–Ed Allomorphs and Linguistic Knowledge of Malay Speakers of English: A Descriptive and Correlational Study

Abstract

Malay is a language from the Austronesian family and unlike the Indo-European-originated English, it does not generally have inflectional temporal markers. Investigating this from a cross-linguisticsinfluence perspective, differences between the languages could mean difficulties for Malay speakers to acquire features of English. The objectives of this study are to investigate Malay speakers' pronunciation of the English language -ed allomorphs - [d], [t] and [ɪd]/[əd] -and the relationship between the morphophonological forms and two types of linguistic knowledge, one of which is implicit while the other is explicit. Data were collated from fifty participants who are social science undergraduates and English majors who speak English as a second language. Four instruments were used to gauge the respondents' verbal use of -ed allomorphs as well as their implicit and explicit knowledge of the allomorphs. Results indicate that the students' verbal usage of the target items either lacks approximation to Standard English pronunciation or is largely dropped altogether. Results also suggest a moderate relationship between implicit and explicit knowledge of the allomorphs and their verbal production by Malay speakers of English. The finding illuminates acquisition problem of English language speakers whose mother tongue does not share similar inflectional markers. Pedagogical solutions can help learners of the English language to approximate Standard English and in the long run, enhance effective communication and increase chances of employability. Keywords: linguistic knowledge; -ed allomorphs; past-time inflections; Malay speakers of English; employabilityThe English language, after more than 1,500 years of rapidly expansive existence, has evolved into a significantly less synthetic language (van Gelderean, 2006). Compared to its earliest form, Old English, Present-Day English is not as highly inflected (Lieber, 2016). The usage of English has great importance in a country like Malaysia even though the majority of its population speaks Malay as the first language. Although there is a vast difference between the temporal indicators of English and Malay, the study by Lotfie, Salleh, and Kadir (2015) indicates that Malay Malaysian English as a second language (ESL) users could successfully produce the written past-time indicator -ed. Usage of -ed allomorphs in their speech or verbal production, however, has not been investigated and the temporal indicator differences between the languages could be one of the factors that lead to the difficulty in acquiring the inflectional forms. Thus, this study examines Malay speakers' verbal production of the forms This paper will proceed with sections on implicit and explicit linguistic knowledge, past-time inflection -ed and its allomorphs as well as relevant studies. They are followed by the study's method, findings and discussion, and ended with conclusion.