Arabic Second Language Acquisition of Morphosyntax

The Cambridge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics

“…Arabic SLA kept abreast, progressively more so, with the development of the general SLA field and its different approaches and models, from contrastive and error analysis to the present (for a detailed survey, see Alhawary 2009a). Thus, Arabic SLA studies started (a decade after the emergence of error analysis) with the appearance of a few error analysis studies (e.g., Al-Ani 1972-1973Rammuny 1976), where the approach of SLA analysis relied on analysing L2 learners' competence-related errors.…”

“…Al-Buainain's findings indicated that, in acquiring the target forms, participants progressed along intermediate stages from simple and deviant interlanguage forms to ones that are more acceptable and target-like. Relatedly, Alhawary (2009a) examined negation constructions and relevant mood endings (based on longitudinal production data). The findings showed the emergence of a certain order of the constructions and such order was impacted by input effects, such as amount and exposure timing.…”

“…However, based on longitudinal and cross-sectional production data, Arabic SLA studies produced mixed evidence on a number of morphosyntactic structures. Such studies either found evidence contrary to the hypothesized implicational processing hierarchy (e.g., Nielsen 1997;Alhawary 2003Alhawary , 2009aAlhawary , 2009bAlhawary , 2019 or claimed evidence in support of it (e.g., Mansouri 2000;Al Shatter 2008) (for a review of such studies, see Alhawary 2009aAlhawary , 2019. The second cognitive model which was tested by Arabic L2 studies is the Competition Model developed by Bates and MacWhinney (1987).…”

“…With respect to the general notions of UG access and L1 transfer, a number of Arabic studies examined UG access and L1 transfer claims (Bolotin 1996;Alhawary 2007bAlhawary , 2009a. Based on performance of L2 English-speaking learners of Arabic on a grammaticality judgement task, Bolotin (1996) found that whereas the beginner and intermediate groups exhibited evidence for L1 transfer by retaining their English L1 non-resumptivepronoun [+movement] setting, the advanced group showed evidence for (indirect) access to UG as they were able to reset the parameter to a resumptive-pronoun [−movement] setting exhibited in their L2 Arabic.…”

“…Similarly, based on production data of null subjects from participants whose L1s are set to [−null] (English) and [+null] (Spanish and Japanese), Alhawary (2007bAlhawary ( , 2009a concluded that since the three groups of L1 participants were able to set the parameter value to [+null] in their L2 learning of Arabic from early on, the data provide evidence for UG access (through the English L1 participants) and L1 transfer (through the Spanish L1 and Japanese L1 participants). In addition, a contingent relationship was found between the Spanish L1 participants' development of verbal agreement morphology and their use of null subjects (see also Alhawary 2019, for further evidence of L1 transfer based on null-subject use by Russianspeaking learners of Arabic).…”