Use Of Verb Morphology Research Articles

Production Accuracy of Verb Morphology in Early EFL: Does Primary School CLIL Make a Difference?

This study explores the impact of CLIL and standard EFL instruction on the use of verb morphology by 40 primary school Catalan/Spanish learners in an oral narrative task over a period of two academic years. The empirical evidence available to date comes from secondary school contexts and indicates that CLIL learners are more accurate using verb inflections than EFL-only learners in the early teens, whereas starting with the mid teens, CLIL has a ceiling effect on the development of verb morphology, with differences only in terms of higher production accuracy of irregular past forms (Huettner and Rider-Bunemann, 2007; Lazaro Ibarrola, 2012; Garcia Mayo and Villarreal Olaizola 2011). No research is available on the impact of CLIL instruction on the use of verb morphology in the early stages of EFL. Production accuracy was analysed in terms of omission, targetlike use and errors regarding suppletive and affixal verb forms. Our findings show that CLIL impacts on the intra-group progress rates for affixal omission, in particular -s omission, and targetlike use of the progressive form. The vehicular use of the target language in CLIL instruction seems to strengthen learners' reliance on semantic prototypes in their use of the progressive form.

Non-native 17th-century English

This article has two aims: to introduce the study of manuscripts written in English by Swedes in the 17th and 18th centuries; and to highlight in one case study the acquisition and use of verb morphology by a young Swedish nobleman, Edvard Gyldenstolpe, as evidenced in two travelogues and five private letters from 1698–9. The first part of the article outlines the background to the project. It describes the possibilities and challenges of building a historical database of non-native English, and outlines uses of the English language before it became a world language. In the second part of the article, a case of study illustrates how verb morphology is used by a non-native language user at a time when hardly any teaching materials or dictionaries were available to Swedish learners of English.

The Development of Verb Morphology in the Advanced Learner Variety: A Longitudinal Study of L2 French

This article presents a longitudinal profile of the advanced learner’s use of verb morphology in L2 French, with the aim of tracking how such usage evolves within the advanced learner variety over a two-year period, as well as exploring how use of particular morphological forms relates to use of others. The forms are wide-ranging, and concern markers of past time, futurity, conditionality, reverse-order, as well as the subjunctive and 3rd person plural present tense irregular forms which are deemed to constitute “fragile zones” in the advanced learner variety. Results are presented in quantitative terms which allow frequently used forms to be identified against less frequent forms as the study progresses. The effect for naturalistic exposure through study abroad as opposed to regular classroom instruction is explored in terms of the effect of such differential exposure conditions on the emergence and use of the various forms concerned. Findings point to the complexity of morphological development in the advanced learner, whereby development is neither linear nor uniform across the morphological forms, while there is also considerable individual variation between learners. Results are discussed in relation to the advanced learner’s acquisitional profile.

Verb morphology as clinical marker of specific language impairment: Evidence from first and second language learners

The goal of this study was to search for verb morphology characteristics as possible clinical markers of SLI in Dutch as a first and second language. We also wanted to find out to what extent bilingual children with SLI are additionally disadvantaged in comparison to monolingual children with SLI, on the one hand, and to typically developing bilingual children, on the other hand. Therefore, we examined the use of verb morphology in the narratives of four groups of 7- and 9-year-old children: native Dutch (monolingual) children without SLI, bilingual children without SLI, native Dutch (monolingual) children with SLI, and bilingual children with SLI. The narrative performance in Dutch as measured by mean length of utterance and number of ungrammatical sentences was found to be generally worse for children learning Dutch as a second language, for children suffering from SLI, and for younger children. Furthermore, omission of an agreement marker in the third person singular verb form can be seen as a clinical marker of SLI in both first and second language learners. Bilingual children with SLI were found to be in an additionally disadvantaged position as far as their use of L2 verb morphology.

Lexical Aspect and the Use of Verb Morphology by Children With Specific Language Impairment

Many typically developing children first use inflections such as -ed with verb predicates whose meanings are compatible with the functions of the inflection (e.g., using -ed when describing events of brief duration with clear end points, such as dropped). This tendency is assumed to be beneficial for development. In this study, the authors examine whether preschool-aged children with specific language impairment (SLI) show a similar tendency. Sixteen children in each of three groups participated-children with SLI, typically developing children matched for age (TD-A), and younger typically developing children matched for mean length of utterance (TD-MLU). The children described actions in contexts that promoted either past tense -ed or progressive aspect -ing in past contexts. Half of the verb predicates referred to events of brief duration with distinct endpoints (e.g., drop), and half referred to events of considerable duration with less distinct points of termination (e.g., play). Both the TD-A children and the TD-MLU children used -ed with verb predicates of the first type more consistently than they did with verb predicates of the second type. They showed the reverse pattern for -ing. The children with SLI did not show any effects according to the verb predicate type. However, although the children with SLI made less overall use of -ed than did both groups of TD children, they differed only from the TD-A children in their overall use of -ing. Difficulties with tense-related morphology may be compounded in children with SLI if they fail to make use of associations between the lexical aspect of verb predicates and the grammatical function of the accompanying inflections. The authors argue that the advantages of using these associations as a starting point in acquisition may be especially important in the case of -ed. Additional studies of children with SLI are clearly needed, including those that employ longitudinal, naturalistic data.

Noun phrase morphology in Swedish-speaking children with specific language impairment

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) are often described as having great difficulty with grammatical morphology, but most studies have focused only on these children's use of verb morphology. In this study, we examined the use of noun phrase (NP) morphology by preschool-age children with SLI who are acquiring Swedish. Relative to typically developing same-age peers and younger peers matched according to mean length of utterance, the children with SLI had greater difficulty in the use of genitive inflections, indefinite articles, and article + adjective + noun constructions. Their difficulties were evidenced in omissions as well as substitutions. Furthermore, article omissions were more frequent in NPs containing an adjective and a noun than in NPs with only a noun. These findings indicate that in languages such as Swedish, NP morphology as well as verb morphology can be quite problematic for children with SLI. Factors that might have contributed to these children's difficulties are the lack of transparency of the gender of Swedish nouns, the morphological complexity of NPs containing adjectives in Swedish, the weak syllable status of articles, and the consonantal nature of some of the inflections.

Specific language impairment in Swedish: the status of verb morphology and word order.

Several competing proposals have been offered to explain the grammatical difficulties experienced by children with specific language impairment (SLI). In this study, the grammatical abilities of Swedish-speaking children with SLI were examined for the purpose of evaluating these proposals and offering new findings that might be used in the development of alternative accounts. A group of preschoolers with SLI showed lower percentages of use of present tense copula forms and regular past tense inflections than normally developing peers matched for age and younger normally developing children matched for mean length of utterance (MLU). Word order errors, too, were more frequent in the speech of the children with SLI. However, these children performed as well as MLU-matched children in the use of present tense inflections and irregular past forms. In addition, the majority of their sentences containing word order errors showed appropriate use of verb morphology. None of the competing accounts of SLI could accommodate all of the findings. In particular, these accounts--or new alternatives-must develop provisions to explain both the earlier acquisition of present tense inflections than past tense inflections and word order errors that seem unrelated to verb morphology.

Tense-aspect Marking by L2 Learners of English and Native English Speakers: Inherent Lexical Aspect and Unitary vs. Repeated Situation Types

In second language acquisition studies, it has been observed that learners ' use of verb morphology is influenced by inherent lexical aspect. The purpose of this study is to go beyond inherent lexical aspect and in vestigate how the aspectual distinction between 'unitary and'repeated'situationtypes(Smith,1997)influenceslearners'andnativespeakers' useof verb morphology. The data ofthis study consist ofaudio-taped interviews ofeight subjects: three native English speakers, andfive learners whose native language is Mandarin Chinese. The results reveal that in relation to inherent lexical aspect, both learners and native speakers demonstrate similar skewed distributions of verb morphology in their speech. However, in relation to unitary vs. repeatedsituation types, learners and native speakers demonstrate different patterns in their use of progressive morphology: Native speakers tend to use progressive morphologyfor describing repeated situations, while learners use it to describe the ongoing, continuous nature of unitary situations. The findings suggest that learners' acquisitionalpatternsmaynotbedeterminedexclusivelybynativeinput. Theprototype account proposed by Shirai & Andersen (1995) provides a feasible explanation for the findings of this study.

Comparing different models of the development of the English verb category

In this study data from the first six months of 12 children s multiword speech were used to test the validity of Valian's (1991) syntactic performance-limitation account and Tomasello s (1992) verb-island account of early multiword speech with particular reference to the development of the English verb category. The results provide evidence for appropriate use of verb morphology, auxiliary verb structures, pronoun case marking, and SVO word order from quite early in development. However, they also demonstrate a great deal of lexical specificity in the children's use of these systems, evidenced by a lack of overlap in the verbs to which different morphological markers were applied, a lack of overlap in the verbs with which different auxiliary verbs were used, a disproportionate use of the first person singular nominative pronoun I, and a lack of overlap in the lexical items that served as the subjects and direct objects of transitive verbs. These findings raise problems for both a syntactic performance-limitation account and a strong verb-island account of the data and suggest the need to develop a more general lexiealist account of early multiword speech that explains why some words come to function as islands of organization in the child's grammar and others do not.

On the overgeneralization of progressive marking on stative verbs: bioprogram or input?

Although several researchers have claimed that overgeneralization of progressive markers rarely, if ever, occurs, the validity of such claims has been questioned. In this study, the spontaneous speech of three children acquiring English, and of their mothers, was analysed for their use of verbs with respect to stativity and progressive marking. The results show that overgeneralization of progressive inflections to stative verbs does occur, and that the mother of a child who frequently produced stative progressives also used stative progressives substantially, while the other two mothers never used them in speech addressed to their children. The strong association observed between maternal speech and the pattern of children's use of verb morphology casts doubts on the claim that the lack of overgeneralization is innate (Bickerton 1981). A prototype account of the phenomenon is proposed as an alternative.

On the overgeneralization of progressive marking on stative verbs: bioprogram or input?

Although several researchers have claimed that overgeneralization of progressive markers rarely, if ever, occurs, the validity of such claims has been questioned. In this study, the spontaneous speech of three children acquiring English, and of their mothers, was analysed for their use of verbs with respect to stativity and progressive marking. The results show that overgeneralization of progressive inflections to stative verbs does occur, and that the mother of a child who frequently produced stative progressives also used stative progressives substantially, while the other two mothers never used them in speech addressed to their children. The strong association observed between maternal speech and the pattern of children's use of verb morphology casts doubts on the claim that the lack of overgeneralization is innate (Bickerton 1981). A prototype account of the phenomenon is proposed as an alternative.

Subject Case Marking and Verb Morphology in Normally Developing and Specifically Language-Impaired Children

Recent theories of language development propose a direct relationship between children's use of verb morphology and their use of subject case pronouns. Such proposals might contribute to an understanding of specifically language-impaired (SLI) children's difficulties. These children's extraordinary problems with verb morphology are well documented, and preliminary evidence indicates frequent pronoun case errors (e.g., her for she) in their speech. Thus, it is possible that a collection of difficulties may be linked to a common source in these children. The objectives of this study were to determine: (a) whether subject case marking, as well as verb morphology was more limited in the speech of a group of SLI children than in the speech of a younger group of normally developing (ND) children matched for mean utterance length; (b) whether a relationship between the use of subject case marking and the use of verb morphology existed in the speech of the ND children; and, if so, (c) whether this relationship is evident in the SLI children as well, in spite of their more limited use of these features. The results revealed that the SLI children were more limited than the ND children in the use of both subject case marking and verb morphology. However, a relationship between the two types of usage was found in both groups of children.

From discourse to semantics: the development of verb morphology and forms of self-reference in the speech of a two-year-old.

ABSTRACTRecent linguistic studies have proposed that verb morphology has evolved to serve particular functions inherent to discourse. In this paper, an attempt is made to apply this proposal to the development of verb morphology in the spontaneous speech of a child from 1;10. 16 to 2;0.2. The question asked was whether there were any aspects of the child's discourse which may have been in part responsible for her differential use of verb morphology. To answer this question, a distributional analysis is presented of the child's speech in two different speech contexts: dialogue vs. crib-monologue. Despite the exiguous amount of data in the corpus, the analysis yields striking patterns of co-occurrences involving verb morphology and forms of self-reference. The patterns were interpreted as provisional evidence that the child may have been sensitive to discourse factors in her selective use of verb morphology. The data is analysed into four developmental phases. It is suggested that the semantic-level meanings of Phase IV are due in part to the type of discourse use to which the morphology is put in the earlier phases.