L2 Acquisition of Arabic Morphosyntactic Features

Alhawary, Mohammad T.

doi:10.1075/cilt.267.14alh

Cited by 36 publications

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“…In his study, he examined the acquisition of the subject-verb gender agreement structure in Arabic by adult L2 learners who have different L1 backgrounds that vary in their gender system. The results of the study were in line with Alhawary's (2005Alhawary's ( , 2009 findings. No significant difference in acquiring the verbal gender agreement structure was found between learners who have a grammatical gender system in their L1 language and learners who do not.…”

Section: Grammatical Gender and L2 Acquisitionsupporting

confidence: 81%

“…However, the majority of the participants in Alhawary's (2003) study acquired the subject-verb gender agreement structure before the noun-adjective one. In two later studies, Alhawary (2005Alhawary ( , 2009) examined the acquisition of nominal gender agreement and verbal gender agreement by L2 adult learners of different L1 backgrounds to explore the effect of the presence or absence of the gender system in the L1 on acquiring the L2 grammatical gender agreement. The results of both studies indicated that with subject-verb gender agreement there was no significant difference between participants whose L1 language has a grammatical gender system and participants with no gender system in their L1.…”

Section: Grammatical Gender and L2 Acquisitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The problematic issue of grammatical gender in Arabic as a foreign language

Alkohlani

2016

Journal of Language and Cultural Education

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Many languages of the world have a grammatical gender system that divides all nouns into gendered categories. The gender assigned to a given noun requires gender agreement with associated items in the sentence, such as: determiners, adjectives, and demonstrative pronouns. Research in the area of grammatical gender acquisition has found that this grammatical category poses considerable difficulty for L2 learners. However, rarely was this area of difficulty the focus of L2 studies in Arabic. The present study focuses on the problematic issue of grammatical gender in Arabic as a foreign language. It examines advanced Arabic L2 learners' written errors of gender assignment and agreement in the Arabic Learner Corpus (ALC) v2, compiled by Alfaifi, Atwel, and Hedaya (2014). Based on the classification and analysis of the errors, possible factors of the difficulty facing L2 learners in assigning the correct gender are discussed, and recommendations to reduce their effects are suggested.

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Section: Grammatical Gender and L2 Acquisitionsupporting

confidence: 81%

Section: Grammatical Gender and L2 Acquisitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The problematic issue of grammatical gender in Arabic as a foreign language

Alkohlani

2016

Journal of Language and Cultural Education

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“…Accordingly, because the copular construction in English does not exhibit gender agreement between the demonstrative pronoun and predicate adjective/noun, feature checking, in Minimalist terms (e.g., Chomsky, 1995), for the gender feature agreement may often be skipped before spell out, generating structures that do not exhibit gender agreement. On the other hand, English exhibits verbal agreement, though non‐uniformly, between the subject and the verb (with the possible transfer of the feature‐checking mechanism from L1, if even checking weak features takes place at Logical Form); hence, processing of verbal agreement in Arabic was not as problematic for the English L1 participants (for similar findings on nominal gender agreement vs. verbal agreement, see Alhawary, 2002, 2005). It is equally significant that Adam, a Creole/French L1 speaker, did not seem to find demonstrative‐predicate agreement more problematic than verbal agreement.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speech Processing Prerequisites or L1 Transfer? Evidence From English and French L2 Learners of Arabic

Alhawary

2009

Foreign Language Annals

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The article aims at investigating speech processing prerequisite claims made by Pienemann's Processability Theory (1998). Longitudinal data from eight English L1 and one French L1 speaker learning Arabic as an L2 were used to investigate the emergence/processing of demonstrative‐predicate gender agreement and verbal agreement structures hypothesized to be processable at the same stage: Stage 4. The findings show that both forms were not processable by the English L1 participants at the same stage, as the participants seemed to encounter more problems with demonstrative‐predicate agreement than with verbal agreement. The findings are further supported by cross‐sectional data of 53 English and French L2 learners of Arabic, where between‐group effects were found with respect to demonstrative‐predicate agreement. It is concluded that this is likely due to L1 transfer—a factor not accounted for by Processability Theory.

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“…Furthermore, Alhawary (2005) explored the acquisition of Arabic morphosyntactic structures including subject-verb agreement, noun-adjective agreement, and noun-adjective word order by L2 learners of a variety of L1 backgrounds to investigate the influence of the L1 on the acquisition of the L2 grammatical gender agreement based on three hypotheses within the context of UG and L1 influence: the Missing Surface Inflection (Lardiere, 2000), the Local Impairment (Beck, 1998), the FFF hypothesis (Hawkins & Chan, 1997). Twenty-seven native English speakers and Twenty-six native French speakers were participated in this study.…”

Section: Previous Investigations Of the Acquisition Of Grammatical Gementioning

confidence: 99%

The Acquisition of Grammatical Gender in Arabic Demonstratives by English Native Speakers

Aljadani¹

2019

IJCE

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Recently, an increase interest in the acquisition of grammatical gender by second language (L2) learners has been revealed. This paper investigated the acquisition of Arabic, a language that has a rich grammatical gender system, by speakers of a first language (L1) that does not have gender (English). Arabic demonstrative pronouns selected as the linguistic feature to be investigated. Due to the gender differentiations, Arabic has nearly ten demonstrative pronouns whereas English has four demonstrative pronouns. Consequently, learnability considerations, the Full Transfer/Full Access (FT/FA) hypothesis presumes that English learners of Arabic will have the ability to acquire L2 grammatical gender despite the absence of these systems in their L1. However, the Failed Functional Features (FFF) hypothesis predicts that English learners of Arabic cannot acquire these systems since they are not available in their L1. This paper investigated the ability of English learners of Arabic in acquiring the Arabic demonstrative pronouns with their gender as accurate as native speakers of Arabic do. Moreover, does the proficiency level play a role in the acquisition of demonstratives? Finally, which hypothesis will be supported by the findings? It was found that L2 learners did not acquire the phenomenon as accurate as the native speakers did. Furthermore, proficiency level played a role in the acquisition of demonstratives as a significant disparity between L2 learners’ levels was appeared. Finally, the current outcomes could be attributed to FT/FA hypothesis.

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L2 Acquisition of Arabic Morphosyntactic Features

Cited by 36 publications

References 0 publications

The problematic issue of grammatical gender in Arabic as a foreign language

The problematic issue of grammatical gender in Arabic as a foreign language

Speech Processing Prerequisites or L1 Transfer? Evidence From English and French L2 Learners of Arabic

The Acquisition of Grammatical Gender in Arabic Demonstratives by English Native Speakers

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