL eighth-semester Arabic-speaking students at Hodeidah University using Ellis' five-step error analysis (EA) approach. According to the research, omission is the most frequent error made in their works. The EA system entails gathering samples, identifying errors, comparing them to "correct," categorizing faults according to the Dulay et al. (1982) approach, and calculating the total number of errors. Out of 201 errors, 58.71% were in learners' writing, mainly due to intralingual transfer. Common errors included number markers, verb-tenses articles, prepositions, subject-verb agreements, and pronouns. Other common errors included word order, addition, and incorrect formation. Factors contributing to these errors include inter-linguistic comparisons between Arabic and English, auxiliary verb disregarding, inflectional morphemes, and verb conjugation components. After discussing the reasons for this study, its importance, analyzing the errors, and identifying the results, the researcher recommends language teachers provide ongoing feedback to prevent errors from becoming fossilized and encourage students to master the correct form of the target language.

Morphological Processes in English and Sanskrit: A Cross-Linguistic Study

Morphology is the sub-discipline of linguistics. It is the study of morphemes and their arrangement in forming words. The present study attempts to identify and compare the morphological processes in English and Sanskrit. This study was based on qualitative methods and the selected documents of both languages were used as the research tools for this study. The results reveal that the English suffixes such as -age, -al,-ation,-ism, -ment, -ant, -ent, -er, and Sanskrit suffixes such as -ya/-eya, -man, -na, -an, -a, -ti -a, -ana, -ah, -ti, -tri, -aka, -man, are nominal derivational suffixes. The plural morpheme -s, and genitive morpheme -'s are English nominal inflectional morphemes whereas there are twenty-one inflectional suffixes (sup) (su, au, jas) in Sanskrit. Similarly, English verbal inflectional morphemes are -ed, -en, and -ing whereas there are eighteen verbal inflectional suffixes (tin) (tip, tas, jhi,) in Sanskrit. Furthermore, there are compound nouns (breakfast), verbs (fine tune), adjectives (open-ended), and adverbs (uprightly) in English. In contrast, there are only two special sub-class of exocentric compounds in Sanskrit, namely numerative (dvigu), and adverbials (avyayībhāva). As a comparative study, it can help identify the root knowledge of both languages as languages are related to each other.

Transformative impacts of explicit morphological instruction on irregular inflectional acquisition in Saudi EFL learners

The study aimed to investigate the transformative effect of overt instruction on the acquisition of irregular inflectional morphemes by Saudi EFL learners. A mixed-method approach consisting of quantitative data and complemented with a qualitative descriptive analysis was adopted for this study to measure the transformative effect of explicit instruction through pretest and posttest procedures. Input Processing Theory and Processability Theory were used in this study to see the transformative effect of overt instruction between the control and experimental groups. The study employed visual aids and metalinguistic discussion instructional techniques to treat the experimental group with a one-hour session once a week, other than the normal classroom instruction sessions. In total, it continued for seven consecutive weeks. The results demonstrated that a p-value less than 0.001 for all three hypotheses developed in the study posited in favour of the alternative hypothesis and rejected the null hypothesis. Hence, the two groups significantly differed in their vocabulary knowledge: morpheme recognition and morpheme use in writing. The results support the hypotheses developed initially in this study that overt instruction of inflectional irregular morphological knowledge transfers to the EFL learners’ writing skills and facilitates L2 acquisition. The study has significant implications for foreign language learners, L2 teachers, and researchers.

Implementation of Teaching Derivational and Inflectional Morphemes to SMP Al Islah Surabaya

This study investigates the integration of instructing derivational and inflectional morphemes at SMP Al Islah Surabaya to improve students' comprehension and its application to the English language. It aims to enhance students' vocabulary acquisition, reading comprehension, and writing skills by employing an effective curriculum and specific instructional methodologies. The present study employs a mixed-methods methodology, integrating quantitative language proficiency evaluations with qualitative observations of classroom interactions and student remarks. Initial results suggest that providing direct guidance on derivational and inflectional morphemes substantially impacts students' linguistic proficiency and apply grammatical principles with greater effectiveness. It emphasizes the significance of including morphology education in the language learning curriculum. It offers practical suggestions for teachers to cultivate a more profound morphology awareness among SMP Al Islah students and improve English language competency.

Derivational or Inflectional Morpheme: A Case of Papuan EFL Students’ Comprehension in Narrative Text

The objective of this research is to scrutinize how students in the English Language Department distinguish derivational morphemes and inflectional morphemes using narrative text. Consequently, student’s obstacles in distinguishing between both of bound morphemes. Qualitative methods are employed to this research with a descriptive approach to collect and analyze derivational and inflectional morphemes. The findings revealed a total of fifty-three derivational and inflectional morphemes, comprising fifteen derivational morphemes and thirty-eight inflectional morphemes. In terms of comprehension, EFL students score 66.5 in derivational morphemes, falling under the C category, indicating a good level of understanding. For inflectional morphemes, students achieve a score of 89, placing them in the A category, signifying a very good understanding. Regarding the obstacles, students face in comprehending derivational morphemes and inflectional morphemes the main challenges are the lack of vocabulary and the lack of grammar, which make it difficult for EFL students to know word class changes and grammar function changes.

ENGLISH NOUNS AND VERBS MORPHOLOGICAL INFLECTION MISTAKES AMONG UNIBA’S TOEFL PREPARATION STUDENTS’ ASSIGNMENTS

This research attempts to find and describe the types and factors of English nouns and verbs morphological inflection from the student's assignments. This research can also be seen as one form of language development research since it also discusses the factors of the mistakes that the students commit in the making of the assignment. The assignment was to write a paragraph about anything in English then the outcome was analyzed to find the morphological inflection mistakes and classify the data based on the criteria. This research applies descriptive qualitative design and uses observation for the data collecting technique and later uses document analysis. The techniques in this research are Spradley's domain, taxonomy, and componential analysis. This research finds 16 data of inflectional mistakes that fulfill the three categories of the factors while the discussion shows that the factor following each type is dominated by unfamiliarity with inflectional rules whereas the dominant type of inflectional mistake is omission. The conclusion shows that the most common mistakes happen in nouns by the supports from Tomasello's Usage-based theory (2009). Finally, the students mostly fail on noun inflection because they are unfamiliar with the inflectional rules of nouns.

Comprehensive Analysis of Derivational and Inflectional Morphemes for English Language Acquisition

Morphology plays a crucial role in students' language acquisition. This study delves into the distinctions between inflectional and derivational morphemes, aiming to enhance comprehension of these concepts. By investigating word creation processes and observed alterations, the study illustrates the profound impact of prefixes and suffixes on words, shedding light on their significance in language learning. Students frequently require clarification when distinguishing between inflectional and derivational morphemes during learning. To enhance comprehension of this subject, this present study initially investigated the definitions and subcategories of these two terms outlined in various literary sources. Next, it provided a concise overview of the critical distinctions between inflectional and derivational morphemes. These analyses aim to determine the word created by derivational morphemes, the word formed by inflectional morphemes, the process by which the specified word is formed, and the types of observed alterations. The author implements the descriptive qualitative approach. It will discover that each morpheme possesses its function and influences the base word's meaning, word class, or grammatical function. This study illustrates the impact of prefixes and suffixes on words.

Exploring global linguistic nuances: analyzing region-specific inflectional morpheme frequency in ICNALE

This study investigates region-specific inflectional morpheme frequencies within the ICNALE Corpus, exploring significant global linguistic intricacies. Through a quantitative, corpus-based approach, it conducts a comprehensive contrastive analysis, leveraging the extensive accessibility of the online ICNALE. Despite inherent limitations in data collection primarily reliant on interviews and written compositions within the ICNALE Corpus, the study offers illuminating insights into how diverse linguistic backgrounds influence the usage of inflectional morphemes in English. The findings bring to light interesting patterns in possessive usage, reflecting variations among ESL learners in acquiring grammatical features. Additionally, it highlights complexities in acquiring comparative and superlative degrees, aligning with challenges encountered by learners in mastering specific inflections. Analyses of plural noun inflections, subject-verb agreement, past tense, past participle, and present participle usage underscore the multifaceted influences of language background, acquisition stages, and instructional emphasis on learners’ morphological patterns. Future inquiries could further investigate the impact of instructional methodologies on inflectional morpheme acquisition, undertake comparative studies across proficiency levels and age groups, explore morphological transfer from learners’ native languages, and deepen comprehension of cognitive processes guiding effective learning strategies. These endeavors hold promise in refining pedagogical methodologies and enriching language learning experiences for diverse learner cohorts.

A Morphemic Analysis of Sindhi, Dhatki, and Balochi Derivational and Inflectional Morphemes

A Morphemic Analysis of Sindhi, Dhatki, and Balochi Derivational and Inflectional Morphemes

Traditional practices and techniques of the àgídìgbo: (re)examining the Yoruba ‘box piano’ through African pianism theory

Traditional instruments in Nigeria, as well as other West African regions, play a crucial role in ref lecting a society’s rich cultural identities and artistic experiences. One of these traditional instruments is the àgídìgbo, a Yoruba ‘box piano’ similar to the thumb pianos found in the lamellaphone family such as the mbira, ikembe and kalimba. The àgídìgbo is essentially a percussive instrument that requires and exemplif ies an indigenous performance practice and technique, along with extra-musical functionalities. While scholars have written about this Yoruba instrument, studies on its practice and techniques from the perspectives of linguistic tonality and music theory are insuff icient. Since Yoruba music is inf luenced by the tonal inf lections of the Yoruba language, the àgídìgbo, with its speech surrogate functions, creatively engages with Yoruba speech rhythms and melodies to achieve melo-rhythmic accompaniments and word intelligibility. This research embraces the theory of African pianism as postulated by Akin Euba (1970) to reexamine and analyse the traditional methods and techniques used in playing the àgídìgbo, while recognising that the instrument should not be equated with the piano. The data analysed were primarily gathered through observation and oral interviews, revealing signif icant insights into the instrument’s specialised traditional practices of tonal communication, melo-rhythmic patterns and the socio-cultural functions of àgídìgbo music. This inquiry recommends further research on and documentation of the practices and techniques related to indigenous instruments such as the àgídìgbo, with the aim of archiving and promoting African arts and cultural heritage on a global scale.

СТРУКТУРНО-НОМИНАТИВНАЯ ТИПОЛОГИЯ ЕДИНИЦ ТОРГОВО-ЭКОНОМИЧЕСКОЙ ТЕРМИНОЛОГИИ: ТЕРМИНЫ-ЮКСТАПОЗИТЫ

This study explores the structural-nominative typology of trade and economic units, specifically juxtaposed terms, by evaluating various methods of defining them and their structural and semantic features. This increase in juxtaposition is due to the need to save linguistic resources and maintain intralingual relationships. This study investigates models based on the relationship between the original word and the structure of the juxtaposed term, including two-, three-, and multi-component juxtapositions. The presence of many synthetic units in the term system indicates its improvement and adherence to the requirements for term compactness. Most components of juxtaposed terms are borrowed from European languages but follow the structuring and inflection rules of the Russian language.

Диалект села Старошведское: опыт составления словаря неизученного языка (sjǖn — slītas)

The dialect of the village of Gammalsvenskby (Rus. Старошведское; current Ukrainian name Змiïвка) belongs historically to the Swedish dialects of Estonia, which were spoken before World War II in the Noarootsi peninsula (Sw. Nuckö), in the villages of Kurkse (Korkis) and Vihterpalu (Vippal), and in the islands of the Moonsund archipelago: Osmussaar (Odensholm), Vormsi (Ormsö), Hiiumaa (Dagö), as well as on the islands Suur- and Väike-Pakri (Stora och Lilla Rågöarna), Ruhnu (Runö), Naissaar (Nargö). In 1782, around 1,000 Swedes from the island of Dagö, which at the time belonged to the Russian Empire, were resettled in the Kherson Governorate. There, on the bank of the Dnieper River, a village that later came to be called Gammalsvenskby was founded. The native language of its founders was the dialect of Dagö. Up to end of the 2010s, some of the elderly residents of the present-day village preserved a language variety that goes back to the dialect of Dagö; this is the dialect of Gammalsvenskby. The present-day state of this dialect has not been systematically described in linguistic literature. The only source of data for this article is fi eldwork with speakers of the dialect. The main objective is to present material recorded in the interviews in the most complete way possible and to describe the state of the vocabulary and infl ection in the dialect. The entries include the following information: type of infl ection; translation; phrases, sentences and short texts illustrating the usage (with initials of the informants). In many cases full paradigms are given as well. They include all phonetic and morphological forms that have occurred in the interviews.

Examining the Effect of Flipped Learning on Proficiency in English Writing Grammar via Inflectional Morphemes

The study aimed to understand the underlying effects of flipped learning on students’ English as Foreign Language (EFL) writing skill. For this study, proficiency of writing knacks of EFL has been examined mainly by using inflection morphemes based on experimental research work. Two sets of intact classes were chosen as participants for this research study. These classes were randomly assigned to different groups, namely control group and experimental group, with a total sample size of 126 EFL students. During the eight-week time, the control group (a non-flipped learning) and the Experimental Group (a flipped learning) were taught traditional writing instructions and flipped learning, respectively. The inflectional morphemes were used in three phases: pre-, mid, and post-test. The test named Repeated Measure Analysis of Variance (RM-ANOVA) was used to analyze data. The research findings show that the flipped learning students have outnumbered their counterparts, i.e., non-flipped learning, in terms of EFL students’ language writing proficiency development for inflectional morphemes. The research findings have proposed some general recommendations on EFL writing instructions for decision-makers, academia, and other interest groups.

Linguistic features in narrative and opinion genres and their relations to writing quality in fourth grade writing

BackgroundWe examined linguistic features in fourth graders' narrative and opinion writing and their relations to writing quality. We analysed narrative and opinion essays in terms of lexical sophistication and diversity as well as syntactic complexity, syntactic accuracy, and morphological complexity.MethodsData were from English‐speaking students in Grade 4 (N = 129; 50% female) in the United States, majority of whom were from low socioeconomic status background. Paired t tests were used to analyse differences of linguistic features between the two genres. Hierarchical regression models were run to examine how language features are related to writing quality.ResultsWords in the narrative task were more diverse and included more diverse verbal inflectional morphemes than those in the opinion task; syntactic complexity was significantly greater in the opinion genre, manifested by longer T‐units and the more frequent use of adverbial and relative clauses. Approximately 80% of T‐units were grammatical and 20% were ungrammatical. Syntactic accuracy and verbal morphological complexity of words were positively related to writing quality in the narrative task. Additionally, syntactic complexity measured by clauses per T‐unit, verbal and nominal morphological complexity of words were uniquely related to writing quality in the opinion genre.ConclusionsThe findings highlight the limited extent to which Grade 4 students use complex syntax in their writing. The study also supports the critical role of linguistic features in writing quality and shows both similarities and differences in language use in two important writing genres, narrative and opinion, in elementary grades.

Influence of Morphological Awareness on the Reading Comprehension of Students at the Tertiary Education Level in Ebonyi State

This paper examined the influence of morphological awareness on the reading comprehension of students at the tertiary education level in Ebonyi State. The study utilized the descriptive survey research design. Three objectives and three research questions were posed to guide the study. The target population comprised 22000 undergraduates from the south east part of Nigeria. A sample size of 220 respondents was selected using the simple random sampling technique. A structured questionnaire was the instrument for data collection. Data were analyzed using the statistical tools of mean and standard deviation. Findings showed that morphological awareness had a positive impact on student' reading comprehension. Result of the study also revealed that students’ knowledge of inflectional morphemes improved their reading comprehension. Result also showed that awareness of the differences between inflectional and derivational morphemes enhanced students' reading comprehension. Based on these findings, one of the recommendations was that curriculum planners should make Morphology a compulsory course to be taught at all levels of education in the university to enhance morphological awareness among undergraduate students and improve their ability to spell words, read words and understand sentences.

A Contrastive Study of the Comparative and Superlative Inflectional Morphemes of English and Yoruba Languages

This paper analyses and contrasts the comparative and superlative inflectional morphemes of the English and Yoruba Languages with the aim of identifying the morphological and syntactic structural differences, which may pose some difficulties to the Yoruba learners of English as a second language. The study adopted the Contrastive Analysis (CA) theory as its theoretical framework as well as the qualitative descriptive design with a content analysis approach, while using a textual data collection method. The study revealed that while the English language uses the inflectional markers “-er” to mark the comparatives and “-est” to mark the superlatives of adjectives and adverbs; the Yoruba language on the other hand employs lexical items “-ju…lo” as comparative marker and “-julo” for the superlative marker through partial reduplication. The paper further discovered that while the inflectional morphemes of the English language are all suffixes, the Yoruba language lends itself to both, but majorly prefixation. However, the comparative and superlative markers of both English and Yoruba languages are suffixes. In addition, the English language in its grammatical rules contains some exceptions or irregularities, which may further pose some challenges to the second language learner. The study therefore recommends that second language learners, whose first language is Yoruba, should ensure proper learning and acquisition of the correct formation and usage of all the comparative and superlative markers of the English language, in order to improve their proficiency in the language.

Exploring Spanish writing abilities of children with developmental language disorder in expository texts.

Numerous studies have shown that children with developmental language disorder (DLD), in addition to oral language difficulties, exhibit impaired writing abilities. Their texts contain problems in grammar, organization, cohesion, and length of written output. However, most of these studies have been conducted with English speakers. English is characterized by complex phonological structure, opaque orthography, poor morphology and strict word order. The aim of this research is to observe the writing abilities of children with DLD in a language with simple phonological structure, transparent orthography, rich morphology and flexible word order like Spanish in the production of expository texts. Twenty-six children with DLD (mean age in months = 128.85) and 26 age-and sex-matched typically developing (TD) children (mean age in months = 124.61) wrote an expository text about their favorite animal. In order to analyze how the two groups plan and encode written texts, we looked at word frequency and sentence structure, grammatical complexity and lexical density, and omissions and errors. Compared to the TD group, the children with DLD omitted more content words; made more errors with functional words, verb conjugation and inflectional morphemes, and made a large number of spelling errors. Moreover, they wrote fewer words, fewer sentences, and less structurally and lexically complex texts. These results show that children with DLD who speak a transparent orthography language such as Spanish also have difficulties in most language areas when producing written texts. Our findings should be considered when planning and designing interventions.

The Influence of Digital and Technology Equipment in Learning Activities on Students' Written Skills

This research aims to observe how students develop their written narrative skills. This research uses survey instruments and questionnaires as data collection methods. Statistical methods are used in data analysis. One hundred students were involved in this research, except those who only wrote less than seven texts from the research sample. The study results show that students experience significant development in their linguistic expression in written communication situations. Their ability to produce texts becomes richer at the linguistic level, with increased lexical diversity in nominal and verbal areas. They also showed a better ability to use sentence-connecting devices. However, there are differences between students who use their mother tongue and those who use their second language in terms of lexis and syntax. Students who use their mother tongue tend to use less and less varied lexis than their second language. In addition, students also showed higher linguistic uncertainty, especially in terms of case inflection and syntax. Nevertheless, there are no significant differences between the two language groups regarding the global structure of the texts. The results of this study provide important insights for language education at the primary school level, showing that students who use their mother tongue have sufficient ability to carry out narrative tasks in a manner comparable to students who use a second language of the same age. However, it should be noted that the development of language skills in students who use their mother tongue may take longer and require special attention in language learning.