Acquisition of Agreement Structures by Ghanaian Arabic Learners

Abstract

The study investigated acquisition of agreement structures by Arabic as Foreign Language (AFL) learners in Ghana from the Processability Theory (PT) perspective. Five Arabic agreement structures at the phrasal, sentence and subordinate clause levels of PT’s processing procedures were tested in a cross-sectional study. It aimed to establish predictions about the implicational nature of the processing procedures. Data were elicited from 15 students of the University of Ghana Arabic learners who were at different proficiency levels. Grammaticality Judgment Task and Elicited Production Task were used to elicit data. The result suggested that acquisition of agreement structures by Ghanaian AFL learners develop, generally, according to PT’s predictions. While the study largely conforms to PT predictions, the behaviour of the Noun Predicative Adjective structure in the interlanguage system of participants suggests that factors other than processing constraints may be involved in the processing architecture of the L2 learners in Ghana.

A triangulation study on gender agreement in Spanish by native Basque speakers

“…These results, in any case, are sufficient to prove the original aims of this study: (i) to contradict the previously existing view of this linguistic feature as one characteristic only of elder euskaldun zaharrak without a high level of education (Fernández Ulloa, 1997) (despite participants' considerable knowledge of what Spanish grammar rules demand in speech), (ii) to amplify its attribution to include a broader and more accurate set of speakers, and (iii) to support the idea that N-SGA production is common among many bilinguals (Anderson, 1999;Bruhn de Garavito and White, 2002;Cruz Rico et al, 2021;Husein, 2021). This is an example of the linguistic convergence between Basque and Spanish among speakers with this profile (Matras, 2009;Moreno-Fernández, 2020), suggesting that the production of N-SGA in the Spanish spoken in the Basque Country may contradict the results of those scholars who have analyzed N-SGA in language contact situations.…”

“…However, after some personal observations of the Spanish that is produced in the Basque Country, it could be the case that the particular feature that has been introduced here does not exclusively form part of the speech of the population mentioned by the previous publications but might rather be a general and prominent characteristic of the Spanish spoken in the Basque Country, regardless of age and education. In fact, N-SGA production is believed to be common in language contact situations (e.g., Spanish in contact with Palenquero, Lipski, 2015;Tepehuán, Torres Sánchez, 2021;Papiamentu, Valdés Kroff et al, 2019;and English, Liceras et al, 2008) where the L1 does not produce grammatical gender (Cruz Rico et al, 2021;Husein, 2021), and in this case, in places where Spanish is the minority language (e.g., Anderson, 1999). This does not mean that those who may produce N-SGA have language learning difficulties (Anderson, 1999), or that they do not know about standard gender agreement (GA) rules in Spanish, but simply that they would not use it in speech.…”

“…These are nouns with canonical endings but there are also nouns with non-canonical endings: nouns that do not end with their expected gender vowel or those that end with consonants (Cruz Rico, 2021;Goebel-Mahrle and Shin, 2020;Roca, 1989). Nevertheless, it is also notable that it is common to have «difficulties» with the acquisition of gender on the L2 (Anderson, 1999;Cruz Rico et al, 2021;Husein, 2021), regardless of whether the L1 produces grammatical gender or not (Bruhn de Garavito and White, 2002).…”