English Morphemes Research Articles

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.

The Evolution of English Morphemes: Sociocultural Perspectives and Future Trajectories

The Evolution of English Morphemes: Sociocultural Perspectives and Future Trajectories

Morphological Awareness and Cross-Language Transfer

This research investigated how knowledge of word structure (morphology) transfers across languages in an EFL context. The study involved 100 randomly selected students from basic education in Tunisia, with half from Grade 8 and the other half from Grade 9. The students' vocabulary sizes were assessed using an adapted version of Nation's Vocabulary Levels. Additionally, tests for inflectional and derivational morphemes in Arabic, French, and English were used to measure the students' awareness of word structure. The students also completed two tasks involving words that are similar in meaning and form across languages (cognates) in French-English and Arabic-English. The results showed that knowledge of word structure in Arabic did not relate to knowledge of word structure in English, but there were significant connections between knowledge of word structure in French and English. Furthermore, the study revealed that the similarity of English words with Arabic affected the transfer of knowledge of word structure, while knowledge of word structure in French had an impact on both similar and dissimilar English words.

Korean neologisms of 2017–2021

This paper investigates the Korean neologisms of the years 2017 to 2021, collected by the Center for Korean Language Information Studies at Kyungpook National University, and examines in particular the 1,081 neologisms that contains at least one borrowed element, which constitute 58.2% of the neologisms collected during that timeframe. The analysis of the source languages of the loans (i.e., the borrowed elements) confirms the preponderance of English in neologism creation due to its status and prestige globally, with 1,024 neologisms containing at least one English morpheme. The examination of semantic categories of the loan-based neologisms shows the dominant interest of Korean speakers in the Economy, Society, and Life & Lifestyle domains, which is also reflected in those that were included in the dictionary Urimalsaem or suggested for inclusion by the dictionary users. Those neologisms in particular were further analysed and proved to be testament to cultural changes in Korean society, which has been shifting from a traditionally Confucian, male-dominant, work-oriented, and holistic society to a society that gives more space to women (ppaminisuthu “dad feminist”) as well as the individual (nanalayntu “me-me-land”) and their well-being (welapayl “work-life balance”, chonkhangsu “countryside vacances”).

500 Years of Past Be in East Anglia: A Variationist Investigation

As it is widely known, the verb to be, in its different tense, person and number forms, is the most frequently used verb in both written and oral English. Additionally, at least in Standard English, it is the most irregular verb, with many different forms. However, this degree of irregularity is not universal across the English-speaking world—more regularised patterns are found in a number of non-standard varieties. Despite much empirical investigation in the variationist literature on past BE, and despite the considerable corpus of work examining East Anglian English, especially by Peter Trudgill (e.g. 2021), there has, as yet, been no variationist investigations of past BE from the core heartland of linguistic East Anglia. In this paper, we try to address this by examining datasets from East Anglia that are half a millennium apart. We begin with a historical sociolinguistic study of past BE forms in the Late Middle English stages of the history of English by observing, detecting, quantifying and analysing their presence in one of the most important linguistic corpora of the period: the Internet electronic edition of the (East Anglian) Paston Letters from the Virginia University Electronic Text Center. We then, much nearer to the present-day, scrutinise a more contemporary corpus of East Anglian English for variable patterns of past BE, namely Peter Trudgill’s own corpus of sociolinguistic interviews from Norwich in the 1960s (see Trudgill, 1974). While the data are (understandably) of very different kinds, our analysis enables us to broaden our understanding of past BE variability, both diachronically and synchronically, by adding East Anglia to the map.

Активизация англоязычных морфем в современном русском словообразовании

Активизация англоязычных морфем в современном русском словообразовании

THE ALLOMORPHY IN ENGLISH WORDS: MORPHOLOGY AND PHONOLOGY INTERRELATED APPROACH

The article aims to analyze which allomorphs occur more accurately in English and what factors determine them. The problems that the researchers examine enable English learners and readers to pronounce English words, in this case, English morphemes. The theory employed by the researchers is morphophonemics, dealing with how morphemes alter their appearance or pronunciation in response to the sounds that surround them in a given piece of content. The approach or method that the researchers use in this article is descriptive qualitative method based on the data. The findings that the researchers come across are as follows: (a) the definitive article, (b) the definitive article, (c) Derivation, (d) Irregular verbs, (e) Past tense marker (-ed), (f) Present tense morpheme, (g) Plural noun markers, (h) Possessive markers. It can be seen that the shape or pronunciation of an English word depends on the linguistic environment in which it occurs, and it is obvious that morphophonemic change involves not only replacing but also changing the phonological shape of a morpheme. Based on the data, the researchers find that there are two basic types of allomorph, such as morphophonemic changes and suppletion. The researchers also attend to the theory of Pike, stating that sounds tend to be influenced by their environments.

Diminutivization as a metaphor engendered phenomenon

The roles of diminutive morphemes in English and in Polish are hardly equivalent. In English, diminutivization of a noun indicates either a relatively small size of a referent and/or a speaker’s emotional attitude towards it (in the hypocoristic function). In Polish, however, besides the two aforementioned roles, a diminutive noun may mark a conception much more complex than just a smaller version of a regular noun’s denotation, possibly very different than that represented by a regular noun. The semantic function of a Polish diminutive morpheme, thus, extends far beyond indicating smallness and amounts to specifying properties that may be absent from referents of regular noun forms. Oftentimes employing such a morpheme is indicative of metaphorical thinking.

피진에서 기층언어의 문법적 흔적을 측정하려는 시도 - 뱀부 영어(Bamboo English)에서 볼 수 있는 일본어나 한국어의 영향 -

20세기 중반, "뱀부 영어"(Bamboo English:이하, BE)라고 불리는 영어 기반의 피진(pidgin)은 전후 점령하 일본에서 미군과 현지인 사이에서 먼저 사용된 이후, 한반도에서는 미군과 현지인 사이에서 사용되었다. BE의 언어 데이터가 많지 않아서인지 지금까지 연구는 거의 이루어지지 않았다. 본고에서는 수량적인 분석을 통해 BE의 문법구조를 조금이라도 해명하는 것이 목적이었다. 분석 대상은 BE 44개의 문장이다. 1문장씩 형태소 해석을 행하고 나서, BE와 표준 영어, BE와 일본어, BE와 한국어의 3가지의 산포도를 작성해, 피어슨(Pearson)의 r치에 의한 상관계수를 문장마다 3개씩 산출하였다. 입력은 x값이 원래의 BE문 형태소의 일련 번호이며, y 값은 표준영어, 일본어 및 한국어 각각의 번역문 형태소를 BE에 맞추어 정렬한 번호 예이다. 분석한 결과, 먼저, BE문의 대부분이 영어와 문법적으로(형태소 순서) 유사하다는 것을 알았다. 원래 BE는 피진화된 영어이며, 피진일본어도 피진한국어도 아니기 때문에, 이것은 예상한대로의 결과라고도 할 수 있다. 그러나 그럼에도 불구하고 44개 문장 가운데, 7개 (약 15 %)는 영어로는 설명 할 수 없는 형태소 순서로 되어 있다. 이 7개문의 대부분은 또, 기층언어(일본어나 한국어)의 통사론적인 영향을 받고 있음이 판명되었다. 마지막으로, BE는 전세계의 많은 다른 피진과는 달리 "제3자에 의한 사용"(tertiary usage)이 발견되지 않는다는 점에 주의할 필요가 있다. 즉, BE는 일본인과 한국인이 서로의 의사전달을 위한 링구아 프랑카(국제어)로는 사용되지 않았다. 그럼에도 불구하고 이 피진에 대한 기층언어의 강한 문법적 영향이 보이는 것은 일본어와 한국어 사이에 존재하는 형태소 순서의 유사성에 기인하는 것으로 보인다. In the mid 20th century an English-based pidgin commonly referred to Bamboo English was used first in post-war occupied Japan by American military and Japanese locals, and later on the Korean peninsula as American soldiers and local people there had increasing contact. No in-depth studies of it have been published mainly because of the paucity of linguistic data. This paper seeks to shed light on its grammatical structure through quantitative analyses, namely producing three scatter plots and thrice calculating Pearson’s r correlation coefficients. These are made for 44 individual sentences in Bamboo English, with the x values being the sequential numbers of the morphemes in the original Bamboo English sentence and the y values being the re-ordered numbers of morphemes in the Standard English, Japanese and Korean translations, respectively. The results showed that the majority of the BE sentences were grammatically similar (similar morpheme order) to English. This is to be expected since, after all, BE is pidginized English and not pidginized Japanese or pidginized Korean. Nonetheless seven (or around 15%) of the 44 sentences had morpheme order which is unexplainable by English. Many (though significantly all of these) do indeed seem to reflect the syntactic influence of the substrata (i.e. Japanese and Korean) languages. Finally, we note that BE differs from many pidgins worldwide in that we do not find “tertiary usage”, that is BE was not used a lingua franca by Japanese and Koreans to communicate with one another. Nonetheless, it is possible that the strong grammatical influence of the substrata languages on this pidgin may be due to the morpheme order similarities inherent in Japanese and Korean.

Foreign Language Processing of English Regular and Irregular Past Tense Verbs by Arabic-Speaking EFL Children

Purpose. This paper examines whether irregular past verbs are acquired earlier than regular past verbs by Arabic-speaking EFL children.
 Methods and procedure. Ninety fifth graders were tested using pictures representing 20 regular and 20 irregular past tense verbs through a sentence completion task. An introspective session was conducted with 70 children following the administration of the tests in order to determine the areas of difficulty. 
 Results. The results mainly revealed that there is a statistically significant difference between regular and irregular verbs in favour of regular verbs. This suggests that the children learn regular forms prior to irregular ones contradicting the Natural Order Hypothesis and providing credence to the two Interlanguage strategies, namely, the L2 Overgeneralization of Alternative L2 Category Strategy and L1 Transfer Strategy. The children’s failure to produce the irregular form of the verb can be ascribed to the default system that they rely on, which is the computation system rather than the storage system. Thus, Arabic-speaking EFL children apply regular inflection of -ed whenever their memory fails to produce an irregular verb form.
 Conclusions. This study has demonstrated that Arabic-speaking EFL children do not follow the same sequence of acquisition as that exhibited by first language learners in acquiring the regular and irregular simple past forms. These learners acquire the regular past tense forms prior to the irregular ones contradicting the Natural Order Hypothesis. Due to the lack of irregularities in their first language, these learners apply the regular inflection rule to novel or unfamiliar verbs without sometimes considering the possibility of an existent irregular form that needs to be retrieved from memory. This also provides credence to two Interlanguage strategies, namely, the L2 Overgeneralization of Alternative L2 Category Strategy and L1 Transfer Strategy. More studies that investigate the sequence of acquisition of other types of morphemes by Arabic-speaking EFL children are needed to explore the effect of L1 and other factors such as the learning situation on the acquisition of English morphemes.

DERIVATIONAL AND INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES IN ENGLISH AND JAVANESE

ABSTRACT This study is about the realization of derivational and inflectional morphemes in English and Javanese. The objectives of this study are to investigate the kinds of derivational and inflectional in English and Javanese short stories, how the English and Javanese words formed by derivational and inflectional, and to explain the realization of derivational and inflectional morphemes in English and Javanese. This study is designed in descriptive-qualitative research. The source of data is English and Javanese short stories namely 1) Oedipus Rex and Sangkuriang, 2) Beauty and the beast and Lutung Kasarung. The data of the study is the words of English and Javanese. The findings of the study showed that the word formation formed by derivational morpheme in English short stories were begun from Oedipus rex consisted of 11 noun formation, 1 verb formation, 2 adjective formation and 8 adverb formation. While, beauty and the beast consisted of 16 noun formation, 2 verb formation, 9 adjective formation, and 14 adverb formation. The total of derivational process in Oedipus Rex and beauty and the beast was 63 words (52%). The word formation formed by derivational morpheme in Javanese short stories were begun from Sangkuriang consisted of 17 noun formation, 16 verb formation, and 1 adverb formation. While, Lutung Kasarung had 3 noun formation, 16 verb formation, 1 adjective formation, and 4 adverb formation. The total of derivational process in sangkuriang and Lutung Kasarung was 58 words (48%). The word formation formed by inflectional morpheme in English short stories were begun from Oedipus Rex had 1 noun formation, 27 verb formation, and 2 adjective formation. While, Beauty and the Beast had 12 noun formation, 36 verb formation, and 14 adjective formation. The total was 92 words (100%). Javanese did not have inflectional process.

Difficulties in Learning English Plural Formation by EFL College Students

Freshman students at the College of Languages and Translation received direct instruction in plural formation. Instruction covered regular plural nouns, irregular plural nouns, plural formation of words ending in –f, and –o, nouns that have the same plural and singular form, and words with Latin and foreign plurals. The students did all the exercises in the textbook, then took an immediate test a week after instruction and a delayed test at the end of the semester (3 months later). Responses were scored and a corpus of 3099 errors was collected from both tests. No significant differences were found in the amount and types of errors made by the students in the immediate and delayed tests. Results revealed that freshman students tended to regularize English plural formation and overgeneralize regular English plural morphemes (63.28%), i.e., they deleted the regular plural suffix from nouns ending in an –s or –es (35.37%) or tended to add the regular plural suffix to words that do not have it (27.91%). They also confused singular and plural endings of Latin words (15.07%). They either confused the singular and plural forms of the same Latin word or added a faulty Latin suffix to a Latin word or even a non-Latin word such as criterium, *curriculon, *natia, *salma, *petrolea. In other cases, they thought the singular and plural forms of a word were the same (7%). In addition, findings showed that the most difficult plurals to master were those of words that end with an –s or –es but have no singular form such as measles, news, pajamas, means, linguistics (28.85%); words with Latin plurals (21.85%); non-count nouns such as information, electricity, petroleum, salmon with no plural form (21.4%), and words that have a plural, but they thought they have no plural form such as nation, illness, infection, African (8.55%). Interference among the English plural morphemes themselves and confusing plural formation rules caused most errors. No interference from Arabic pluralization was found. Recommendations for improving students’ English plural formation competence are given.

Assessing of English Morpheme Acquisition Order of Thai Deaf University Students

The purposes of this study were to assess the acquisition order of nine English grammatical morphemes and to identify types of grammatical morphemes which seem difficult for Thai deaf university students. Thirty-seven Thai deaf university students completed 18 fill-in-the-blank questions. Data were analyzed by frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation. The results indicated that the English grammatical morpheme acquisition order of Thai deaf university students was as follows: 1) article (Mean (M) =1.38/3.00), 2) plural (M =1.36/3.00), 3) regular past tense (M =1.28/3.00), 4) progressive (M = 1.22/3.00), 5) the 3rd person singular simple present tense (M=1.16/3.00), 6) auxiliary (M = 1.53/3.00), 7) irregular past tense (M = 1.46/3.00), 8) copula (M = 0.41/3.00), and 9) possessive (M = 0.39/3.00). From the results, the 3rd person singular simple present tense, auxiliary, irregular past tense, copula, and possessive were considered difficult for the deaf participants. The findings from this study can be used for further pedagogical and curriculum development in teaching English grammatical morphemes to Thai deaf students.

Production of Third-Person Singular –s And be Copula in Communication Tasks by Vietnamese EFL Learners: Acquisition Order and Learner Orientation to Form

Research on the acquisition order of inflectional morphemes in English has shown that third-person singular –s (3SG–s) is challenging to acquire and acquired later than be copula by both L1 and L2 learners of English. In a departure from the usual practice of controlled elicitation, the current study investigated the production of these two forms by Vietnamese EFL learners in oral communication tasks performed in intact classrooms. Vietnamese L1 does not inflectionally mark 3SG–s although the construction of be copula in Vietnamese and English shares some features. These differences motivated the selection of the two target forms. Nine pairs of Vietnamese EFL university students were recorded performing five communicative tasks generated contexts for use of 3SG–s. over three weeks in their normal classes. Performance data were transcribed and analyzed for frequencies of production and omission of the two target forms in obligatory contexts. After completing the tasks, the students were interviewed about what they attended to when performing the tasks. Interview transcripts were analyzed thematically. Results show that the learners omitted 3SG–s in most obligatory contexts and across all tasks. They were better at accurately producing be copula than 3SG–s but accuracy rates varied between learners. Interview data revealed the conscious decisions learners made concerning the accuracy of their language production. The findings are discussed with reference to different theoretical models. The study advances understanding of acquisition of 3SG–s and be copula by EFL learners and offers pedagogical implications for how a focus on inflectional forms can be managed in oral communicative task performance.

“Grammar of emotions”: English affixal morphemes, adverbs of frequency, word-order, auxiliaryverbs as a means of verbalization of emotions

“Grammar of emotions”: English affixal morphemes, adverbs of frequency, word-order, auxiliaryverbs as a means of verbalization of emotions

Accuracy order in L2 grammatical morphemes: Corpus evidence from different proficiency levels of Turkish learners of English

The present study empirically scrutinizes the fixed natural order of grammatical morphemes relying on a manual analysis of an EFL learner corpus. Specifically, we test whether the accuracy order of L2 grammatical morphemes in the case of L1 Turkish speakers of English deviates from Krashen’s (1977) natural order and whether proficiency levels play a role in the order of acquisition of these morphemes. With this in mind, we focus on the (in)accuracy of nine English grammatical morphemes with 2883 cases manually tagged by the UAM Corpus Tool in the written exam scripts of Turkish learners of English. The results based on target-like use scores provide evidence for deviation from what is widely believed to be a set order of acquisition of these grammatical morphemes by second language learners. In light of such findings, we challenge the view that the internally driven processes of mastering grammatical morphemes in English for interlanguage users are largely independent of their L1. Regardless of L2 grammar proficiency in our data, the observed accuracy of some morphemes ranked low in comparison with the so-called natural order. These grammatical morphemes were almost exclusively non-existent features in participants’ mother tongue (e.g., third person singular –s, articles and the irregular past tense forms), thus suggesting the influence of L1 in this respect.

Cross-linguistic transfer between aspect in Cantonese and past tense in English in Cantonese-English bilingual preschool children

Purpose: This study addresses the question of whether sequential bilingual children’s past tense marking development in their second language (L2) is affected by their knowledge of temporal marking in their first language (L1). We investigated whether Cantonese-English sequential bilingual children’s knowledge of aspect markers in Cantonese (L1), along with external and internal factors, predicts their past tense marking in English (L2). Method: We examined 39 pre-school children’s production of perfective aspect markers in Cantonese and regular and irregular past tense morphemes in English using a story-retell task administered in both languages. Result: The results showed that children produced significantly more irregular past tense verbs than regular past tense verbs in English. Their English irregular past tense use, but not regular past tense use, was predicted by their knowledge of aspect markers in Cantonese. Conclusion: Findings suggest that semantic transfer between Cantonese and English might contribute to the early stages of acquiring English past tense marking. Clinically, the results could potentially lead to more informed assessment procedures and better diagnostic decision making for bilingual children.

A preliminary study of the relationship between working memory, language experience, and grammatical skill in dual language learners

Purpose: This study examined the relationship between verbal short-term and working memory, language experience, and English tense-marking skill in Spanish L1-English L2 dual language learners (DLLs). Methodology: Ten Spanish-English DLLs, in kindergarten and first grade, participated in the study. Children completed the Test of Early Grammatical Impairment, a narrative retell task in English, and verbal memory tasks. Parents provided information regarding language input and output in the home and school environment. Data and analysis: Correlational analyses were conducted to examine relationships between English and Spanish input/output, forward and backward digit span, assessed in English and Spanish, and the accurate and productive use of English tense morphemes in various linguistic contexts. Conclusions: Study outcomes indicated varied use of English tense morphemes among DLLs. Additionally, a strong, positive association was found between the use of a variety of distinct tense forms and verbal working memory performance. Originality: This study is the first investigation to examine verbal short-term and working memory and home language experience to advance our understanding of the specific child internal and external factors that may account for the variability in tense marking during English second language acquisition. Significance: This research provides further insight to the effects of individual differences on the acquisition of second language grammatical skill during childhood.

Register of Online Transactions in the Field of Beauty on Social Media Instagram

This current research aimed to find out and describe the form of registers that are in the online buying and selling in the beauty field and to find out how the registers are formed. The online beauty shop was chosen because it considers a lot of enthusiasts and interactions between sellers and buyers in the buying and selling process. With the development of online beauty shops, it is possible has variations in the register used. Based on that reason, the author are interested in analyzing more about the register term found in the online beauty shop. The method used in this research is descriptive qualitative and data collection techniques used in this research are documentation. The data of this research are the register terms in two beauty online shops on Instagram. The source of data is written utterances from sellers and buyers that communicate during the online buying and selling process. The result of this research indicates that there are thirty five out of forty register terms which include in word formation process among others are ten register terms as abbreviations, one register terms as back formation, five register terms as clipping, six register terms as compounding, one register terms as inflection, four register terms as derivation, and the last is seven register terms as Indonesian affixation + English morpheme. The usage of register terms is influenced by the age, educational levels, and occupation of buyers.Keywords: register, online shop, sociolinguistics.

Al-Furȗq fî al-Mȗrfîmât bayn al-‘Arabiyyah wa al-Injilîziyyah “al-Mȗrfîm (Mâ) al-‘Arabiy wa al-Injilîziy (what) Anmȗdhajan

This paper investigates Arabic and English morphemes with to identifying the similarities and differences between them. The differences between the two languages might be the main reason for making errors by Arab learners. It might help both teachers and learners to overcome these problems. By identifying the morphological differences between the two languages, teachers will determine how and what to teach, on the one hand, and students will know how and what to focus on when learning the target language, on the other. The Paper will shed light on phonological terms such as: "phonem, allophones, intonation, and accentuation" and their equivalents in English in order to identify the appropriate or opposing signs that affect the specificity of the sounds. We have followed the descriptive and analysis research methods. The results of study on morphemes have an interrogative and exclamatory function, and we find that the morpheme “what” is distinguished from the morpheme “ما”, which has other uses such as negation, infinitive, extra and accentuation.