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DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE

 

6/01 o'JCIRCJDaleDuest—pds

LIBRARY
Michigan State

if” ‘ University

 

This is to certify that the
dissertation entitled

"The Acquisition of English Syntax by
Four Arabic-Speaking Children"

presented by

Souheila M. Sabra

/
has been accepted towfn‘ds fulfillment
of the requirements for

"Ph.D. degreein English
l
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Mflll...1m._u ‘A, ,5‘ In . . . 0.12771

 

 

/THE ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH SYNTAX BY FOUR
ARABIC-SPEAKING CHILDRE§/

BY

Souheila M. Sabra

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of English

1987

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‘9' '
,’.L,*€h11'-“-* " . ABSTRACT
l. ‘- The
. THE ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH SYNTAX BY FOUR
breccrfi " ARABIC- SPEAKING CHILDREN
Chr0“3: BY
.§“ “*” I ' Souheila H. Sabra
'A
g (5) ««',
. :r' 9“ Studies of the acquisition of English as a second

‘ I‘flgflage have been intensively conducted on children of
fifhdus language backgrounds. Arabic children, however,
.CIVW‘rsceived little attention regarding their acquisi-

‘ I l‘fidllofilnglish syntax in a natural environment. This

1‘:~J{ijiiifch has, therefore, been carried out to study—Eh:
*fii’-‘ 6 si of second-language acquisition by Arabic

Hiiifidéen‘in kindergarten and first- -grade classrooms,

«no £ornal English instruction was given. In these
‘dfiiliroons, four Arabic children, ranging in age

.T ££1t6 seven years, were observed_£ee~{ive-weeks.

ltiéns vars-then continued out at school for-an

bflul~eight weeks.

a: iajor issues were considered in this study:

fl lopiental stages that the four children

*!h£®d§h in acquiring English syntax: (2) the

t'hffiigidédndfilifiguage learners of English:

 

 

Sabra

(3) the extent of interference from their native
language: and (4) the communicative strategies the
children employ to compensate for language deficiencies.
The principal means of collecting data was through
recordings of the subjects' free spontaneous speech, and
through the use of three standardized tests: (1) elic—
ited imitation tests: (2) translation test: and
l (3) Berko's morphology test. Tests one and two were
given three times throughout the study period and test

three was given at the end of the study. Three areas of

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 
  

 

syntax were analyzed in depth to assess the children's
syntactic development. These were negation and question
formation involving particular aux constituents, and the
acquisition of morphological rules.

It was found that the four children showed
significant development in English syntax acquisition
during the study. The rate of progress of one subject
was substantially different from the others. All
children, however, showed similar stages of acquisition
to those found in first- and second-language studies.
Also, there was no marked interference from the
children's first language (Arabic) in their process of
.V: . acquisition. The subjects used different communicative
strategies such as repetition and intonation, gestures,
noises, simplification, and imitation to compensate for

Luthsir language deficiencies.

     

fifth} “Ltwiiflifil ‘3
fin. fl. author sou.1 l‘ve tc ex_~c a her s..>~

ta

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research.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

    
  
  
   
  
  
  
  
    
    
   
 
   
  

The author would like to express her sincere
gratitude to her Academic Advisor, Dr. James Stalker,
fad his critical and valuable comments, accompanied by
his continuous encouragement and guidance, throughout
this research.

Special acknowledgment is due to the members of
véfle Advisory Committee: Dr. Howard Anderson, Dr.
larcellete Williams, Dr. Marilyn Wilson, and the outside
reader Dr. Grover Hudson for their time in reviewing
piߤ7~this dissertation and for their encouragement.

. .l The author is greatly indebted to the "little
* E pE%%ioud”kids' and their families as well as their

Y"Thatcher, Hrs. Meredith HcLellan, who all made this work

it,
flassible.

A special word of gratitude is due to the author's

I h
\r) -
Eh
~21
,inwnta, in Debanon, who have consciously waited across
galles for the success of this effort.
”3‘393F2,§§¢“k9»i3 also due to the author's husband

h) forthis'love, encouragement, and patience

 

  

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I.

'saztt:

CHAPTER

INTRODUCTION

Purpose of the Study . . .
Specific English Syntactic A

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Significance of the Study . .

REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE

iterature on First-Language Acquisition

reas

of Study

A Survey of Developmental Syntax
Observational Studies . .
Experimental Studies . . .
Literature on Second-Language
Acquisition . . . . . . . .
Summary and Conclusions . . .

Subjects . . . . . . . . . .
Choice of Classroom . . . . . . . .
Classroom Atmosphere and Curriculum
_»Lsnguage-Learning Environment
Outside the Classroom . . . .
Erecedures for Data Collection

Spontaneous Speech Samples
Controlled Production Experiments
Elicited Imitation Tests

Translation Test . . . .
Morphology Test . . . . .
Research Design and Data Anal
Research Design . . . . . .
Data Analysis . . . . . . .

vi

Ital. nascnlerrou or SUBJECTS AND STUDY

ysis.

.
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O

C

p.-

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Page

IV. RESULTS AND ANALYSES . . . . . . . . . . . 73

General Development of the Subjects'

Negation Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Period I (April 11-May 12, 1986) . . . 74
Period II (May 12-June 13, 1986) . . . 79
Period III (June 13—July 11, 1986) . . 83
‘ General Development of the Subjects'
Question Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Period I (April ll—May 12, 1986) . . . 87
Period II (May lZ-June 13, 1986) . . . 90
Period III (June 13-July 11, 1986) . . 92
Acquisition of Specific Grammatical
Structures . . . . . . . . . . . 99

The Progressive

Copula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Past Tense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Inflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
'Do' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
'Can' and 'Can't' . . . . . . . . . . . 103
The Subjects' Communicative Strategies . 103
Repetition and Intonation . . . . . . . 104
Gestures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Noises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Simplification . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Imitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Results of Controlled Production
Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Elicited Imitation Test . . . . . . . . 108
Translation Test . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Berko's Morphology Test . . . . . . . . 116 x
V. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS . . . . . . . 123

Recommendations for Further Study . . . . 128
APPENDICES I I I O I I I I I I I I I I O I I I I I 130

REFERENCES I O O O I I I I O O I I I I C I I I I 171

 

   

  
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
   
 

LIST OF TABLES

Page

Differences between Sami and the Other
Three Subjects' Negation Development
for Three Periods . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

Differences between Seal and the Other

5pfilhree Subjects' Question Development

“- for Three Periods . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
”Curing

_ev Percentage of Correct Answers on the

"I; ‘vwn‘fé Mk0 Test I I I I I I I I O I I I I I I I 122

I

“DOE ‘3'

    

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\H{‘ I l ' . . ";.
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1G? i‘u:.; «and '1‘

'aairat:on. rw. . -:a .7 a c

 

 

 

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

   
    
   
  
   
    
    
     
    
   
   
 
 
    
  

ICU: 7‘.

It is a universal phenomenon that children learn
.fif ~51ara.
to speak in a relatively short period of time, and

f during the years when their conceptual and reasoning

capacities are as yet undeveloped. According to

.NRTC Lenneberg (1967, p. 67), the ability to speak “is so
I'l' deeply rooted in man that children learn it even in the
Ezé; of dramatic handicaps." Generally, the ability to

: aseak occurs with no formal instruction. The nature of

\ ggizlprocess and how it takes places is an enigma and

7 E2; :réused the interest of various linguists and psycho-
u .Iggzzéisii in the last two decades.

9‘ ~Sheir 7,.

v.‘

8
§ ..
11’. _ ;

,7n A

It is noteworthy that in the 1960s, theories about
xrizrrdcture of knowledge the child must have in order
“agiredknowledge have led to theories of how the
_ :étually learns a language. The general trend of
q q_.Acquisition in the last twenty or more years

42;. underlying basic similarities of all languages
"Than: ell
mesdi.organisation. These similarities are

l

 

 

 

 

called linguistic universals, and they are really
'innate mental endowments" rather than the results of
learning. Further, these linguistic universals1 guide
language acquisition which follows sequential, consis-
tent patterns of development (Chomsky, 1965).
Therefore, theoretically speaking, in the 19608,
second-language learning was considered to be essen-
tially similar to first-language2 learning. This
assumption made it possible to investigate and discover

the developmental trends of both L1 and L learning

2
processes.

A great deal of research has been conducted to
analyze children's L1 acquisition process. In the
United States, much literature has accumulated on the
developmental syntax of English as a first language.
The circumstances surrounding children's L2
development are clearly different from those surrounding
their L1 development. As a result, research findings
on the developmental syntax of English as a first
language have been considered as being of little asset

in understanding the acquisition of English as a second

language (Huang, 1971). Also for this reason, L2

 

1Although not related to this study, they are
mentioned as historical background only.

,zThese will be mostly referred to as L1 and
b2 for abbreviation.

 

 

acquisition has been intensively researched in the last
twenty years.

Acquisition studies on L however, have

1,
revealed that not only speaking is itself universal, but
the onset of speech takes place at about the same time
in all children's development. Also individual children
follow similar developmental stages while acquiring
their native language (Slobin, 1967). In addition, Ll
acquisition studies have shown that there is some type
of sequence in the acquisition of certain English morpho-
logical and syntactic features (Berko, 1958; Brown, 1968
and 1973: C. Chomsky, 1969).

It is important to note that these studies
described child's language development in terms of lin-
guistic theory1 (Chomsky, 1957). Similar studies of

L development were also followed (Adams, 1974;

2
Cancino et al., 1978: Trosborg, 1982). Most of the L

2
studies showed that children as well as adults go
through a similar process when acquiring a second lan-
guage in a natural situation, i.e., when learners live
in the second-language community. Most importantly,
despite differences between L1 and L2 learning,

researchers have shown that the L acquisition process

2

 

1This line of research in L continued until
the early 1970s: thereafter, a shift in the literature
occurred, as will be seen in Chapter II.

 

 

is the same as the L1 acquisition process. This will
be discussed in detail in Chapter II.

This study investigated the acquisition of English
syntax by four Arabic-speaking children. It is a study
of bilingual development, beginning after a native
language has been acquired. It has been derived from

studies of L learning in native-speakers, especially

1

English-speaking children, and of L2 learning (in

children and adults).

Purpose of the Study
Many major issues relating to children's language
capacity and their adding a second language have been

addressed in most L acquisition studies. This study

2
is directed at a number of topics selected on the basis
of those issues. The study investigates the syntactic
and morphological development of four Arab children when
acquiring English as a second language in a natural
situation, where there is no systematic instruction of
English. The purpose of this study is to answer the
following questions:
1. What particular aspects do Arabic-speaking
children learn in the process of acquiring
English syntax as a second language?

2. What stages do they pass through in acquiring

English syntax?

 

3. Does acquisition of English syntax occur in a
developmental sequence?

4. Is there an ordered sequence of stages?

5. Do the acquisition stages found in the study
replicate those given in other first- and
second-language acquisition studies?

6. What communicative strategies do the subjects
employ throughout the learning process?

7. To what extent do they rely upon knowledge of
their native language?

In order to answer the above questions, it was
necessary to make collections of the Arab children's
spontaneous speech samples. Elicited speech samples
were also collected by employing various testing proce-
dures. All the samples were organized once collected.
The study was conducted on the four subjects in their
classrooms (kindergarten and first grade) in a univer—
sity community elementary school. Observations were
also made outside the school (at the children's homes,
and sometimes in a playground) by arrangement with the

children's parents.

Specific §nglish Syntactic Areas of Study
Based on English syntactic structures which have
been investigated in related first- and second-language

acquisition studies, such as Berko (1958), Ravem (1975),

6

and Adams (1974), certain English syntactic areas were
selected for examination. For this purpose, it was
still necessary to collect as much of the children's
speech as possible in order to enable the examination of
any aspects needed for this study. Therefore, the

‘_.

following syntactic aspects were investigated in this

study:

I. The acquisition of the English auxiliary
systems and the variations involved in two
different types of sentences. These ag::::

// 1. Negative structures
2. Interrogative structures consisting of
Yes/No questions and WH-questions
3. Auxiliary constituents: tense copula "be'I
constructions, modals, progressive —iflg;
perfective —gfl, present tense and verb,
past tense and verb.

II. The acquisition of English morphological
rules, including inflectional endings (the
formation of plural nouns, third person
9.992.132:_8.£':9t31a£.::?_91ur;1 P°sseE§§X9.9' the
progressive past tense, the comparative and
superlative of adjectives, the diminutive, and

word derivations and compounds).

 

 

 

Significance of the Study

A great many studies in first- and second-language
acquisition have been undertaken to determine the
grammatical characteristics of language used by children
in various stages of development. These studies made it
possible to describe children's language development
with a high degree of accuracy. This study replicates
and analyzes the development of certain grammatical
structures used by Arab children learning English as a
second language.

This observational study is important for many
reasons. It can be considered as among the very first
studies, if any, conducted on Arabic children. In fact,
through a continuous inter-library search for published
or unpublished studies in this regard, the researcher
could not find a solid evidence of similar studies on
Arabic children. Only a few studies (Hanania, 1974:
Heckler, 1975: Larsen-Freeman, 1975; and Waterbury &
Tucker, 1978) have been conducted on the acquisition of
English syntax by Arabic-speaking adults. The fact that
there is a need for basic research on Arabic-speaking
children learning English as a second language in
immersion gives this study significance.

In addition, second-language acquisition studies
in an immersion situation that includes subjects from

various language backgrounds might shed new light on ESL

   
   
  
   
  
  
   
   
  
  
  
  
   

(action. ESL teachers can always benefit from new
nation on second-language acquisition because the
,,V'ifire they know about second-language learning, the more
.fli'iikely they are to be successful in their teaching of
‘TJ(. English as a second language. '

'I Research findings on developmental syntax of
Inglish as a second language could be a great asset to
ISL teachers. These findings might reveal the best

', gossible conditions for teaching English as a second
38‘

*” language.‘ It might also identify L2 learners'

difficulties with certain syntactic areas. This may

”2". 1a." 1: 2.
g. enable ESL teachers to adjust their curriculum and
I. -;";.f "h“f '
"' encourage the use of textbooks designed to emphasize
tum ‘

f these areas.

”tryi
E e data w :1
i. q ‘f:

  

‘1"¥f psfrha

 

 

 

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE

In this chapter, a thorough review of previous
studies on first— and second—language acquisition
aspects has been made, in relation to the present study.
Since there has been an extensive literature on first—
language acquisition, only pioneer studies on this part
which led to similar analyses of second—language acquisi-
tion will be emphasized here.

Literature on First—Language Acguisition:fi2fl
A Survey of Developmental Syntax

 

Prior to 1950, most researchers were interested in

carrying out language normative studies of children.

The data were collected for the most part by a linguist

or psycholinguist parent who observed his child's (or
children's) language progress. These studies estab-
lished certain characteristics of the “form" of
children's speech. The main result was the observation
and the specification of developmental stages in the
language produced by children. Because there were quite
a few of these studies during the 19503, they allowed

9

 

 

10

comparison among individual children or groups of
children who varied in age, social class, and so on.
Several normative studies have become "landmarks" in the
literature, such as Leopold (1939-1949) and Gregoire
(1971).1

After 1950, there has been a dramatic change in
the research of child language development, particularly
in the questions being asked. With the advent of the
theory of Generative-Transformational Grammar (Chomsky,
1957), investigators such as Berko (1958), Brown and
Bellugi (1964), and others began to inquire into the
knowledge that underlies the ability to speak and compre—
hend, that is, "The productive system . . . that the
child employs in the creation of new forms.’I Most
important, given the language data, these researchers
abandoned descriptions of the form of speech in an
effort to discover the grammar of the child, and to
describe the change of the rule systems over a period of
time.

The children in these studies were observed either
in a few sessions or over a long period of time (for up
to several years by Brown and his colleagues). The data
were collected by recording the child's utterances in

the classroom or at home at periodic intervals.

 

1These normative studies are indeed irrelevant
to the present study, and will not be reviewed here. A
more comprehensive review of these studies is in
McCarthy, 1954.

 

 

11

Transformational-generative grammar rules were then
written for the data. Spontaneous speech analyses,
however, soon proved to be problematic. Such as that
'. . . Children sometimes understand and produce a
structure but that no occasion arises during the
observation period to record it” (Hatch, 1969, p. 5).

This required the development of new methodology
and research techniques of data collection. Tests, for
example, were devised to evaluate the linguistic compe-
tence of the child by eliciting structures as evidence
of rule acquisition (Berko, 1958). These studies
revealed that what the child learns is an "underlying
linguistic system" which is never consciously available
to the child or the adult. They also strongly indicated
that early syntax is "a systematic reduction" of adult
forms and even the earliest sentences were produced in
an orderly, predictable manner., Although there were
important individual differences, the process of lan-
guage acquisition was nonetheless the same for all
children.

In summary, after 1950 the literature on child
developmental syntax was concerned with describing the
grammar of children. The studies were of two types:

a) observational, based on collecting the child's speech
data in a natural setting, and b) experimental, based on

eliciting the structures from the child. For the

k.

‘M-.-oo.

 

 

12

purpose of this study, we now turn to a review of the
most important of observational works, which considered
morphological rules, and the auxiliary verb system

involving negation and question pattern development.

Observational Studies

The best known of the observational studies is the
pioneer longitudinal study of the Brown group at Harvard
University in 1962. Roger Brown, Ursula Bellugi-Klima,
Colin Fraser, and several other linguists studied first-
language development of three children (Eve, 18 months:
Adam and Sarahy both 27 months), particularly the devel—
opment of grammar after the emergence of syntax in the
child's two- and three-word utterances. The children
were periodically recorded for several years. Data
gathered have been discussed in several research reports
since the early 1960s. Most of the analyses, however,
on the three children's acquisition of English syntax
were within the framework of transformational grammar.
To write rules for the data, samples of the NP, negative
sentences, question sentences, and so on, were
abstracted from all of the tapes. Another important
research was conducted at the same time by Ervin-Tripp
(1964), which will be mentioned later.

Brown and Bellugi (1964), in their report on the

WP section of the data, noted that Adam used plurals

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

13

eight months before the I-sl of the third person singu-
lar verb, and long before the possessive I-sl. Ervin-
Tripp (1964), in her study of seven children, showed
that they learned the singular—plural contrast between
the ages of 2 and 3 years. None of them, however, used
the adult plural form with words ending with a sibilant.
For example, the I-izl plural form was omitted for words
like I'glass". And when the I-izl plural first appeared,
it was in free variation with the [-3] and I-zI plurals.

Ervin-Tripp, in the above study, also discussed
the children's development of the past tense. The
children learned the irregular past forms first. Next
they produced the regular past rule and began general—
izing it for the irregular verbs. That is, "did",
'broke', 'came', and so on, were produced first, then
later 'did - doed', broke - breaked', I'came - comed',
were observed in free variation. These findings will be
compared in Chapter IV with the morphological observa-
tions of the present study.

Klima (1964) and Klima and Bellugi (1966) reported
on negation and question pattern development of the
three children's data (Adam, Eve and Sarah). In the
study of negation, they proposed that children's earli—
est negatives occur as one-word utterances; for example,
'no' or I'allgone". The negative pattern begins as "neg

+ nucleus", or “nucleus + neg'. In general, it starts

4
1

 

._l _ _ _

 

 

 

. ‘7
~-
. ' e i‘
— |
vl‘
'.

14

by placing a negative marker (such as "no'I or 'not")
outside of a simple sentence, with the negative markers
appearing inside of the sentence subsequently.

Klima (1964) described the negation pattern in
three developmental stages. During Stage 1, the
children produce multiple—word negative sentences with
the negative particle (generally, 'no') placed outside
the utterance: for example, "no play that", 'no Mommy
go', 'not cowboy", and "more no".

Children's utterances at this stage are of limited
structure. They consist mainly of nouns and verbs
without indication of tense or number. There are no
negatives, or auxiliaries within the sentences. Nega-
tion is signalled by using the negative element "no" or
'not", which either precedes or follows the rest of the
sentence.

Klima and Bellugi (1971) further argued that:—

At this stage, there is no clear evidence that

the child even understands the negative

embedded in the auxiliary of adult speech,

without at least some reinforcement. . .

What is interesting in the speech of the child

at this stage is that he employs extremely

limited means for negative sentences in his

own speech, and the same system is repeated in
all three subjects. (p. 418)

In Stage 2, the negative element is moved into the
sentence and such forms as 'can't', 'not", and 'don't'

are found within the utterance. Some examples are "That

 

 

15

no Mommy', 'I no taste them“, "That not blue", and 'I
don't want it'.

These negative elements are not full auxiliary
verbs because they lack inflections and flexibility.
Moreover, the auxiliary verbs occur in the children's
utterances only when accompanied by a negative. They do
not occur in affirmative sentences or questions at this
stage. The auxiliary verbs occur only in negative appro—
priate contexts, and in limited forms such as "can't",
'don't', 'not", and occasionally ”no". The negative
element is also found within the sentence, but not
connected to an auxiliary verb, as in "He no bite you".

In addition, some negative imperative utterances
appeared in the speech of all three children at this
stage, such as "Don't leave me" or "Don't wait for me'.
Also, affirmative imperatives as in "come here" and I'do
it“ are found at this period.

In general, children's utterances at Stage 2 are
clearly more complete than those at Stage 1. They
contain more of the elements of full sentences. The
major change, however, is that the negative element is
internal, rather than external to the sentence preceding
the predicate or verb-phase.

I Bellugi (1965) suggested that at this stage the
adult auxiliary system has not yet been established.

Children's negative sentences with 'don't' and "can't"

 

16

are not based on 'Aux + neg“ form, but rather are
alternative ways for saying "not“.

At Stage 3, the use of modal auxiliaries, copula
and "do'I appeared in a greater variety of forms and in
both negative and affirmative utterances. For example:

I didn't see something.

You can't sit down by me.

He won't talk (modal).

I not a doctor (be).

Don't touch that fish.

I not hurt him.
At this stage, it is shown that the neg auxiliary verbs
are no longer limited to "don't and "can't". They also
appear in decrarative sentences and questions. Most
important, the auxiliary verbs are now constructed from
an I'Aux + neg“ adult form.

Klima and Bellugi (1971) also described character-
istics of three stages in the development of children's
question forms. Both Yes/No and WH—questions occurred
during Stage 1. They were indicated only by rising
intonation on an echo question; for example, "ball gof',
'see hole?“, and 'no carf'. As with the negative in the
same period, there is very limited structure to the
question construction at Stage 1. They also are
restricted in variety, particularly WH-questions which

are so limited both in content and in form. Klima and

Bellugi described this stage as follows:

 

17

At this stage, then, the children are produc-
ing questions that only superficially resemble
these questions in which the object of a verb
has been questioned and preposed and they do
not understand this construction when they
hear it. (1971, p. 421)
During Stage 2, some of the children's questions
are:
You want eat?
Where me sleep?
What the dollie have?
Why you waking me up?
Why not me can't dance?
Children's questipns are little changed in the superfi-
I.-
cial structure from Stage 1. They include a greater
}. e .
variety of things.: There are, however, no modal auxili-
aries in affirmative sentences, and only two negative
modals ("don't", "can't") appear in some negative ques—
tions, such as "You can't fix it?'. Klima and Bellugi
(1971) suggested that children at Stage 2 are not really
using true auxiliary verbs. And there is no inversion
of auxiliaries with the utterances' subjects. In short,
there is little real development in forming questions.
At Stage 3, a major development occurs in the ques-
tion structure of children's speech. A great variety of
auxiliaries appear in Yes/No questions. The auxiliary
component is appropriately inverted with the subject
noun phrase. In addition, modal auxiliaries occur in

affirmative sentences. In WH-questions, however,

children generally do not invert the auxiliary with the

 

18

sentences' subjects: for example, "What he can ride in?"
or "How they can't talk?'. Stage 3 WH-questions are not
yet as close to adult forms as is the case for Yes/No
questions and negative statements.

In summary, Klima and Bellugi's studies on child
L1 learning indicate that the developmental process of
negative and interrogative patterns follows three simi-
lar stages. In Stage 1, both patterns are of limited
structure consisting mainly of nouns and main verbs,
with no indication of tense or number. There are also
no auxiliaries within the sentences. At Stage 2, no
real development occurs in negative and interrogative
patterns. Children in both patterns do not use true
auxiliary verbs. In addition, there are no modal
auxiliaries in affirmative sentences or questions at
this stage. Only the two negative modals "don't" and
'can't' appear in negative appropriate contexts and in
some negative questions. In Stage 3, negative
statements and Yes/No questions are close to adult
forms, but WH—questions are not yet close to adult
form. The children at this stage use true auxiliary
verbs. A great variety of modal auxiliaries appear in
negative, affirmative utterances and in questions. For
example, the negative modals are no longer limited to
'don't' and 'can't.‘ They also appear in declarative

sentences and questions.

 

 

19

Brown (1968) also reported on the same data for
the question forms and described three stages of develop-
ment. His analysis, however, differed in that questions
prior to Stage 3 were regarded as "fixed forms rather
than productive constructions." The child, for example,
has heard "What's this?" hundreds of times. Therefore,
WH-questions (such as 'What dat?') can best be described
as a list of a few I'routines" or “formulas" which do not
need a rule. Negative and interrogative studies, des-
cribed so far, will also be compared in Chapter IV to
what has been found in the present research.

Generally speaking, the main argument of the Brown
group, in particular (Brown & Bellugi, Klima & Bellugi,
et al.), is that the acquisition of language cannot be
adequately explained by imitation and generalization.
The language of a child is also more than a mere reduc-
tion of adult speech. The child, when acquiring the
language, inducts structure in his continuing search for
the rules of English. Even the earliest two-word
utterances can be described as rule-governed, and Brown
and others concur on what the rules are.

It is noteworthy, however, to point out that the
universality of the Klima and Bellugi stages has been
questioned even in first—language learners. For
example, Bloom (1970) and Lord (1974) failed to find

evidence for stage 1 in the subjects.

 

20

Also, Huxley (1966) discussed the Klima and
Bellugi report. She emphasized that the results of the
longitudinal study being conducted at Edinburgh revealed
quite different rules and stages for the negative and
question structures. Moreover, Huxley argued that
writing rules only elevates the status of the data on
which they are based and that such rules cannot be a

serious report of the child's language competence.

. k »
Brown (1973) provided findings about his original X‘ ‘.))
v-g L
three subjects, Adam, Eve, and Sarah, from a long-range \o /:P
t
(\\5 ,5

perspective. He made numerous references to longitu-
dinal and experimental studies by other people, many of
whom researched languages other than English. Brown
compared Cazden's (1968) description of the morphologi-
cal development in the speech of Brown's three subjects,
with other studies in the literature on the morphologi-
cal acquisition of children in the same age range.

Brown claimed that different children generally appear
to develop English grammatical morphemes in a roughly

invariant order, as follows: present progressive, in,

on, plural, irregular past, possessive, uncontracted

\copula, articles, regular past, regular third person,

and contracted auxiliary. The sequence was revealed by
a procedure where the morphemes were scored for their
suppliance in obligatory contexts (see Brown, 1973:255

for a discussion of this construct). De Villiers and de

 

21

Villiers (1973) substantiated this finding in a larger
cross-sectional first-language sample. It is noteworthy
to mention that Brown's basic objective was to find
universals among all first-language learners. Similar
analyses of the acquisition of English morphemes as a
second language were followed by others, and will be
reviewed in the L2 literature. This order of morpho-
logical acquisition will also be examined in Chapter IV
with regard to the subjects' learning in the present
study.

Bloom et a1. (1975) significantly challenged some
of the Brown's (1970, 1973) findings on language acqui-
sition. Bloom took these studies and added ”function"
as a primary interest. Not only what is said but what
is meant must be taken into consideration when analyzing
the child's language. Bloom (p. 5) explains that ”Mommy
sock', at the two-word stage, operated in different
semantic circumstances: as possession ("Mommy's sock')

and as an actor- -agent (“Mommy is putting the sock on' ).

'~~ . ch... -.

In addition, Bloom studied :hSIEEKZEISHD as well jvv *“°W

 

as the form, by making specific observations of the
speech contexts. Results revealed that there is much
more variance in learning strategies than had previously
been supposed. Bloom's findings 'would cast some doubt
on the view of language development as the same innately

preprogrammed behavior for all children“ (p. 227). An

 

 

22

adequate analysis of language development must consider
the interaction of linguistic experience with non-

linguistic experience and cognitive growth (p. 231).1

Experimental Studies

 

Jean Berko's study (1958) is considered the best
known of experimental studies, whose standard morphology

test has been adopted in other L investigations

2
including the present one. In her research, Berko
tested production rather than comprehension. The stu—
dents ranged in age from four to seven years. Berko
devised a morphology test to examine the internalization
of all the morphological inflections of English syntax.
She used nonsense content words and appealing pictures
to elicit examples of the morphology rules. Berko found

that although the child knows most of the rules, he

still has problems with certain rules. For example, the

 

1In fact, at the beginning of the 19708, a major
shift in the line of research on child language was
started by Bloom. The shift changed the direction from
the description of child's grammar development in terms
of 1 ngu at c theory to the ex lanation of language
development in terms of cognitive theory (that is, in
terms of the relation between form and meaning). This
kind of approach 'led in the 19703 to the virtual
cessation of any attempts to examine children's L1
with formal grammar" (Ingram, 1981).

Since Bloom's shift, many scholars have followed
his line, which is irrelevant to the present study and
therefore will not be mentioned here. Should the reader
be interested in that line, reference can be made to
Bloom et al., 1975; Braine, 1971; Maratos, 1978.

 

(g;

percentage of correct plural forms for nouns supports
Ervin's (1964) statement that chidlren have trouble with
the I-izl plural allomorphs (at least with nonsense
samples). Correct plural allomorphs were given (80% to
90% range over the age span) for the l—sl and I-zl
plurals but only 28 to 36% correct responses were given
for the I-izl form. The children's rule seemed to be to
add l-sl or I—zI unless the word ended in Is 2 s z c jl.
To words ending in these sounds they added nothing to
form the plural, and when asked to make a plural they
repeated the stem as if it were already in the plural.

The same problem with the final I—sI was evident
in the data on possessives and third-person singular
present tense. Berko's analysis of the past tense
allomorph also agrees with Ervin's report that the I-tl
and I-dI allomorphs are much easier for the child than
the I-idl form. For the progressive -iflg, 90% correct
responses were obtained.

Results also showed that children have great diffi-
culty with derived forms, particularly the comparative
(-er, -est). The diminutive affix 'wuggy' was not used
by any child. A compound substitute "baby wug' was
provided instead. No child used inflected adjectives
derived from nouns. For example, 'a dog with a quirk"

was 'a quirk dog'I rather than 'a quirky dog".

 

 

24

Eraser, Bellugi and Brown (1963) devised an
'imitation' experiment to test individual children's
ability to imitate certain syntactic features which
could not be produced on the child's own. Their
experiment was also used in the present study. The
'imitation test" consists of model sentences carefully
designed to reflect the range of sentence types typical
in child's speech. The model sentences also vary in
regard to grammatical form, intonation, stress patterns,
and length. In addition, the major sentence types and
syntactic processes of the English language are
included, such as affirmative, negative, imperative,
yes/no questions, negative questions, and so on. The
sentences also sample major grammatical categories such
as tense, mood, and aspect (Slobin, 1971, p. 22).

C. Chomsky's (1969) original experiments on the \¢///
acquisition of a set of complex structures (easy/eager
to see, tell/promise, ask/tell) by English-speaking
children will be cited here. This is because it was

replicated by recent L acquisition studies, one of

2
which included Arabic—speaking adults. These studies
confirm that L1 and L2 acquisition processes

are similar in some aspects which will be discussed
later.

C. Chomsky's experiment tested the children's

ability to discriminate between sentences such as:

 

 

 

25

(a) "John is eager to see'; and (b) 'John is easy to
see." These sentences have similar surface structures,
but the underlying relationships between the words are
different. Sentences such as in (b) deviate from the
general structural rule of English and their surface
structure is relatively inexplicit with respect to the
underlying grammatical relationships. C. Chomsky found
that such sentences were acquired late. In general, the
child learns to apply the linguistic processes in the
simpler cases first and only then proceeds to use them
in the more complex cases. C. Chomsky's data also
seemed to reveal interesting language learning
strategies. For example, beginners tended to rely on
semantic rather than on syntactic information when
interpreting ambiguous sentences.

In conclusion, pioneer studies on first-language
acquisition which are related to the present research
have revealed that individual children follow similar
stages of development in the process of learning their
native language. These studies have also pointed out
that there seems to be some type of sequence in the
acquisition of certain English syntactic and morphologi-

cal features. Literature on L acquisition will be

2
reviewed in detail next.

}

 

26

Literature on Second—Language Acquisition

The present study looks at bilingual development,
beginning after a native language has been acquired.
Therefore, studies of second-language acquisition are
especially relevant here. A great many of these studies
focus particularly on the bilingual environment in which
the child must be able to communicate in two languages:
one for home use and one for school use.

Second-language acquisition syntax has been
intensively researched in the last twenty years. Among
the more useful works are: Vallette (1964), Kneisner
(1967), Thornhill (1969), Ravem (1968, 1975, 1978),
Huang (1971), Butterworth (1972), Cathcart (1972),
Chamot (1973), Dulay and BurtngEZi, 1974), Adams
(1974), Young (1974), Hakuta (1974), Wagner-cough
(1975), Rosansky (1976), Krashen (1977), Cancino,
Rosansky, and Schumann (1978), Waterbury and Tucker
(1978), Wade (1978), Trosborg (1982), and Beniak (1984).
These studies are particularly relevant to this study
because they are observational studies on second—
language development. (The subjects of most of these
studies were children who learned a second language
naturally and were not taught syntax systematically>
(They all had similar learning environments where the
second language was dominant everywhere except in the

home.)

 

 

27

It is believed that reviewing the above mentioned
studies, along with a summary of conclusions at the end
of this chapter, will answer the main controversial
questions that are considered in this study. These
questions will focus on the similarities and differences
between L1 and L2 acquisition processes as well as
the nature and amount of transfer from the native
language.

Vallette (1964) published a cursory examination of
her four-year—old son's natural and undirected acquisi-
tion of French in Paris. English was maintained at home
while only French was spoken at the nursery school.
Vallette found that after a daily nine—month immersion
in French, in a school situation, the child had only
acquired the proficiency of a three-year-old in his new
language. She further concluded that the manner in
which the young child learned grammatical forms supports
the theories of pattern practice and structural linguis-
tics. Although good data were obtained in Vallette's
study, a better conclusion could have been drawn if the
data were not analyzed in terms of structural linguis-
tics, since the pattern practice has been thoroughly
discredited.

Kneisner (1967) investigated the process of acquir-
ing English by a young adult French-speaking Swiss girl,

without the aid of a structured linguistic instruction.

 

28

Basically, Kneisner observed the behavior of an adult
engaged in learning a second language. Data were
gathered through a series of taped questions and
answers. It was then analyzed transformationally.
Kneisner showed that an adult, learning English as a
second language, in an immersion environment, used base
structures in a way similar to that of a child learning
his native language.

)//Thornhill (1969) did observational research with
young adults. His study was a quantitative examination
of the development of syntactical fluency of four
Spanish—speaking adults learning English while living in
the United States. When compared to similar data from
native speakers, the subjects showed striking similari—
ties in development, syntactic repertoire, and acquisi-
tion trends. Based on the data, Thornhill rejects any
notion of formula learning and habit formation, and
suggests a system similar to that of first—language
learning.

Ravem (1968, 1975, 1978) conducted several studies
of his two Norwegian children's acquisition of English
syntax in a naturalistic setting in Great Britain. When
the study began, the two children were six and a half
years and three years-nine months old. The studies were
longitudinal—observational and conceived within the

framework of first-language syntax studies by Brown and

 

29

his colleagues, particularly Ursula Bellugi. Data were
collected from free conversation, imitation and transla-

1 The structures that Ravem examined were

tion tasks.
negatives, interrogatives, and the development of the
auxiliary constituents. He compared some of his results
to Klima-Bellugi's (1966) description of negation and
interrogation in English-speaking children. Ravem found
similarities in the developmental sequence and stages of
negative and interrogative patterns.

Ravem's significant finding was that ". . . the
more closely two languages are related, the more there
is which can successfully be transferred. There is much
in the development of my informants' English which must

be viewed as transfer, in the sense of an active use of

I"

knowledge“ (1978, p. 153). Ravem's findings will
be compared with those obtained by the researcher.
Huang (1971) examined the acquisition of English
syntax (particularly the development of interrogative
structure) by a five-year—old Taiwanese boy during a
nineteen-week period in a nursery school. His study
constitutes an outstanding analysis of the strategies
used in learning English as a second language. Huang's
data showed that the child had two major learning

stategies: he could use a well—formed adult sentence

 

1A translation test was also used in the present
study on the basis of Ravem's test.

 

30

which he had learned as a single unit through mere
imitation, and he could combine, in his own way, words
he had learned to make an original sentence: namely, the
strategy of sentence imitation and the strategy of his
idiolect syntax.

Huang further claimed that the subject tended to
figure out the meaning of English utterances in terms of
his first language, but there was no evidence that he
depended on his native language in learning English
syntax. The subject's performance had the characteris—
tics both of a child learning his first language and of
an adult learning a second language.

Hatch (1972) studied Huang's data and discovered a
number of other strategies employed in language acquisi-
tion. One involves sentence and topic expansion which
resembles teacher-student, classroom expansion drills:
for example, “This ice cream. This is ice cream" and
"Bay. This is boy'. The other strategy Hatch labels
'drill practice play' which resembles a simple substi-
tution drill. Huang's subject used this strategy only
when addressing himself; for example, "This is tele-
phone. This is whistle', or 'Open the door. Open the
window' (p. 32).

Butterworth (1972) did a longitudinal case study
of e thirteen-year-old Spanish-speaking boy learning

English in a natural environment in California. He

 

31

observed the boy's speech over a three-month period.
Butterworth investigated a number of syntactic areas:
copula construction, prepositions, pronoun selection,
negative structure, interrogative structures, and so
on. He discovered that his subject's learning resembled
that of child first—language and child second-language
acquisition. Butterworth also noted that the subject's
need to communicate as an adult allowed transfer from
his native language. In addition, the boy simplified
his English by eliminating certain inflections and func—
tion words and even verbs if context conveyed meaning.
Butterworth concluded that such a “simplification"
strategy may be universal to all language learners.
Chamot (1973) carried out a case study on her
ten-year-old son's acquisition of English morphology
syntax over a nine-month period. He was bilingual in
Spanish and French. He was learning English as his
third language at a school in Austin, Texas. The study
began one month after his arrival in the United States.
Chamot relied significantly on contrastive analysis to
explain her son's errors while acquiring English. She
also investigated developmental-error rules of the
learner as he acquired more accurate structures. Some
particular English structures were difficult for him to
master. These difficulties were attributed to interfer-

ence. Chamot concluded that her son had the impediments

 

32

of age, which meant that his language acquisition
ability at the age of ten was less than in early child-
hood, and of interference from two related languages,
which in some instances produced double interference.
The four studies mentioned so far show conflicting data
on the transfer aspect. A conclusion regarding this
conflict will be drawn at the end of this section.
Cathcart (1972) reported on a group of English-
speaking children after one year of immersion in Spanish
instruction. The children were organized in a program
similar to Wallace Lambert's bilingual program in Quebec
(Lambert et al., 1970). The children were treated as
native Spanish speakers. Cathcart attempted to give a
comprehensive examination of the children's production
of Spanish utterances. The results were tentative.
However, she did list some “operative verbal strategies"
used by children: some mixing of Spanish words in
English structures, use of two content words without a
verb, employment of one verb for all forms, appearance

of pivot-like structures similar to that of L acquisi-

1
tion, and so on. These strategies seemed to indicate
that the native language was relied on by the children.
The reason may be the language environment, where all

the American children could use English with one

another.

33

Flores' thesis (1973) dealt with the same group of
children with whom Cathcart worked. Flores examined the
children's acquisition of Spanish syntax and morphology.
The children progressed through the universal stages of
grammar acquisition presented by Slobin in his Berkeley
research which showed that L1 acquisition across
cultures looked alike in many ways. Flores also
reported that the children's speech shared most of the
traits of the speech of children learning Spanish as
their second language.

Adams (1974) also observed a group of Spanish-
speaking children in a special classroom in Culver City
where the entire class was immersed in English. In her
thesis she investigated the acquisition of morphological
rules by children in the process of learning English as
a second language. Adams also described the successive
stages that children passed through in acquiring the
English auxiliary system. The results revealed that the
order of acquisition was the same for first and second
language learners. These interesting results will be
compared to the present study.

Dulay and Burt conducted a number of studies to
examine the relatedness of first and second language
learning processes in children. Dulay and Burt (1972)
reviewed the contrastive analysis hypothesis in relation

to children's second-language acquisition, and proposed

 

:.

34

as an alternative and more comprehensive explanation for
children's errors the L2 = Ll hypothesis which is

based on the similarity in processing strategies. Dulay
and Burt showed that many second-language errors made by
children are developmental errors which are made in L1
learning and that interference-like errors, which are
used to support the contrastive analysis hypothesis, can
be explained in terms of processing strategies, such as
overgeneralization, which are shared by first-language
learners.

In addition, Dulay and Burt (1974) tested whether
children from three different native languages show the
same sequence of acquisition of eleven grammatical
morphemes (similar to those identified by Brown). They
also compared the sequence with the corresponding order
in first-language acquisition of English. The results
revealed a common sequence of acquisition among the
three groups, and a different sequence from that in
first-language learning. Dulay and Burt concluded that
'These structures in L2 acquisition would be acquired
in different order than that found in L1 acquisition
. . . since the older L2 learner need not struggle
with the same kinds of semantic notions already acquired
in earlier childhood" (p. 252). Following Dulay and

Burt's work, Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974) reported

35

a natural order for adult subjects quite similar to that

of child second—language acquisition.

\

V

adult in an English-speaking environment. She investi—

Hanania (1974) conducted a case study on a Saudi

gated the subject's acquisition of English structure
over an eighteen-month period. Results showed that the
subject developed English sentence structures in a
manner similar to that of a child acquiring a first
language. The study, however, showed no evidence for
marked interference from the subject's first language in
her English utterances. Hanania noted the primary impor—
tance of semantic situational context in the acquisition
of English as a second language. In addition, the
subject, throughout the learning process, employed a
number of strategies. These included attention to word
order, to content words, and to simple forms of verbs.

A simplification strategy also appeared in the use of
certain English structures.

Young (1974) investigated the acquisition of
English negation, question formation, and the definite
and indefinite article by three Spanish-speaking
children. Her results showed that the children did pass
through many of the stages as first-language learners.
Interference from the Spanish language, however, caused

the persistence of certain errors for a longer period of

36

time than is usually the case with first-language
learners.

Hakuta (1974) reported on the development of
fourteen grammatical morphemes (as identified by Brown)
in a five-year—old Japanese girl learning English as a
second language. Her study was the first attempt to use
Brown's methodology with a second-language learner.
Hakuta compared and discussed the differences between
the order of acquisition for first- and second-language
learners. She hypothesized some determinants of the
order of L acquisition. These included semantic dif-

2

ferences between L1 and L2, the simplicity prin-

ciple, and phonological differences. The simplicity
principle is similar to one of Slobin's (1967) prin-
ciples, ”Avoid exceptions,‘ and it accounts for the
acquisition of the highly regular form of the past
auxiliary long before the irregular form and the infre-
quent regular form. In general, Hakuta showed that her
subject's acquisition process was a gradual one and
similar to that of most first-language learners.

V/ Heckler (1975) included Arabic, Japanese, and
Spanish speakers in his study of their acquisition of
English verb morphology. The study was based on Berko's
English morphology research (1958) on native English-

speaking children. The data showed that the subject's

level of proficiency in English, as well as his native

37

language, determined his performance. Moreover, non-
native speakers tend to learn English morphology struc-
tures in a “non-randomized" order. For example, present
I-sl, I-sI and l-zl forms were mastered before l—izl,
and past, I-tl and l-dl allomorphs were mastered before A
I-idl. Heckler's findings agreed with Berko's (1958)
and Ervin's (1970) findings on the order of acquisition ‘

of morphology rules by L speakers.

1
Larsen-Freeman (1975) conducted a study on the L,/”’—‘_“‘

acquisition of grammatical morphemes by Arabic, Japan-

ese, and Persian adult ESL learners. The study was

designed to determine if the order of acquisition of

grammatical morphemes for L2 learners as reported by

Dulay and Burt (1973) would be found to exist in tasks

other than requiring speech production. A battery of

five tasks—-reading, writing, listening, imitating, and

speaking--were administered to the subjects (see

Larsen-Freeman, 1975:410 for a discussion of these

tasks). It was found that there is "a high level of

concordance across language groups with regards to

morpheme ordering within tasks” (p. 409). Larsen-

Freeman further concluded “that the notion of 'invari—

ance' used by L1 acquisition researchers investigating

morpheme acquisition (Brown 1973:272: de Villiers & de

Villiers 1973:268) was not appropriate when describing

38

the sequences obtained in this L2 acquisition study"
(1975, p. 417).

Wagner-Gough (1975) conducted comparative studies
in second-language learning. She also investigated the
language development of an Iranian child (5 years, 11
months old) who was learning English as a second lan-
guage by immersion. Like the previously mentioned
researchers, Gough described similar deve10pment stages
and universal strategies in first and second language
learning.

Rosansky (1976) carried out a longitudinal study
on the order of acquisition of English morphemes by a
native Spanish-speaking adolescent. She compared the
acquisition order (longitudinal) with the relative
accuracy of the use of the morphemes at a given point in
development (cross-sectional). Rosansky found that the
subject's longitudinal order is not the same as his
cross-sectional order.

Krashen (1982) reviewed the findings of 21
longitudinal and cross-sectional L1 and L2 studies
on the acquisition of English morphemes. He found a
similar order of acquisition for second-language
learners, which he termed the "natural order.“ Most
important, Krashen found that the order of acquisition
for a second language is not the same as the order of

acquisition for a first language, which agrees with the

39

findings of Dulay and Burt (1974) and Larsen-Freeman
(1975).

Cancino, Rosansky, and Schumann (1978) studied the
natural, untutored acquisition of English negatives and
interrogatives by six Spanish speakers: two children
(both 5 years old), two adolescents (11 and 13 years
old), and two adults (25 and 33 years old). The study
was the first observational-longitudinal one that
examined particularly the age differences in the rate of
acquiring English as a second language. The least
progress, obviously, was that made by the 33-year-old
subject. The results, when compared to Klima and

Bellugi's findings on L acquisition, indicated

1
similarities as well as differences in some of the
developmental stages of English syntax acquisition. For
example, Cancino, Rosansky and Schumann question Klima
and Bellugi's (1966) findings in terms of the reality of
Stage 1 negation. They also question Klima and
Bellugi's finding of a Stage 3 question pattern in which
children invert the auxiliary with the sentence's
subjects in yes/no questions but not in WH-questions.
According to Cancino, Rosansky and Schumann, inverted
yes/no questions do not precede inverted WH—questions,
or vice-verse.

Waterbury and Tucker (1978) replicated C.

Chomsky's (1969) experiment on the acquisition of

40

English complex structures. Their subjects were
Egyptian Arabic-speaking adults at different levels of
learning proficiency. In addition, a translation task
was administered to probe explicitly for evidence of
interlingual interference. The results for the most
advanced learners indicated a developmental pattern
similar to that reported by C. Chomsky for child native
speakers. No evidence was found that the subjects
attempted to make use of Arabic native language struc-
tures in producing those of the English language. This
finding agrees with Hanania's (1974) conclusion,
mentioned earlier.

Several previously discussed studies on the
untutored second-language acquisition of English have
indicated that L is acquired like L

2 l'
lar, researchers such as Corder (1967) and Dulay and

In particu-

Burt (1974) have suggested that the same develOpmental
sequence occurs for the acquisition of the interrogative
structures regardless of whether English is learned as a
first or a second language. Dulay and Burt (1974)
further claimed that "Syntactic interference from the
first language was almost nonexistent for Spanish
children learning English in the United States. . . .
Interference . . . is virtually nonexistent in child

second—language acquisition” (p. 82).

41

Wode (1978) discussed the shortcomings of the
morpheme order approach in first- and second-language
acquisition research. He proposed instead the notion of
developmental sequence. Wode drew on examples from both
phonological and syntactic data on four German children
learning English naturalistically. The results showed
that the first—language acquisition of English questions
is different from the second-language acquisition.
Although Wode's data supported the widely held view that
L2 follows ordered developmental patterns, it indi-
cated that L developmental sequences are not exactly

2

like the respective L sequences.

1

In addition, the data revealed that the L2

children do make use of prior L knowledge, and that

1
interference as well as positive transfer from the pre-
viously learned language does take place. This finding

prompted Wode to conclude that the L developmental

2
sequences for any language vary systematically as a
function of the L1 acquired previously.

Trosborg (1982) also replicated C. Chomsky's
research on Danish-speaking subjects. She investigated
the existence of a developmental sequence for the
acquisition of the complex structures (easy/eager to
see, promise, ask/tell). Her investigation was an

analysis of eight studies that involved Danish-speaking

subjects acquiring English as a second language at ages

42

7-10, 13, and 18. The results indicated a develOpmental
pattern similar to that reported by C. Chomsky and
Waterbury and Tucker.

Beniak (1984) carried out three studies on the
acquisition of French syntax by young speakers of
English and French in Quebec and Ontario. Each study
was a comparison of the acquisition of an aspect of the
French verb system by three groups of speakers. They
were: young English-speakers learning French as a second
language in an early French immersion program in
Montreal: young monolingual French-speakers attending
elementary French language schools in Quebec: and young
bilingual French-speakers enrolled in elementary French
language schools in Ontario. The three aspects of the
French verb system studied were the syntax of the
infinitival complement of motion verbs, the morphology
of the pronominal verbs (that is, reflexive pronoun plus
verb), and the morphology of the past participles (that
is, stem plus affix). Each study presented and
explained the language acquisition errors made by the
three speaker groups as well as the differences in the

language acquisition stages reached by them.

 

Summary and Conclusions», \ .
/
Studies on L2 acquisition show that children as C3?)

well as adults form different L1 backgrounds, in a

 

f
‘s

I
l

i

x ,
‘c/ There are two major areas of research which

 

43

natural envirionment, acquire English syntax in a way
similar to a child learning his native language. That .
is, studies generally show that the L2 acqusition TR EDCDR

process is the same as the L1 acquisition process. 03-.
\.Q

However, differences existinwsomeflaspectg. Rf

.- saw~--

illuminate differences and similarities between L1 and

L2 acquisition. These are the morpheme studies

t .m’.
“.m,._.... 5', I __..,...,-n -"

 

 

 

 

.....

(studies of the accuracy of use of English grammatical

”w.‘ W' . ”—4-

 

 

morphemes) and studies of the development of negation

/

and interrogation. An interpretation of the results of

, .1
an..- ..,_-,~-JH-V’ L

L2 morpheme studies led researchers to postulate a
similar order of acquisition, regardless of differences

in age and L background (Dulay & Burt, 1974: Bailey,

1
Madden, & Krashen, 1974), and in spite of the use of
different testing procedures (Larsen-Freeman, 1975).
The accuracy order of development, however, was not
identical to that found in L1 acquisition (Brown 1973;

AI
De Villiers & de Villiers, 1973). (Order of acquisition

/" /' "
(’5‘ d. g..."
was conditioned by cognitive development in the case of 7

L1, while the L2 acquisition order correlated with
frequency in input (Larsen-Freeman, 1976).)
These studies have been of considerable influence
in recent research, even though their subsequent results 54‘:
have been criticized for many reasons. First, what is

examined is not a developmental order, but an order

I
l
r

J

a“,

:‘L':;’fl;a’ ,

. /" /

“ /\O / 44
0/

Trelative to the degree of accuracy with which these

/- -\..
morphemes occur in obligatory contexts. Second, the (Q

testing method which has been used eliminates individual

differences (Meisel, Clashen & Pienemann, 1981). Third,

falthough the(;EEEEEme studies show definite regulari-

§ ties, there is also deviation from regularities for

1
i

1 groups and individuals. For example,(longitudinal

5 studies of the acquisition of the same morphemes in indi-

[Li

viduals (Hakuta, 1974: Rosansky, 1976) showed an order

“if/'7 “4 ‘ .

 

 

different from the one found in the<¢ross-sectional) 1
studies (Dulay & Burt, 1974: Krashen, 1982).
In the case of the studies of negation and inter-

rogation there is evidence of similar L deve10pment

2

across differences in L1 background and age. In
addition, developmental stages are identical to those
reported in L1 acquisition.

Furthermore, L1 and L2 acquisition researches
indicate a well-defined sequence of deve10pment for yet
another area, a specific set of linguistic structures
(easy/eager to see, promise, ask/tell). These struc-
tures were originally reported by C. Chomsky (1969) to
be acquired in a regular sequence by English-speaking
children. A similar deve10pmenta1 pattern is evident in
L2 learning (Waterbury & Tucker, 1978: Trosborg, 1982)

in spite of differences in the range of age (adults and

children), as well as differences in L1 background

 

45

(Arabic and Danish). These findings confirm the notion

that L and L acquisition derive from the same

1 2
underlying process.

Regarding the interference from native language,
conflicting data were found in the literature. In some
cases, the interference was obvious, and in others there
was little or no interference. In the case of Norwegian
children (Ravem, 1978) and German children (Wode, 1978),
transfer from the native language did exist while
acquiring English syntax. This is possibly due to the
fact that the three languages (English, German, and
Norwegian) belong to the same branch (Germanic) of the
Indo-European language family.

On the other hand, no syntactic interference from
the first language was observed with Spanish-,
Taiwanese-, and Chinese-speaking children (Young, 1974:
Huang, 1971: Dulay & Burt, 1974). These languages
obviously do not belong to the same branch as that of
English (i.e., Germanic), even though Spanish falls into
the same family of languages as English (Indo-European).

With the adolescents, the case is different.
Interference did exist for Spanish-speaking as well as
French-speaking subjects (Butterworth, 1972: Chamot,
1972). It was argued that these subjects' need to
communicate as adults made L1 transfer possible. On

the contrary, no interference was observed with Arabic

46

adults while acquiring English syntax (Hanania, 1974:
Waterbury & Tucker, 1978). This could be attributed to
the fact that Arabic is not of the same language family
as English. In general, it appears that interference
would more likely occur when the first language is in
the same family, and particularly the same branch, as
English. At this point, it can only be concluded that

more research on this aspect is needed.

CHAPTER III

DESCRIPTION OF SUBJECTS AND STUDY

Subjects

The children in this study were native Arabic-
speakers from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. They were
four boys who ranged in age from 5.9 to 7 years at the
beginning of the study (April 11, 1986). The children
arrived in December, 1985 with their parents, who are
graduate students at the local university. The children
were enrolled in an elementary school by the middle of
January, 1986. It is a university community school
where more than half of the students are the children of
international students attending the local university.
The school is considered moderate in size with a total
of about 350 students. The Arabic children attended the
school for five days each week, Monday through Friday,
from 8:55 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. The selection of the
subjects was controlled so as to have two children from
each of the two grades--kindergarten and first grade--
chosen for the study.

47

48

Observation started with five children: the four
boys and one six-year old girl. She entered the kinder-
garten class on February 11, 1986, just a few days
after her arrival in the United States with her parents.
At the time the study began, she neither spoke nor
understood English. Theoretically, a child like this is
an ideal subject from whom to learn about language devel—
opment because one does not have to work at discovering
what the child knew of the language before observation
began. However, the girl did not speak English until
two months after the study began. This was, of course,
frustrating for someone awaiting her every word. It
therefore seemed logical to exclude her from the study
since there was so little evidence of progress.

The basic criteria for selecting the children were

~simply: 1) that their first language be Arabic and

F
'2) that their English-language skills be in the begin-

   
 

'ning stages. From nine Arabic-speaking children in both .
kindergarten class and first grade, four were chosen:
-fil . __ . -' """ m” ’
the others were excluded because they were fairly fluent
in English at the start of observation. The four
selected children were Ali, Adel, Tarek, and Sami.1
However, based on the researcher's observations of the

children's ability to follow instructions in English, or

 

1These are not their real names.

49

the level of their apparent structural development, the
four children selected appeared to have a rudimentary
knowledge of English. While they did not have a great
difficulty in understanding simple English, they were
able to use only basic common expressions with obvious
grammatical mistakes. Sami seemed at the beginning to
be the least knowledgeable of the four, but later he
showed interesting progress.

Until the four children came to the United States,
two of them (Ali and Adel) had only very limited instruc-
tion in English. It was reported that they knew only a
few words and expressions of English, and did some
simple writing and reading exercises, but the language
was not spoken at all. The other two children (Tarek
and Sami) had no previous knowledge of English, and had
received no formal instruction in the language. These
two children differed from the excluded girl in the fact
that she was the only Arabic-speaking girl in the class.
That probably made her very introverted and shy, and she
rarely spoke or interacted with the other children.

According to the parents, the children spoke only
Arabic before they left their home countries. They
watched only Arabic TV programs and never had any
natural exposure to English. It is most likely that

they had their first contact with the new language when

50

they first arrived in the United States and started
school.

Arabic was the principal medium of communication
at home. The parents, however, indicated that it is
important that their children correctly speak and learn
English. They encouraged the children and took interest
in their school work. They used English at home
occasionally. English was also spoken when the children
went out to play with peers. In fact, because the
childen spent most of their time with American friends,
they were more exposed to English than to Arabic. But
they seldom watched TV in the beginning because of the
language barrier. In general, it appears that the
children have spent most of the daytime (around 8 to 10
hours, including school time) outside home communicating
in English.

Fortunately, three subjects were more talkative
than Sami, who was quiet and liked to play alone
sometimes. In his house, he used to be more active.
This could be explained by the fact that at the end of
the school day he tries to work out this quietness
caused by the language barrier. Later I found that Sami
was shy and wary of strangers. Once he felt comfort-
able, however, he could be very playful. In addition,
this child's attendance at school was erratic for

different reasons, including sickness and sometimes

51

laziness. But he still had contact with his English-
speaking friends at home and in the playground, where an
improvement in his English was noticeable every time
compared to the excluded girl. Also, the other three
children were more sociable than Sami. At school they
were very interested in other children and in engaging
in all the activities. They never missed a class.
Their involvement in school life helped them make
friends among the American students and the other
school-age bilinguals from different countries. I had
the impression that although the children knew they
spoke a different language, they never felt as
outsiders. ‘

After school and on weekends, they usually played
with children their own age around their apartments in
the student housing. Most of their playmates were
native speakers of English. Generally, throughout the
observation period, the four children were friendly,
helpful, cooperative, and willing to participate freely

in the study.

Choice of Classroom
The two grades (kindergarten and first grade) were
chosen for the following reasons:
1. No systematic instruction of English was

given, even in the ESL classes where children's English

52

was corrected only occasionally. The children were
exposed to the new language in much the same way a child
learns his first language. This makes it easy to
determine how much English an Arab child could absorb
naturally in an immersion situation.

2. In this setting, the child's total verbal
environment would be an unfamiliar one each day, which
he would have to decode in order to communicate in it.
The child would have to learn a new language to under-
stand his teacher and play with his peers. Thus, a high
motivation factor would be present, making this situa-
tion the ideal one to examine child second-language

acquisition.

Classroom Atmosphere and Curriculum

The atmosphere in the two classrooms was congenial
and friendly. It was a good environment for studying
language. There were enough activities (explained
below) to make it possible to observe the children in
classroom interaction. Because the teacher spoke no
Arabic and the majority of the children were Americans,
the official language in the classroom was English. The
Arabic—speaking children rarely spoke Arabic among each
other. Significantly, the Arab children, through this

natural environment approach to English used in the

53

classroom, were treated not only as if they could learn
but as if they were expected to learn.

The teacher made an effort to introduce an
integrated and well-rounded curriculum to the children.
The language arts and materials used were primarily
children's reading books, pictures, and other audio-
visual aids intended to stimulate language flow. In the
classroom, the children had a variety of things to do:
listening to stories, reading, writing, singing,
dancing, playing games, playing with toys, art work, and
other activities.

Different kinds of stories and fairy tales were

read to the students, such as The Three Bears, The Three

 

 

gigs, Hansel and Gretel, and others. Various activites
were also used in reading or retelling a story. “These
included an art project, a cooking project, the use of
puppets or a flannel board, and so on. In addition, the
children were asked to make individual books of a story
(simplified language): that is, to rewrite it using
their own vocabulary. Generally, the teacher would
continue with a story, using as many media as possible,
until she was sure that the children had learned the
vocabulary, the particular sounds and syntactic construc-
tions, or until they were tired of the subject.

Similarly, books such as Brown Bear and I Know An

 

 

Old Lady were also taught in the classroom. The teacher

54

also used a number of ESL textbooks entitled, I Like
English (Book 1) and 1331 (Book A). These two books
stress oral language, listening, and speaking. Their
goal is communication in English. The books provide
materials deve10ped to enable the young child to use
English actively from the beginning. In short, teaching
was centered around the students' immediate needs and
ability to communicate, by listening, imitating,
questioning, and expanding through a wide variety of
drills, dialogues, songs, and other means.

The early lessons of I Like English (I), which

 

were covered by the students, emphasized particular
syntactic structures such as: present progressive tense,
simple present tense of fig, £313, like, and 323$,
negative, WH-questions, possessive adjectives, and so
on. The other book, 2331 (A), introduced simple English
vocabularies through pictures, such as: 22253, 32233,
ESEES' gfligt, 223' 22292'.£222' swings, and so on.
Besides the ESL books, other reading books normally
taught to English-speakers were also used. These books

are: Sun Up, Happy Mornigg, Magic Afternoon, Sun and

 

Shadow, and Together We Go.

 

Activity songs were used basically to reinforce
certain nouns and verbs. These songs included: Walk
Around the Circle: March Around the Alphabet, What Are

You Wearing, Colors, Circle Game, All on the Table

 

 

55

Before You, and others. The teacher also tried to
communicate with the children through singing certain

songs such as Hello, What Is Your Name, where they

 

 

respond with "my name is .'

Games such as Alphabet Bingo and Concentration

 

 

were employed to illustrate the use and recognition of
alphabets, colors, clothing and food names, and so
forth. In addition, the teacher mentioned that she
always collects a wide variety of pictures, an important
tool of teaching.

The four Arabic-speaking children, among other
non-native speakers of English, were participating in
all classroom activities. They all had the need and the
opportunity to speak English. It is also important to
note that throughout the class period, the teacher
corrected the grammar and the pronunciation of all the
students but there was no attempt to teach English
systematically.

Language-Learning Environment
Outside the Classroom

 

 

In addition to classroom activities, the natural
exposure the Arabic-speaking children received in their
everyday environment (whether through school or the
outside environment) enhanced their language development

to a great extent. This was evidenced by the English

56

structures they produced throughout the observation
period.

The natural exposure through television, social
contacts and activities, and so on, was extremely
important. The children have had exposure to English
through television. They used to watch a variety of
programs, particularly cartoons. In addition, the
social contacts with American peers stimulated the use
of language in contextual social situations. The
children had the opportunity to gradually learn and use
more words, more greetings, and social expressions in
talking to American children or adults. For example,
going to the playground gave the Arabic children the
occasion to hear and use English at play. They would
repeat songs and other things they had learned during
the day at school. On the whole, rapid progress was
made in the children's learning of English.

In this immersion situation, the children were
highly motivated to learn a new language since they felt
themselves to be members of the new language community.
Also, the children's need or the urge to communicate
with Americans encouraged them to use English to
establish new relationships or express certain ideas.

In addition to the basic need for interaction
within a language community, social prestige appeared to

be one of the factors motivating these language

57

learners. For example, when one of the subjects was
asked if he enjoyed speaking English, he replied, ”Yes,
because when I go back to Egypt it makes the other
children jealous of me because they can't speak
English." The Saudi child said, 'I enjoy speaking
English because my mother likes it.“ That is, when the
social value placed on the second language is high,
motivation to learn will be quite high.

Generally, a natural environment for learning a
foreign language is desirable and is perhaps the best
medium for second—language acquisition: in particular,
when this medium is a university dominated school
similar to the one where this study took place. It
provides sufficient exposure, which is considered a must
for the process of second-language development to take
place as it does in first-language learning. In
addition, the type of tapics that come up in a natural
immersion situation are quite different from what is
dealt with in a classroom situation with formal
instruction of the target language.

In summary, the four subjects' exposure to English
in this language-learning environment was constant and
varied. After a few months, the Arabic-speaking
children, who previously had no background in English,

were writing and speaking the language. Furthermore,

58

they were developing positive attitudes toward the

American culture and language-learning in general.

Procedures for Data Collection

 

The purpose of this study, as previously
mentioned, was to describe the order in which four
Arabic-speaking children acquire the English Esgiéhs
question pattern involving particular aux constituentszx
and morphological rules. Researchers who conducted
similar studies adopted similar procedures in collecting
their data. Most of the researchers recommended observ—
ing and recording the subjects' free speech. They also
recommended the use of certain standardized tests as the
best means for data collection in further language
acquisition studies. These included imitation tests and
translation tests. Adams (1972) concluded that for a
thorough language acquisition study, it is necessary to
use more than one technique, such as the use of obser-
vation, imitation, and translation simultaneously. She
also claimed that this would give a more complete
picture of the student's production and "would elicit
more information through each technique where another
was lacking“ (p. 63).

The data were collected during the thirteen-week

period from April 11 to July 11, 1986. The researcher

gathered the data from two main sources: 1) observations

59

and manual transcriptions of the subjects' spontaneous
speech (this technique was used by Ravem (1968, 1975,
1978), Huang (1971), and others), and 2) controlled
production experiments-(Berko's morphology test,

elicited imitation test, and translation test).

Spontaneous Speech Samples

Because of rules and restrictions imposed by the
school system, observations of the four Arabic-speaking
children's spontaneous utterances were limited only to

the children' s first five weeks at school. Observations

7—,. )M m-‘ '9 4"”
“-0 «~__,’—.,fi _____ .~ “(Wu _' _. ”firm. r...- W "W M...- ~ .-
"m h“,- ‘— -

for the second eight weeks were continued out of school

WM“.

 

 

M.M~.m_fl . H». “w ”HWM-wd_m" a

 

A Hem- “as“ ... “M.”

by arrangement with the children's parents. At school
the observations were conducted in the children's
classrooms. The observations took place four hours per
week: two hours on Mondays and two hours on Fridays. On
each day, one hour was spent with Sami and Adel in 4*

)rl
+¢
kindergarten and the other hour was spent with Ali and -3+J3

,.
\, b

-A

u

Tarek in first grade. The same amount of time was spent
with the same children outside school during the second
eight weeks of observation.

At school, note-taking was the sole medium of data
collection. Again, school regulations forbid the use of
a tape recorder in the classroom. I also found that the
general noise level and the freedom of movement of the
students would have made a tape recorder impractical in

any case. I carried a notebook and wrote down as many

60

of the utterances as I could during each observation
session. I always tried to be within hearing distance
of the subjects and to take careful notes on all the
responses they produced, along with the context
sometimes. At first, the students were curious about my
presence in the classroom, but the teacher explained
that I was learning how to teach and that I needed to
observe the class activities.

It was possible to keep a consistent record of the
four subjects' speech during the observation sessions.
After every session, a diary of each subject was written
(examples are included in Appendix A). Later, all noted
English utterances were transcribed using the transcrip-

tion format suggested in A Field Manual for Cross-

 

Cultural Study of the Acquisition of Communicative

 

Competence (Slobin, 1967).

 

In fact, a great deal of important data were
obtained. Also, interesting information and valuable
insights were provided into the strategies the subjects
employed while acquiring English. These strategies will
be discussed in Chapter IV.

From May 16 to July 11, 1986, the researcher
visited the subjects' homes in order to continue col-
lecting the data. A friendly relationship developed
with the children. At home they were talkative and

seemed to be relieved from school burdens and tension.

61

Although Arabic was the principal language at home, the
children spoke to me in English all the time. This was
due to the researcher's Lebanese Arabic dialect which
differed from the children's Arabic dialects and might
have been difficult to understand.

For convenience, at their homes, the researcher
attempted to consistently observe the children at
regular intervals each week. This was possible since I
lived in the same university complex. Visiting the
children's homes to record their English utterances
turned out to be very productive. The language data
were collected during interviews held twice a week in
the evenings, and lasted about one hour each. All
interviews were tape-recorded. A Panasonic cassette
tape recorder (Model RQ—350) with a built-in micrOphone
was used. The quality of the recordings was quite
satisfactory. The recorded interviews involved two
people at a time-—the researcher and one of the
subjects. The cooperation and the understanding of the
parents facilitated the recording and the subsequent
transcription of the data.

Following each interview, the recording was
accurately transcribed, using the previously mentioned
Slobin format. All the utterances, except for some

Arabic words and expressions, were transcribed in

62

detail, using conventional English spelling, but
indicating approximations and repetitions.

During the interviews, the researcher used a
different set of techniques to elicit conversation as
close to natural as possible. One of these techniques
was to verbally create situations in which the children
would use English spontaneously. For example, several
socially conversational questions were used to elicit
more responses in English, most of which were understood
and answered. The children were asked how they would
make particular statements in English. They were also
asked to recall English expressions that they knew or
had recently learned, or to recall experiences in school
or anything of special interest to them. This included
a valuable amount of reproduced conversation which
significantly enhanced the data.

Another technique for eliciting English utterances
was the use of pictures. Pictures of simple format and
of various interesting story possibilities were shown
and discussed. The subjects were asked to describe what
they saw in the picture and to tell what was happening
in the picture. They were helped along with questions
to facilitate eliciting utterances.

As the children and the researcher became better
friends, the chances for natural conversational situa-

tions increased. A few visits were also arranged

63

between the subjects and their young American peers,
during which more natural conversations were carried out
entirely in English.

In addition, other possibilities were explored in
order to record the children's spontaneous speech in
situations when they needed to communicate in English.
The researcher accompanied the children on several
occasions to the playground, where they spent one to two
hours playing with American friends. At the playground,
taping was so difficult that a memo was kept instead.

Generally, when they were engaged in normal
playground activities, the children's language develOped
into spontaneous conversations from which the researcher
could often times withdraw. Most important, there
seemed to be 22 barrier of nationality or language which
enhanced the children's verbal communications. Also, at
the playground a certain competitive spirit was present
which evoked different interesting types of conversa-
tion. This provided additional data on the children's
English utterances.

Generally, significantly varied samples of the
children's speech were collected during the study per-
iod. Although the collection of data was Open-ended and
included anything the subjects said, the main concern
was centered on their development of certain syntactic

structures. The data gathered through observations of

64

the children's spontaneous speech, and through the use
of controlled production experiments (which will be
explained later) served as the foundation for the

discussion that will follow in Chapter IV.

Controlled Production Experiments

The four subjects were given three standardized
tests individually, at regular intervals, to investigate
English structures that might not have appeared in the
children's spontaneous speech (this will be discussed in
Chapter IV). These tests were:

Elicited Imitation Tests. In this test, the
children's oral production and imitation of a certain
set of sentences were examined. It was used mainly to
determine the children's processing of particular
English structures. Imitation tasks have been applied
to examine first-language acquisition (Fraser, Bellugi,
Brown, 1963: Menyuk, 1963: and Slobin & Welsh, 1973).
Moreover, imitation tests have been administered in
studies of second-language acquisition (Butterworth,
1972: Cathcart, 1972: and Adams, 1974).

In preparing the imitation tests, the researcher
took some sentences directly from Slobin's manual (1967:
Appendix 1) and also used some of the sentences that
Slobin and Welsh had given to their subjects. In

addition, other grammatical and ungrammatical sentences

65

based on the models developed by Slobin (1970) were
constructed. In the second and third month of data
collection, the researcher concentrated on sentences
with auxiliaries (especially 199?), question words,
inversions, and progressives bezsuse many of these
structures had not appeared in the children's spontane—
ous speech but they often seemed to comprehend such
structures. Vocabularies familiar to the children were
used in all sentences. Elicited imitation tests that
were administered and recorded in weeks 5, 9 and 13 are
found in Appendix B.

Translation Test. Ravem (1968, 1978) devised a
translation test to determine his six-year-old son's
development of the English auxiliary system. Butterworth
(1972) developed his translation test on the basis of
Ravem's for the same purpose. Ravem's test was the
model for the translation test devised for this study.
This test also included vocabularies apprOpriate to
Arabic-speaking children. The purpose was to determine
the children's knowledge of the English auxiliary
system.

The children were given instructions in Arabic,
such as, "Tell your brother that you don't like coffee,”
or "Ask him if he likes ice cream.“ The children then

translated these into direct English statements or

questions addressed to a third person. (The children's

66

translations will be analyzed and compared to their
spontaneous speech in Chapter IV). Using the native
language reduced the number of clues the children had to
the English structure. In addition, the use of an
Arabic language stimulus facilitated the children's
understanding of what they must respond to. The
researcher, however, was mainly concerned with the pro-
duction of an appropriate structure, not comprehending
the instructions to choose that structure.

The translation test was given and recorded in
weeks 5, 9, and 13. The sentences constructed with an
English translation of the stimulus are found in
Appendix C.

Morphology Test. This test was administered to
determine the four children's knowledge of English
morphological rules. The same testing technique was
adopted by Adams (1974) and Butterworth (1972).

The researcher gave the children an oral version
of Jean Berko's morphology test (Slobin, 1967) in week
13 (Appendix D). The main objective was to trace the
development of the children's acquisition of English
noun plural, third-person singular, adjectives, and past
tense inflections in a more systematic way than was
possible from analysis of speech samples.

Test items consisted of real words interspersed

with nonsense syllables. They were presented in the

67

format: 'I have a wug. I have two. I have two .'

 

The children had to provide the appropriately inflected
form. The main emphasis, however, was placed on the use
of the correct morpheme and not on the children's actual
pronunciation of the morpheme. The tests mentioned so
far were used simultaneously to elicit enough data for
analyzing the children's production of particular

English structures.

Research Design and Data Analysis

 

Research Design

 

As previously mentioned, the study was carried out
over a three-month period. The description of collected
data proceeded through three observation periods:

I - April 11 to May 12: II - May 12 to June 13: and

III - June 13 to July 11. The researcher found it appro-
priate to group the data into units covering four weeks
each, making three periods total. This does not imply
that language development and changes took place

abruptly at the period boundaries. In fact, language
development was continuous throughout the entire observa-
tion period. This type of arrangement was merely to
facilitate the analysis of the data.

The researcher, therefore, analyzed the spontane-

ous speech data collected for each child over a period

68

of one month. In addition, two previously discussed
controlled production experiments-~the elicited imita-
tion test and the translation test--were administered
toward the end of each period. The two tests elicited
specific structures which might not have appeared in the
child's spontaneous speech. Each child was tested
individually at the end of each period. The timing of
the test was based on the assumption that a child might
develop in one month particular syntactic aspects that
should be immediately tested before he proceeds to a
higher level of language acquisition. The results of
each child's tests were compared to the sentences of the
child's free speech observed during the same period.
This helped to show if the tests' results reflected
patterns in English syntax usage similar to those
observed in the children's free speech.

Furthermore, the researcher tried to discover if
the structures were learned by the children in any
definable sequence through time. Each child's grammar
for the first month was compared with his grammar for
the second and third months. After determining the
sequence of(English syntactic developmen§)for each
child, the researcher compared their sequencing to see
if the order of acquisition of grammatical structures

was similar for all four children.

69

The study was designed as closely as possible to a
pseudo-longitudinal study, since a longitudinal case
study requires more data to be collected over a longer
period of time. Therefore, in this pseudo-longitudinal
study, the analysis of negative, interrogative, and
auxiliary development is based on data from the four
children, with no one subject having examples for every
pattern. That is, I have not made generalizations which
are based on data taken from only one student. One sub-
ject (Sami), however, showed significantly different
results from the other children in the way he developed
his negative and interrogative English pattern. Sami's
data will be analyzed separately and then compared with
the data from the other three subjects. It was believed
that this framework provided a fairly complete detailed
description, assuming enough data have been collected at
frequent intervals.

At the end of the study, Berko's test of English
morphology was administered individually. This examined
the children's knowledge and order of acquisition of the
morphological rules of English after a few months of
learning the language. The test also determined whether
children who are in the process of acquiring English as
a second language internalize grammar rules in the same

order as first- and second-language learners.

70

Data Analysis

The main concern in analyzing the data was to find
out EEEE English structures the Arabic-speaking children
learn and he: they learn them. The researcher was also
concerned with investigating what strategies children
use to learn a second language. The researcher did not
analyze the data within the framework of transforma-
tional-generative grammar (like most first- and second-
language researchers) . Rules that would generate
utterances like those found in the data were not
written. Based on readings (Butterworth, 1972: Adams,
1974: Cancino et al., 1978: and others who argued that
writing grammars to analyze the data is unsuitable
development descriptive technique), the researcher found
it unnecessary to write rules that accounted for all of
the utterances children produce at a certain age. This
would have complicated the task tremendously. Most
importantly, it might have revealed inaccurate evalua—
tion of the children's actual competence in the English
language.

The researcher mainly emphasized describing and
analyzing the structure and origin of the children's
language. This description relied solely upon observ-
able speech: that is, the surface structures of their
language. The data analysis described the children's

production of specific syntactic areas. It also

71

followed their development of English syntax from one
specific point in time to another over a three-month
period. This determined if the structures were acquired
in a definable sequence through time.

In addition, with the two contrasting hypotheses
of Dulay and Burt (1972, 1974) in mind (contrastive
analysis and L1 = L2 hypotheses), specific predic-
tions were made about ”transitional“ errors in child-
ren's speech. Based on the two hypotheses, there were
two possible assumptions to account for the errors
produced by the Arabic-speaking children. First, these
errors could be similar to those of the child learning
his first language. Second, the children's errors could
be accounted for by interference from their native
linguistic system.

Although the researcher did not rely heavily upon
the notion of error analysis to describe and organize
the data, the above two possible explanations were used
as criteria to explain the children's English syntactic
development. In fact, the researcher was reluctant to
completely drOp the notion of error analysis because
strong evidence exists in related studies (Wagner-Gough,
1975: Wode, 1978) that children as second-language

learners draw upon their native syntactic structures to

produce English.

72

It was expected that this data design and analysis
would give a more complete description and better
justification of the generalizations and conclusions.
However, because the data come only from four subjects,
the descriptions and the findings are highly tentative
and speculative. This study must be considered as a
further step toward rather than the basis for strong
generalizations about the learning process of English

syntax by Arabic-speaking children.

CHAPTER IV

RESULTS AND ANALYSES

This chapter presents the findings of the present
research in three parts. In the first part, the sub-
jects' progress in the acquisition of English negative,
interrogative patterns, and specific auxiliary consti-
tuents is traced throughout the three one-month periods
covered by the study. The spontaneous speech samples1
collected are analyzed by sentence type or syntactic
surface structure with some reference to Arabic, wherever
applicable. Since one child (Sami) showed significantly
different results, his data will be analyzed separately
and then compared with the data from the other three
subjects. The developmental stages, through the three
periods of this study, will also be compared with those
observed in other L1 and L2 studies.

The second part of the chapter describes the

specific communicative strategies or procedures the

 

1Data obtained from observations of one child's
free speech (April ll-July 11, 1986) is given in
Appendix A.

73

74

Arabic-speaking children appeared to employ in learning
English as a second language. The third part describes
the results of the three controlled production experi-
ments given: elicited imitation test, translation test
(Arabic to English), and Berko's test of English
morphology.
General Development of the
{:Subjects' Negation Patterns
Period I (April ll-May 12, 1986)
During period I, the data of three subjects (Ali,
Adel, and Tarek, whose ages ranged from 5.9 to 7 years)
can be considered as fitting somewhere between Stage I

and Stage II of L negation acquisition described by

l
Klima and Bellugi (1971). They divided the acquisition
of the negative into three stages: Stage I, in which the
subjects' ages ranged from 19 to 29 months, has a
negative applied externally to a sentence nucleus: NEG +
NUC (e.g., 'No play that'). In Stage II, where the ages
ranged from 28 to 38 months, the negative moves inside
the utterance (e.g., 'I no taste that'). The auxiliary
is undeveloped, but 'don't' appears as a variant of 'no'
and 'not'.

In this period, some of the negative utterances
used by the three subjects were declarative sentences in

which 'no' was used for the auxiliary 'do + not', such

75

4.1 I no have picture

4.2 I no got black (black crayon)

4.3 I no . . . I no got sister

4.4 I no like cookie

4.5 He no wan yellow
In these utterances, 'no' is directly preceding the main
verb and there is no tense marker present. Although
'do' is a difficult concept to master, because in Arabic
there is no parallel construction, the three children's
development at this stage is not due to interference,
because it looks like a natural phase of deve10pment as
found in the literature of child first and second
language (Chamut and Butterworth). Also, in Arabic,
verb forms are made negative by the negative particles
'La' and 'ma' (both mean 'not') preceding the verb, but
it is not necessary to have a separate subject pronouns
'I' and 'he' since the form of the verb itself indicates
the subject. For instance, the Arabic equivalents of
examples 4.1, 4.4, and 4.5 above are:

4.1a Ma amlook soora

4.4a La ohib elhalwa

4.5a La youreed asfar
In the first two examples, the pronoun 'ana' (EI) is
omitted, and in example 4.5a the pronoun 'howa' (she) is

also omitted.

76

The subjects also used declarative sentences in

which 'no' was substituted for 'not': for example,

4.6 no blue, blue

4.7 no me

4.8 no mine
Although 'no' does not occur within the utterances, as
in Stage I of child language analysis, the children's
competence is more developed than the first-language
learners. The above utterances only resemble the
surface form of Stage I, and simply the use of 'not'
would have made them correct.

There were also other interesting utterances
produced by Ali and Tarek, such as 'No could the
picture', and 'no could the bus'. The first sentence
means that Ali's classmate could not draw the picture,
and in the second sentence means that Tarek was trying
to describe a picture the teacher displayed of a girl
who could not catch the bus. In these sentences, the
'no' is placed before a nucleus including a verb,
and L

1 2
child language Stage I (Bellugi, Ravem, and Adams),

similar to those examples described in L

except for the use of 'could', which indicates more

develOpment than those of other L and L children.

1 2
During period I, 'no' was used in place of 'don't

for all the imperatives, as in:

77

4.9 No say me!

4.10 No eat it!

4.11 No play no more!

4.12 No look it!
Similar structures were also found in L1 children
during their first stage, whereas 'don't' was observed
in their second stage. In my study, one of the three
children used 'don't' in the imperatives twice only
during this observation period. The use of the personal
pronoun at the end of the above imperatives is a normal
feature of this developmental stage. If Arabic were
causing interference, there would have been no object
pronoun following the verb. Instead, an object marker
suffixed to the stem of the verb indicates the object
pronoun in Arabic. 'No look it' is an interesting
example, as it seems that 'no' was simply added to the
English expression 'look it' commonly used by children.

Double negatives were used during this time, as in

'I no got no black'. There is evidence in the litera—
ture (Chamot, 1973) that this is common among American
school—age children. Also, at the end of this period
there was evidence that the children started to become
familiar with the English auxiliary 'can't'. Some
examples are:

4.13 This book no can't, can't have it

4.14 No can't, can't play Bingo

78

There is a parallel construction to 'can't' in Arabic,
but the negative particle is placed in front of the word
'can', which indicates noninterference. It seems that
at this stage the subjects were, probably, uncertain as
to whether 'can't' is a one-word negative by itself or
not. Thus 'no' and 'can't' were first used and then
corrected by using 'can't' alone.

The observations indicate that Sami, the fourth
child, started at a slower pace and level but at the end
of the time period was even with the other three chil-
dren on some features and further developed on others.
There has been a great evidence in the literature that
there is similarity in the developmental stages of L

1
and L acquisition. The differences are mainly

2
related to the subjects' rate of progress, a factor that
is considered quite significant in the literature.
Therefore, considering the significant difference in
Sami's progress and the fact that he represents 25% of
my data, Sami is dealt with separately.

Sami's negative statements more nearly resembled
those of L1 and L2 Stage I (Bellugi, Adams, and so
on) than did statements of Ali, Adel, and Tarek.
Negatives were formed by simply attaching 'no' to the
utterance. However, unlike a child's Stage I, the 'no'

was used inside and outside the utterance, and most of

his utterances had no verbs. For example, Sami's data

79

showed few declarative sentences in which 'no' was used
for 'do + not', as in:

4.15 No come yet.

4.16 No five. Dis no five.
In the first utterance, Sami used 'no' with a verb that
should have been in past time, 'he didn't come yet'.
Because he had no feature to mark past tense at this
time, this use of the verb 'come' is expected. In 4.16,
Sami was referring to his friend who did not know the
'five cents" picture when displayed by the teacher. He
used 'no' in place of 'doesn't'. There were also a few
other declarative sentences in which the 'no' was used
for 'not', as in:

4.17 That no picture.

4.18 No pint. No this.

4.19 Me no get off.
Unlike the other three subjects, Sami's data did not
show examples of imperatives, double negatives, or any

other negative structures at this time.

Period II (May lZ-June 13, 1986)

During this time, there were some changes in the
three children's knowledge of negation as well as
English in general. They continued to use declarative
utterances with 'no' in place of 'do + not', such as

in:

80

4.20 He no like.

4.21 I no want.

4.22 You no take mine.

4.23 I no got a book.

4.24 No got it.
These sentences are similar to those discussed previ-
ously. The only changes are due to greater familiarity
with pronoun use. The use of 'he' necessitates
'doesn't'. In brief, in these sentences 'no' is used
directly before the main verb with no indication of
tense marker. The data also showed declarative
utterances such as 'no me', 'no red color', and 'dis no
us', with 'no' used for 'not'. 'No' here has been
placed in front of a word without a verb, similar to
what occurred in period I. There were other sentences
where 'no' replaced 'not', as in:

4.25 We no going outside.

4.26 I no gonna play.

4.27 We no ready.
Here the 'no' precedes the verb with the auxiliary
copula deleted. These are similar to utterances by L1
and L2 children in Stage II.

In period II, there was a change in the acquisi-

tion of the imperative form. There was only one example

--'no tell me'--in which 'no' was used before the verb.

In all the other imperatives, 'don't' was correctly

81

placed in the initial position. The three children
started by using 'don't!‘ alone as an imperative:
shortly afterward a verb was added to it. In addition
to the imperatives, there were other instances which
showed that the subjects productive use of 'don't' was
increasing: for example,

4.28 You don't know nothing.

4.29 You don't got any color.

4.30 You don't have any bear.
As previously mentioned, double negatives are common
among American school-age children. The above sentences
are significant, however, because they reveal other
types of English syntactic development. The use of the
indefinite 'any' shows that other areas are developing.
It is difficult to explain why 'color' and 'bear' were
not pluralized. And in Arabic such a construction would
be pluralized, thus indicating no interference. Another
type of double negative, 'that ain't nothing', which is
common among children of this age, was often used by the
three subjects.

In addition to the above discussed types of
sentences, there were several new ones in this period.
For example, the incorrect use of 'not', as in:

4.31 That not red one.
4.32 No, not broken.

4.33 You no playing.

82

4.34 She no reading.
4.35 I no did it.
Example 4.31 is similar to sentences found in L1 and

L studies in Stages II and III. It is not likely

2
that there is interference from Arabic in this sentence
for many reasons. First, the article would not be
deleted in the Arabic construction. Second, the predi-
cate noun 'one' is not used in Arabic. The noun is
usually incorporated into the adjective, where the end-
ing indicates gender. In sentence 4.32, although the
word order parallels the Arabic structure, it is not
certain that Arabic is causing interference. It is
possible that the first language is merely serving as an
aid. In addition, in sentences 4.33, 4.34, and 4.35 the
use of both the past 'did' and the continuous '-ing',
although the c0pula is deleted, reveals a developing
knowledge of English, that could not have come from
Arabic because the structures 'did' and '-ing' do not
exist in Arabic.

In general, the auxiliary system expanded during
this period. The use of 'can' increased and 'could'
began to be used. 'Could' often substituted for 'can',
which makes it clear that the subjects recognized 'can'
as a separate unit. 'Can't' was produced primarily with

'do'.

83

In period II, there was noticeable development in
Sami's knowledge of English. The modals 'can' and
'can't' started to appear in his speech. In addition,
the cepula became a regular part of his sentence con-
struction, and 'not' was produced frequently. There
were no imperative constructions. Declarative sentences
with 'no' in place of 'do + not' or instead of 'not'
were used sometimes with 'no' always inside the
utterance, such as:

4.36 I no have juice.
4.37 You no play.
4.38 You say no eat.

Interestingly, Sami used 'not' mainly in sentences

where the verb 'to be' was required, such as in:

4.39 Not a girl

4.40 She not yellow one?

4.41 Me book not like that.
This construction was used by the other three children
in period III. In addition, Sami used the copula very
frequently in this period, but only with questions and

declaratives. The capula was not used in the negative.

Period III (June 13-July 11, 1986)
For Ali, Adel, and Tarek, during this period, 'no'
continued to be used instead of 'do + not' or 'not' in

declarative utterances but much less frequently. The

84

use of 'don't' increased, primarily in the imperatives,
where it was used alone and sometimes with verbs.
Imperatives with 'no' continued but were used less than
before. The children now started to use 'don't' in many
other language contexts, such as in 'He don't have big
one.‘ In summary, the three Arabic children did not use
'does' or 'doesn't' at all during the study period.
Other L1 and L2 studies showed similar results.
Also, questions such as

4.42 She no like you?

4.43 I can't read yet?
were used. Questions were rarely inverted and the child-
ren were simply placing 'no' before an action verb. The
above examples do not indicate interference from Arabic
because it is not necessary in Arabic to have a separate
object pronoun, since the pronoun suffix attached to the
verb usually indicates the subject.

'Not' was used more frequently during this period.

It was used mainly in utterances where the copula should
be both as a main verb and as an auxiliary verb. For
example,

4.44 I no gonna do black.

4.45 I not playing.

4.46 Oh, he is not playing.

4.47 That not a bear.

85

The children generally made the distinction of placing
'no' in front of a transitive verb and 'not' where 'be'
was required. This is similar to Adams' findings
(1974). As with L1 and L2 learners, the use of

'not' began to increase, although 'no' was used simul-
taneously in utterances of the same period. There is
evidence in the literature that in all language learning
the old form continues while new learning is taking
place.

During the third time period, there was a signifi-
cant development in Sami's syntax. The modals previ-
ously mentioned and the c0pu1a continued to be used
frequently. In addition, 'are', "re', 'me', "s',
'was', "nt', and 'do' began to appear. Sami continued
to substitute 'no' for 'do + not' in declarative
utterances such as 'he no like that' and 'he no play
bingo'. However, there were no declaratives in which
'no' was used for 'not', as well as no imperatives in
this period. There were two double negatives and non-
inverted questions, such as:

4.48 He don't be in the house?

4.49 What he not playing, you see?

4.50 Why he don't come?
In sentence 4.49, Sami substituted 'what' for 'why' and
omitted the capula with 'not'. In sentence 4.50, he

used 'don't' instead of 'doesn't' and did not invert.

86

In addition, Sami continued to distinguish between the
use of 'no' and 'not', although he started to use the
c0pula with 'not' during this period, as in 'this two
are not stronger.‘

In conclusion, for the first period, comparison
between Sami's progress and the other three children is
fruitless, because Sami produced far fewer utterances
than the other three children. Generally, the four
subjects associated 'no' with negation and understood
the intonation associated with negation. During period
II, it was obvious that Sami's English syntax had
progressed significantly and started to parallel that of
Ali, Adel, and Tarek. They all used 'no' in place of
'do' and 'not' in declaratives and imperatives, 'no' in
place of 'not'. Double negatives were only used by Ali,
Adel, and Tarek. The children started to produce 'not'
more frequently. In this period, Sami made the
distinction of using 'not' in constructions where the
copula was required and of using 'no' in others.

During the third period, there was evidence that
the four subjects were progressing rapidly. However,
Ali, Adel, and Tarek used 'no' with greater frequency
than did Sami. They also used 'not' but somehow
confused it with 'no'. In addition, they began to make
the distinction between the use of 'no' and 'not' that

Sami made in the previous period. In summary, it seems

87

that the four children proceeded through the same stages
in acquiring the English negation. However, Sami's data
showed a significantly different order of acquisition as
shown in Table l, which summarizes the basic differences
between Sami and the other three subjects' negation
development during the three periods.

General Development of the

Subjects' Question Patterns
Period I (April ll-May 12, 1986)

During period 1, Ali, Adel, and Tarek's questions
were also similar to analyses of L1 and L2 language
learners (e.g., Bellugi, Adams, and others). However,
their development more closely resembled Stage II of
these analyses because their utterances were longer and
more complex. In this period, the three children asked
questions simply through rising intonation. The word
order was the same as a declarative sentence, and there
was no inversion. Most of the children's questions,
however, were of the yes/no type. For example,

4.51 The girl?
4.52 We go now?
4.53 You know the name?
All the yes/no questions required the modals 'do' or
'did' in the initial position.
In Arabic, a statement may be changed into a

yes/no question or Wh-question simply by beginning with

88

Table l--Differences between Sami and the Other Three
Subjects' Negation Development for Three Periods

 

Period Sami Ali, Adel, and Tarek

 

I: - Resembled stage I of Fitting somewhere between

L and L studies stage I and II
- Meatly hgd no verbs - Mostly had verbs
- No imperatives - Use of imperatives
- No double negatives - Double negative used often

- 'Can't' was not used 'Can't' used

II: - 'Can't' used with and - 'Can't' used primarily
without 'do' with 'do'

- No use of imperatives - Use of imperatives

— No double negatives - Use of double negatives

- Copula used often - Copula omitted often

- 'Not' frequently used, — 'Not' less frequently
and in places where used and omitted where
'to be' required 'to be' is required

III: - Regular use of copula - Copula less regularly used

- Use of copula with - No use of copula with
'not' 'not'

- Did not confuse use - Use of 'no' confused with
of 'no' with 'not' 'not'

- Use of 'do' as a — Use of 'do' as a tense
tense carrier in carrier only in the
different contexts imperative

- No imperatives — Use of imperatives

 

an interrogative particle and keeping the same word
order. There are also particular intonation patterns
associated with questions. In English, questions have a
different word order from statements. In addition,
Arabic has no grammatical element equivalent to 'do' and
'be'. But at the same time, a subject and an object
pronoun are not expressed in the interrogative sentence.

Therefore, at the beginning stage of learning, it is

89

possible to consider the above questions of this kind a
natural stage of the learning process rather than

interference. L and L2 studies show that rules for

1
the auxiliary systems, inversion, and the insertion of
'do' are learned later. They involve more syntactic
knowledge than the child had at this point and, most
importantly, are not needed for communication.
Also, in period I, all questions omitting 'be'

were interrogatives with a Wh-word, as in

4.54 What that?

4.55 What you doing there?

4.56 What you name?

4.57 Where the crayon?

4.58 For what this?
These questions are all similar to the Stage I expres-
sions (Bellugi, et a1.) except for 4.55 and 4.56,
because pronouns would not be used at this stage.
Interestingly, 'What you doing' was the only utterance
in which -ing was attached to a verb during this period
(later, -ing began to be used regularly). This means
that the subjects, at this stage, were repeating a
phrase previously heard, by simply omitting the
auxiliary and inflections which were not yet in their
syntax. It appears that certain phrases needed for
daily survival were learned quickly, with no knowledge

of syntax. Similarly, 'What your name?‘ is also often

90

used and heard in the classroom. Once again, the 'is'
was deleted. The utterance 'for what this?‘ is slightly
different from the above discussed ones. In Arabic, the
preposition is often attached before the question word,
and it seems here the 'for' was attached as if it were
translated. It also could be inverted English
structure.
During this period, there were a few examples of

Wh-questions in Sami's data, such as

4.59 What time?

4.60 What color this?

4.61 What your name?
With these questions the auxiliary, copula and inflec-
tions were left out. Sami also used a few questions
different from the above ones, with declarative order
and with the deletion of the copula, such as 'the
bears?‘ and 'this what color?‘ The second question,
however, could either be caused by interference (this
structure is possible in Arabic) or could simply be
attributed to being a normal stage in development for

all English learners.

Period II (May lZ-June 13, 1986)

 

During this time, the three subjects continued to
use the questions with declarative order similar to
those in period I. The modal 'can' was present in a few

utterances:

91

4.62 You give me paper?

4.63 I can do my name?

4.64 I can go get it?

4.65 I got two minute?

4.66 You want no do it?

4.67 You can do that number?

'Do' was now omitted for Wh-questions: for example,
4.68 What you want to do now?
4.69 Where you get the pencil?

Also,

the copula 'be' was still omitted for Wh-questions

and for yes/no questions in this period:

4.70 What color that?
4.71 What book the?
4.72 What you doing?
4.73 Where he paper?
4.74 This your mother?

It was not the interference that played a factor here,

but the capula was not developed as yet. There is

strong evidence in the literature that for L learners

1
the copula appears late as well.

Sami's syntax significantly developed during this

period. The copula became an integral part of his

speech and he began to use 'can', 'can't', and the

auxiliary 'don't'. 'Do' was still not used. However,

all of Sami's questions in this period were of

declarative word order, such as:

92

4.75 You see the white?

4.76 You got this now?

4.77 This is grandma?

4.78 This is big bear?

4.79 This is a girl?

4.80 You don't see black, white, red?

4.81 You don't see this?
Questions 4.77, 4.78, and 4.79 simply lack the inversion
of 'this' and 'is'. Questions 4.80 and 4.81 lack the
inversion of 'don't' and 'you'. This lack of inversion
is probably caused by nonmastery at this point.

Sami also used the following Wh-questions:

4.82 What she ask?

4.83 You know what is?

4.84 Where the baby?
'Do' was omitted in these questions. It is also inter-
esting that 'is' was not included here, although it was

in the yes/no questions of the same period.

Period III (June 13-July 11, 1986)

 

During this period, questions with declarative
word order were used by Ali, Adel, and Tarek, but now
with modal auxiliaries:

4.85 You wanna go over there?
4.86 You gonna do that?
4.87 You wanna do it?

4.88 I can sit here?

93

4.89 I can't see yet?

4.90 You can do bird for me?
In the first utterances, 'wanna' and 'gonna' are
shortened forms of 'want to' and 'going to'. They are
not considered auxiliaries which could be inverted with
the subjects, but are the pure verbs themselves. There-
fore, they still need an auxiliary. Thus, 'do' is
required before the questions with 'wanna' and 'are'
before the questions with 'gonna', since they function
as progressive verbs.

The latter three questions show that the subjects
still were not inverting. There were also several
Wh-questions not inverted, such as 'Where she was?'.
However, this is another example of nonmastery, and is a

typical error among L learners. Even in Stage III,

1
for example, when Bellugi's children were inverting
yes/no questions, Wh-questions were frequently not
inverted. ‘

Also, in period III, the children were still using
quite a few yes/no questions and Wh-questions with
simply rising intonationl and with no modal or
auxiliary, such as the following questions that require
Ldo':

4.91 You know what color?

4.92 He no like him?

4.93 Now you play?

94

4.94 Why you break?

4.95 How you do it?

4.96 How you know?
In addition, 'be' was omitted in most of the
Wh-questions, which again can only be attributed to
nonmastery. For example:

4.97 What you laugh about?

4.98 How you gonna do?

4.99 Where the red one?

In this period, Sami's data also revealed
questions with declarative word order and with modal
auxiliary, such as:

4.100 I could have this?
4.101 I can put this on?
4.102 You no wanna play?

The first two questions need simple inversion of
the auxiliary and NP. The third needs the 'no' changed
to 'don't' and then placed in the initial position.

There were also questions of declarative word
order and with 'don't', as in:

4.103 He don't be here?

4.104 He don't scare of me?

 

1It should be mentioned here that all questions
require inversions from a strict grammatical viewpoint.
The yes/no questions, however, allow rising intonation
as a question marker, whereas Wh-questions require
inversion.

95

4.105 Why we don't see his grandma in the
picture?

4.106 Why he don't run?
These questions again require simple inversion of
'don't' and the NP. In addition, it seems that Sami was
confusing 'don't' and 'isn't'. For example, in
sentences 4.103 and 4.104 'isn't' would have been the
correct word to use.

He also used yes/no questions with no auxiliary,

such as:

4.107 This goes right here?

4.108 This big boy here?
There were also questions like:

4.109 He's a boy?

4.110 Why he's bigger?

4.111 They're little and he's big?
Question 110 also requires the inversion of 'is' and the
pronoun. It is interesting that at the same time that
Sami was using this kind of question, he was inverting
other questions with 'is'. This means that he was
beginning to be conscious of inversion and that those
questions with 'is' would be the first to be success-
fully transformed. Even in Stage III, where yes/no
questions are inverted, Wh—questions are not yet
inverted according to the studies of Bellugi, Adams, and

others. However, Cancino (1978) found that yes/no

96

questions and Wh-questions were inverted at the same
time.
Sami also used yes/no questions and Wh—questions

with the omission of the auxiliary 'do':

4.112 You know whats a park?

4.113 Where he live?

4.114 What he want?

4.115 Why he look sad?
Most of his questions during this period omitted 'do'.
Toward the end of this period, Sami began to produce
'do' sometimes, so it is possible that given additional
time he would have gained productive control of its use.

There were also other yes/no questions and

Wh-questions in which the auxiliary 'be' was omitted, as
in:

4.116 This one stronger?

4.117 And this his house?

4.118 Why he mad?

4.119 What you drawing?

4.120 Where he going?
It is natural for L1 and L2 learners to go through a
period of flux when they are using a particular syntac-
tic structure. They use it correctly some of the time
and incorrectly other times. (For example, in Bellugi et
al., the children often omitted the copula in questions

where it was used in combination with other verbs.)

97

In brief, although Sami started at a slower pace
and acquired certain syntactic structures in a signifi-
cantly different order. The basic differences between
Sami and the other three subjects' questions development
for the three periods are summarized in Table 2.

Table 2--Differences between Sami and the Other Three
Subjects' Question Development for Three Periods

 

 

Period Sami Ali, Adel, and Tarek

I: - Produce very few - Resembled stage II of L1
questions: not enough and L learners
for comparison in - Use of rising intonation

this period - Omission of 'do' and 'be'
A in yes/no and Wh-questions

II: - Frequent use of copula - Use of copula only at
early in this period end of this period
- Use of 'to be' in - No use of 'to be' in
yes/no questions yes/no questions
- Use of modals 'can't' - No use of modals

and 'don't'

III: - Inversion with yes/no - No inversion with yes/no
questions questions
- Use of 'do' as a - No such use

tense marker in
yes/no questions

- Use of modal 'could' No use of 'could'

 

The four subjects, however, were similar in three
aspects of developing questions:

1. Forming questions in declarative word order with
non-inversion of the verb and NP: probably because the
child has no difficulty in being understood when asking

questions in this way. Therefore, there is no or little

98

functional and communicative pressure to adopt alternate
question structures.

2. Omission of the auxiliary 'be': The children
omitted the c0pula at the early observational stages. Its
use was not consistent until the end of period II, where
the copula became much more frequent and appeared in more
varied contexts than it had before, particularly with Sami
who started using it early in period II.

3. Omission of the auxiliary 'do': It was obvious
that the four children had difficulty with the auxiliary
'do'. Ali, Adel, and Tarek did not use the auxiliary
tense marker form of 'do' at all during the observation
period, although they used it as a transitive verb. They
seemed, however, at the point where subtleties like 'do'
might be developed within a short period. Sami began to
include 'do' as a tense marker at the end of period III.

Similar results were found in other L studies (Huang,

2
Butterworth, and so on).

In summary, the previous discussion reveals that the
four Arabic—speaking children, while acquiring English
negation and questions involving specific aux,
constituents, went through stages similar to those
described in L1 and L2 acquisition studies. In
addition, there was no evidence for marked interference

from the subjects' first language in their English

sentence construction.

99

Acquisition of Specific Grammatical Structures

The Progressive

The progressive form 'V + ing' was the first verb
inflection (other than simple past) that appeared in the
four subjects' data. For Ali, Adel, and Tarek, most
often it was expressed without the copula, although
there were instances where the c0pula was present. For
example, in the third period, utterances with the past
form of the copula -ing were produced, as in 'He was
eating' and 'She was peeking'. Sami also first used the
'-ing' form in period III. Although there is not much
data of this inflection in his speech, it seems that the
copula was present in most of his utterances.

The progressive inflection was also the first verb
inflection to appear in studies such as Brown (1973),
Adams (1974), and Hanania (1974). These studies
indicate that the '-ing' first appeared without the
auxiliary 'be', a finding that agrees with the data in

this study.

Copula

The c0pula was produced in few utterances during
period I. However, its use increased in periods II and
III. Questions were the first type of sentences in
which the capula occurred with consistency. The child-

ren produced 'was' only a few times in each period, and

100

they did not produce 'are' until the second period,
where it was used in a few instances, but increased in
period III. Contractions began to appear in the last
two weeks of the study, such as 'I'm playing' and
'You're welcome'. These results agree with some of the
L1 and L2 studies (Klima & Bellugi, Young, and
Adams).

Unlike Ali, Adel, and Tarek, the c0pula was a
grammatical aspect which Sami seemed to acquire easily.
He even seemed to be more advanced than other L and

l
L learners in this aspect. Sami used the copula

2
occasionally toward the end of period I. In periods II
and III, Sami used it~regularly. However, like the
other three subjects, he was most consistent in using
the capula in questions. Sami also produced contrac-

tions very regularly during period III, where "s' and

"re' were used more than 'is' and 'are'.

Past Tense

 

The irregular verbs were produced first. During
period I, verbs such as 'seed' were used several times,
overgeneralizing the formation of the regular past.
This indicated a growing ability to control the regular
past. However, in the second period most of the past
forms produced were irregular, such as 'found', 'saw',
'forgot', 'got', and 'did'. During the third period,

the past forms used were still primarily irregular ones,

101

and the children added the use of 'said', 'made',
'drew', 'broke', 'went', 'lost', 'done‘, 'ran', and
'won'. Only a few regular past forms were used as well,
like 'missed' and 'listened'. 'Did' was also found in
some of the subjects' utterances. It is important to
note that Sami had not produced regular pasts throughout
the entire study. However, the increasing use of pasts,
although irregular, implies a definite development of
and L studies

1 2

such as Ervin-Tripp, Brown, de Villiers and de Villiers,

the past and its different forms. L

Young, and Hakuta showed that learners first produce
irregular past verbs and later use regular verbs
infrequently. In addition, the four Arabic-speaking
children did not produce future inflections or any
sentences with the auxiliary 'have + en' throughout the

three months of data collection.

Inflections

 

A. Plural I-SI. The subjects began to use the
canonical pluralization rule in period III, where many
regular plural forms were expressed. In addition, the
irregulars 'children', 'feet', and 'teeth' were used.
This agrees with Ervin-Tripp's L1 study.

B. The possessive inflection was not used by Ali,
Adel, and Tarek, although they seemed to understand
possession as a concept. For example, in period III,

with reference to a toy in a picture, the question

102

'Whose toy is it?‘ produced 'It's the girl toy'.
Although the possessive inflection is not realized here,
it is clear that the child understands the possession
being questioned. Furthermore, this is particularly
significant as the Arabic equivalent would have the
reverse order. On the other hand, the possessive form
l-‘sl occurred in Sami's data at the end of the last
observation period. Therefore, it is difficult to know
how consistent he was in its application. Also
Ervin-Tripp's L1 children (2-3 years old) developed

the possessive inflection at the end of the study
period.

C. The third-person singular I-sl appeared only
once in two children's data (Sami and Ali) at the end of
period III. This agrees with L1 studies (Brown and
Bellugi) regarding the development of the same

inflection at a late stage by their subjects.

'Do'

 

This verb was not used at all by Adel, Ali, and
Tarek in the affirmative as a tense carrier during the
three-month study period. It was used, however, as a
transitive verb. 'Don't' began to appear regularly
during the second period. At the end of period II, it
was expressed in imperatives regularly. In addition, 'I
don't know', which is considered in the literature as a

separate lexical unit, was a frequently used idiom.

103

Sami, on the other hand, started to use 'do' in
the affirmative at the very end of the study period. It
was produced many times in the last two weeks in its
past form + negative (e.g., 'I didn't found'). This is
an evidence of his understanding of 'do' and 'past',
although the tense is doubly marked, which was only

observed in L studies of Adams as well as Young.

2
However, like the other three children, 'don't' was much
easier for Sami and it appeared regularly in his speech
during period II. He did not use it in imperatives at

all, but the expression '1 don't know' was used in all

study periods.

'Can' and 'Can't¥

These two syntactic aspects became well estab-
lished in Ali, Adel, and Tarek's lexicon and syntax by
the end of the first observation period. 'Could' was
produced during the first month of observation, but was
found regularly at the beginning of period II. Sami
used 'can' sometimes during the second observation

period, but he used it often during the third period.

'Can't' appeared only twice in his data.

The Subjects' Communicative Strategies

 

The four Arabic-speaking children appeared to
employ certain strategies in learning English as a

second language. These are:

104

l. Repetition and Intonation
On certain occasions, it appeared that the
children repeated what they were saying enough times in
order to communicate. They probably thought that
through repetition they would be understood. Repetition
was sometimes accompanied by a rising intonation. For
example, when Ali was describing a kite in the play-
ground, he said 'go up, up, up, up'. His intonation was
becoming increasingly louder, as if the kite was ascend-
ing through his voice. The repetition of 'up' and the
change in Ali's intonation was an attempt on his behalf
to communicate his thought and to make certain it was
understood. Such methaphoric and simple means of
communication was also observed in other instances where
the subjects repeated their utterances with a lowering
intonation.
Generally, the children produced several types of
repetition patterns. First, those in which the entire
sentence was repeated:
4.121 To get a bike. To get a bike.
4.122 Close your eyes. Close your eyes.
4.123 I know. I know.
4.124 Not you. Not you.

Second, those in which only a part of the phrase was

repeated:

105

4.125 Hey that green. Green.

4.126 He had a red nose. A red nose.

4.127 Look at big kite. Look it.
And third, there were repetition patterns in which the
meaning was excluded by adding words to the initial
phrases, such as:

4.128 Like that. Picture like that.

4.129 You got two. You got two. One red.

One blue.

The repetition strategy was reported particularly
in the studies of Butterworth, Huang, and Hanania.
Others did not mention much about repetition, probably
because it did not occur or was not considered impor-
tant. However, the present study reveals that repeti-
tion is one type of strategy that is used by children in
communication, which indirectly enhanced their language
learning process. They tend to repeat and play with,
the new sounds or words as a natural way to familiarize
themselves with the new language.

2. Gestures

 

The use of physical gestures as a method of
communication was quite frequent. Gestures usually
replaced unknown or unremembered English vocabulary.
For example, one day in the classroom, the teacher was
asking the students what kind of birds they have at

home. Adel looked at me and said, 'I have hamama'

106

(which means 'dove' in Arabic), then he added (with
flying gestures), 'go like that'. Because Adel used the
Arabic word for 'dove', he had to make the flying
gestures for clarification. Also, once the teacher
asked Ali if he was drawing a picture. He said, 'no'
(showing her the crayons) and added (by making painting
gestures with his hands), 'no pink'.

On another occasion, during the third period, I
was showing Tarek a picture of a man with boxing
gloves. When I asked him, 'What does the man have on
his hands?', he replied in Arabic 'Kfouf' (for gloves)
and started making boxing gestures. Other few similar
situations also occurred throughout the study period.

3. Noises

There were also a few instances where noises were
used as a tool of communication, often accompanied by
gestures. One day (toward the end of the study), Sami
and Tarek were talking about cars:

Sami: Do you drive?

Tarek: Yes (laugh: then continued): You go
like that. Go like that! (gestures of
driving) I go (car noise)

Also, on another occasion, the children were asked about
the meanings of the Seven Dwarfs' names (Sleepy, Happy,
Sneezy, Grumpy, and so on) mentioned in the story, Snow

White and the Seven Dwarfs. In their answers, the

 

107

children reverted mostly to noises and gestures for
describing the different names.

4. Simplification

 

Another communication strategy in evidence was the
subjects' use of sentences with simple structure.
Generally, the children's utterances lacked the
inflections, auxiliary constitutents, and many of the
function words characteristic of adult surface
structure. The subjects relied on context to complete
meanings. Verbs mostly appeared as infinitives ('go',
'like', 'know', and 'play'). They were not inflected
for either tense or number. In short, the children's
utterances reflected a process of simplifying and
basically contained content words such as:

4.130 She give flower water.

4.131 He no milkman.

4.132 No, two fish.
This strategy also appeared in many second-language
acquisition studies such as Butterworth, Huang, and
Hanania.

5. Imitation

The children's data also showed a number of
utterances that indicate an entire imitation. Because
of the usefulness of some utterances, regardless of
their complexity, they were learned as whole units

rather than formed by the application of rules. There

108

were quite a few declarative and imperative imitations
that were used by the four subjects throughout the
different periods of the study, such as 'Excuse me',
'wait a minute', 'come on!', 'let's go', 'I gotta go',

and 'get outta here'.

Results of Controlled Production Experiments

 

Elicited Imitation Test

Each subject was given a standardized imitation
test at the end of weeks five, nine, and thirteen of the
study period. The results of each child's tests were
compared with his free speech collected in each month's
period. The description of the tests' results are based
on a pooling of data from the four subjects, with no one
student having examples for every pattern.

Generally, results revealed that the children
modified most of the model sentences in the three imita-
tion tests to agree with their own grammar during that
period of the test. For example, Tarek's free speech
during period I produced negative declarative sentences
in which 'no' was used for 'do not', as in 'Ali no wan
purple'. Similar syntactic structures were also
produced in his imitation test I, as in:

Model Sentence Imitation

 

 

4.133a I don't want an apple. 4.133b I no wan apple.
4.134s I don't know his name. 4.134b I no know Iizl

name.

109

4.135a Mohammed didn't have a 4.135b Mohammed no
bike last year have bike.
Also, paralleling the generally increased use of 'can'
in free speech during period II, Ali, for example,
imitated the same model sentence 'Cats can drink milk',
whereas in period I he omitted 'can' in 'I can see a
cow'.

Interestingly, in period II Sami used the c0pula
in questions and declaratives but not in the negatives,
as previously discussed. Also, in the imitation test of
the same period, he changed the model sentence 'the red
desk is not here and the black desk is here' to 'the red
desk not here and the black desk is here'. For all
subjects, the use of 'don't' was mostly restricted to a
few memorized expressions such as 'I don't know'. The
fact that the subjects did not produce 'don't' in the
imitation tests at the end of periods II and III
provides additional support for the conclusion that they
had virtually no rule-governed productive control over
'do + not'. The following examples demonstrate the
subjects' normal responses.

Model Sentence Imitation

 

 

4.136s I'm not old but I don't 4.136b I no old I no
have any hair hair
4.137a We don't like to buy a 4.137b We no like to

new car every year. car every year.

110

4.138a I don't like Tina and I 4.138b I no like Tina
don't speak to her. I no speak her.
'Does' and 'doesn't' were not used at all during the
study period, and none of the subjects used them in the
imitation tests.

Regarding the yes/no- and the Wh-questions, the
subjects produced sentences similar to their speech
data. They changed the questions into declarative
statements with rising intonation and with the omission
of the auxiliary 'do'. In test I, for example, the
model sentence 'do I like to read books?‘ was imitated
as 'I like read bookf*'. During this last period, 'be'
was still omitted in most Wh-questions of the free
speech data. This was also observed in test III, where
'are', for example, was omitted in 'where are you going
to sit'.

Similarly, yes/no-questions with the models 'can'
and 'can't' were not inverted in the last imitation
test. In addition, the four children were never heard
to produce 'have + en' throughout the whole study
period. They, however, only produced the past
participle of the main verb and omitted the auxiliary
'have' in their imitated sentences. Some examples are:

Model Sentence Imitation

 

 

4.139a Ahmed have lost the 4.139b Ahmed lost the

game. game.

111

4.140a We have gone to the 4.140b We gone to

Mall yesterday. Mall yesterday.

Translation Test

A translation test was administered basically
because there is a slight possibility that in the
imitation test the student could have imitated the model
sentences without comprehension. As explained earlier,
this test was based on Ravem's test (1968) and was given
to the four subjects individually in weeks 5, 9, and 13
of the study. Ravem used the test to compare the
translated utterances with the data obtained from the
children's free speech in order to get an indication of
the validity of prompted utterances of this kind.

The test consisted of forty-eight sentences which
included vocabularies familiar to the subjects. Each
child completed the test in about thirty minutes. The
children were given instructions in Arabic, such as
'Tell your brother that you didn't go to gym today', and
so on. They had to translate these into English state-
ments or questions addressed to a third person. They
were also told to translate exactly the model sentence
said by the researcher in order to have them use a
certain negative, interrogative, or auxiliary form. The

results, therefore, were expected to be related to the

112

children's develOpment of these syntactic aspects, but
many alterations occurred and there was obvious inter-
ference from Arabic. In fact the translation test
turned out to be more of a stimulus for free speech
production than one of rigid control like the elicited
imitation test. However, it was another useful source
of information on the children's English syntactic
development.

The children maintained the Arabic word order in
their translations, which is similar to the findings of
some L2 acquisition studies (Ravem, Butterworth, and
Adams) on translation tests. Such a strong influence of
the native language on the children's translations was
not expected, considering the previous analysis of their
free speech that did not show marked interference from
Arabic. The children's data also revealed that they
sometimes would give an English word which is not a
lexical equivalent of the Arabic word, but a member of
the same semantic category. These two findings
(preservation of Arabic word order in translation and
word substitution based on semantic relationships) were
prevalent in the present study.

Interference from the children's first-language
grammar was obvious in the sentence, 'His family name',

where the Arabic order was kept when Tarek translated it

into English as 'The name of family him'C Similarly,

113

the sentence 'Your mother's name' was translated by Ali
and Adel as 'The name of mother you', and by Sami as
'The name of you mother'. Also, in Arabic the adjective
follows the noun it modifies, which is the reverse order
of English. Ali, Adel, and Tarek produced 'bar choco-
late, book English, and game soccer' on the translation
tests. Sami produced 'English book, bar chocolate, and
game soccer'. These results did not conform with the
children's spontaneous data, which basically did not
contain errors in word order interference from Arabic.
Therefore, the use of the Arabic language stimulus to
facilitate the children's understanding of what they
respond to had a strong influence on the sentences' word
order in translation.

In addition, the Arabic model sentences had
influenced the subjects' translations in other aspects.
There were instances of mixing and word-for-word transla-
tion. There was lexical as well as phonetic mixing.
Lexical mixing occurred when the children kept certain
Arabic words in their English translations, such as
'with whom', 'bicycle', and 'ice cream'. Phonetic
mixing was evident in the children's use of Arabic
pronunciations for 'Shoprite', 'brinciEal,‘ 'tape
recorder', 'brogram', 'efery', 'jym', and so on. Thus,
the Ipl, Ivl, and ldsl, which have no equivalent sounds

in Arabic, were replaced by Ibl, Ifl, and I3I. This

114

type of phonological interference, that is, borrowing
sounds from the Arabic language when constructing the
English constructions, was found in much fewer instances
of spontaneous speech data.

Three subjects also made word-for-word transla—
tions by saying 'all the week' instead of 'every week'.
The copula 'be' presented difficulties for the Arabic-
speaking children during period I of the observations.
The verbs 'got' and 'have' were used instead, because
their equivalents in Arabic function in a few cases
where English would require a form of 'be'. The use of
'be', particularly in questions, increased and became
consistent in the children's speech in periods II and
III. Therefore, during period I the word 'got' was
mainly used in place of 'be' with reference to age.
However, in the translation tests given at weeks 9 and
13, Ali and Adel translated the sentence 'Ask him if he
is six years old and if Ali is seven years' as 'You got
six year and Ali got seven year'. Tarek used 'have'
instead of 'got', and Sami used 'is' then changed to
'got'. Thus, the words 'have' or 'got' were used in
place of 'be', when 'be' was frequently produced in
spontaneous speech. There were also many lexical
substitutions. For example, 'ShOprite' was produced
instead of 'store', 'basketball' was used instead of

'gym', and the word 'game' was changed to 'bingo'.

115

Also, 'wash' was changed to 'put water' and 'couch' was
changed to 'chair'.

The above discussion makes it clear that caution
must be exercised when using data derived from transla-
tion because it reveals interference from the children's
native language which is not normally observed in their
spontaneous speech. However, in addition to the previ-
ous findings, the researcher tried to obtain further
information from translations about the subjects' devel-
Opment of negative, interrogative, and the auxiliary
system. After comparing the children's translations of
the model sentences to their speech data collected in
the study period, it was obvious that there were no
significant differences between the two regarding the
children's deve10pment of English syntax. The following
examples taken from the four subjects will help clarify
this point:

Free Speech Translation

 

 

4.141s I no like cookie. 4.14lb I no like coffee.
4.142s I no got black. 4.142b I no understand name

you family.

4.143a We go now? 4.143b You like ice cream?

4.144a You playing? 4.144b You drinking cola?

4.145a What you doing 4.145b What he doing
there? tonight?

4.146a We no ready. 4.146b You no sell your car.

116

4.147a You don't know 4.147b I don't know name of
nothing. you family.
4.148a You want to do it? 4.148b You clean your car
all the week?
4.149a Where you get the 4.149b Where you go tonight?
pencil?
4.150a He don't have big 4.150b I no sit all the day
car in my chair.
4.151a She no like you? 4.151b You no go Shoprite
tomorrow?
4.152a What he want? 4.152b What you watch on TV

yesterday?

Berko's Morphology Test

An oral version of Berko's morphology test (1958)
was given to the children in the last week of the study
period. Its objective was to trace the children's acqui-
sition of English morphology rules after a few months of
learning the second language. For this purpose, a
number of nonsense words were invented, following the
rules for possible sound combinations in English. If
the test had contained real words, the child might have
been able to give the correct forms. This would not
have indicated that the child had actually internalized

the grammatical rules because he could have memorized

117

the form of the word. If the child had a productive
rule he would generlize and use it when encountering new
words.

The test consists of twenty-seven problems, each
accompanied by an illustrative picture. The items deal
with aspects of English morphology, including inflec-
tional endings (the formation of plural nouns, third~
person singular, singular and plural possessives, the
progressive, past tense, the comparative and superlative
of adjectives, and the diminutive), and word derivations
and compounds. The researcher would give several sen—
tences and the child would solve the presented problem
by providing the appropriate modification.

The researcher gave an example of how the subjects
were expected to respond to the test items because some
did not seem to understand the task. She also found it
necessary to comment on the imaginative animals and
various pictures to hold the children's interest. The
child, for example, was shown a picture of an imagina-
tive animal and then a picture of two of them. The
researcher would say, 'This is a gutch. Now there is
another one. There are two of them. There are two

'. The child was required to give the plural of

 

'gutch'. If he had internalized the grammatical rule
for forming English plurals, he would be able to add the

allomorph lazl and say 'gutches'.

118

Except for 'ring' and 'melt', there were two
possible answers for the past tense formation for all of
the English examples given ('bing', 'gling', 'spow',
'mot', and 'bod'). Generally, the answers were as in
'rick', for example, either 'ricked' or 'was ricking'.
In the case of the past tense of 'ring' there were three
possible answers: 'rang', 'was ringing', and 'ringed'.
None of the children responded with the first two
choices, but Ali and Tarek said 'ringed'. Although this
form is not acceptable in terms of an adult's grammar,
it indicates that the children are aware of the forma-
tion of the regular past. 'Melted' was the only
possible answer to the question, 'What happened to the
ice?‘ because the picture showed a puddle of water, the
result of melting. None of the four subjects responded
with the correct past tense of 'melt', although Ali
supplied the correct past tense of the parallel nonsense
verb 'mot'.

Similar results appeared with the allomorph l-bzl,
which is added to a word ending in a sibilant to form
the plural of a noun, the possessive, or the third-
person singular. For example, Tarek produced the
correct plural of 'gutch' ('gutches') but failed to give
the plural of the other cases requiring the addition of
I-bzl. Ali and Adel supplied the correct plural of

'kazh' but could not provide the other l-le endings.

119

Sami was the only child who responded appropriately to
most of the items such as 'loodges', 'nazzes', glasses',
and 'tasses'. However, he did not give the expected
plural of 'gutch' or 'kazh'.

Although the same inflections are added for plural-
ization, third-person singular, and the possessive, it
is obvious that the children acquire its use for the
plural before the possessive. For example, three
children (Ali, Tarek, and Sami) formed the plural of
'wug' correctly by adding I-zl, but only Sami added the
morpheme to 'wug' to form the singular possessive. On
the other hand, the test showed that the four children
were more able to form the plural possessive than the
singular. These results, however, could not be reliable
because the subjects were given the plural form of the
nouns, which happened to be the same as the plural
possessives ('wugs" and 'biks"). It is more likely
that the children imitated the researcher, since nothing
is added to a plural noun.

The morphology test also showed that the Arabic-
speaking children have not internalized the rules for
derivation and compounding. When they were asked what
they would call a tiny 'wug', only Sami supplied or
derived the correct diminutive 'wuggie'. Ali, Adel, and
Tarek responded with 'baby wug' and 'little wug'. How-

ever, none of the four children produced the compound

120

'wughouse' in response to the question, 'What would you
call a house that a wug lives in?'. In the picture, the
'wug's' house is located on the mountainside, therefore
Tarek and Sami's answer 'mountain-house' is considered
an acceptable noun compound. Ali also gave the sensible
answer, 'his house'. In addition, neither the subjects
of Berko's study nor the Arabic children could derive
the adjective 'quirky' from the noun 'quirk'. Only Sami
said that a dog with 'quirks' on him was a 'quirk dog'.
Adjectival inflections such as 'quirkier' and
'quirkiest' also seem to develop later. For example,
the comparative 'quirkier' was not produced by any of
the children. And only 1.2% of Berko's subjects could
supply it. Similarly, neither in Berko's study nor in
the present one did the subjects give the superlative
form 'quirkiest' without the researcher first giving
them the comparative. However, in this study, when the
researcher first told the children the comparative form,
Tarek was able to answer with the superlative. Sami
said, 'The most quirky', which means that at the time,
he had only one rule in his grammar for the formation of
the superlative: 'the most' + adjective, since in adult
grammar two-syllable adjectives or adverbs which do not
end in l-yl or l-lyl keep their original form and are

preceded by 'the most'.

121

In brief, Berko's morphology test showed that
Arabic-speaking children learn the allomorphs l-zl and
I—sl before they learn I-izl, and that they acquire the
past tense allomorphs l-dl and l-tl before I-edl..
Adjectival inflections, derivatives, and compounds also
seem to appear later. These findings agree with the
analysis of the acquisition of the same allomorphs in
and L studies (Berko, Ervin, Adams,

1 2
Heckler, and so on). It is important to note that there

some L

is evidence that the same grammatical rules seem to be
internalized earlier in both first- and second-language
acquisition. Percentages of the Arabic children's

correct answers are present in Table 3 and are compared

with those from Berko's subjects.

122

Table 3--Percentage of Correct Answers on the Berko Test

 

 

 

 

Inflectional Arabic K and Berko's
Items Allomorph lst-Graders lst-Graders
Plural
glasses I-azl 25 99
wugs I-zl 75 97
luns l-zl 75 92
tors |-z| 50 90
heafs I-sl or I—vzl 50 80
cras l-zl 25 80
lasses l-azl 25 39
gutches l-azl 25 38
kazhes l-azl 50 36
nizzes I-azl 0 33
Progressive
zibbing I—igl 100 33
Past Tense
binged -d| so 85
glinged -d| 25 85
ricked -t| 25 73
melted —ad| 0 31
spowed -d| 0 59
morted -ad| 25 33
bodded {-BdI O 31
rang lael <- |i| 0 25
Third Singular
loodges l-azl 25 56
nazzes I-azl 25 29
Possessive
wug's -z| 25 81
bik's -s| 50 95
niz's -az| 25 46
wugs' -8I 100 99
biks' —8| 100 82
Adjectival Inflections
quirkier |- r| 0 1.2
quirkiest I- stl 25 35
Derivation and Compounding
zibber or zibman 25 16
wuggie or wuglet 25 0
wughouse 0 18

quirky dog 0 0

 

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

This study was carried out to ascertain and
describe the process of second-language acquisition in
kindergarten and first-grade classrooms, where no formal
English instruction took place. In these two
classrooms, four children whose native language is
Arabic were observed for five weeks. Observations
continued out of school for an additional eight weeks.

The study also investigates the degree to which
Arabic children at the age of six and seven could learn
English as a second language simply through exposure.
Three areas of English syntax were analyzed in depth.
These were: negation and question formation involving
particular auxiliary constituents, and the acquisition
of morphological rules. Data were gathered through
recording of the children's spontaneous speech and
through the use of three standardized tests: elicited
imitation test, translation test, and Berko's morphology
test. In addition, other aspects of language communica-
tion were discussed, as they seemed to provide a clear

123

124

picture of second-language learning. These pertained to
the children's communicative strategies and the ways
with which they compensate for language deficiencies.

A number of conclusions have been drawn from the
present study. These conclusions are summarized below:

1. One of the most significant results is the
similarity of the pattern of development between natural
acquisition of English as a second language by an Arabic
child and first-language acquisition.

2. Also there is a distinct similarity between
the develOpmental stages of an Arabic child's acquisi-
tion and those found in other L2 studies.

3. There is no evidence for a marked interference
from the children's first language in their English
sentence construction. However, there have been a few
cases where the use of certain structures could be attri-
buted either to normal acquisition or to interference.

4. The general trend of the four children
regarding the developmental stages in the three-month
period are:

A. In negation:
a. Use of 'no' in negation
b. Use of double negatives
c. Omission of the aux copula
d. Use of 'not' mainly in sentences

where the verb 'be' is required

125

e. Use of 'do' as a tense carrier
mainly in imperatives
B. In questions:
a. Use of rising intonation and
declarative word order
b. Lack of inversion
c. Non-use of tense marker 'do'
d. Omission of auxiliary 'be'
e. Use of cOpula in period III
C. In specific syntactic structures:
a. The progressive inflection
'V + ing' appeared first without
the c0pula and then was produced
with the copula in period III
b. The use of copula increased,
mainly in questions, in periods
II and III
c. Regarding the past tense:
i. Irregular verbs were produced
first and frequently
ii. The formation of the regular
past was overgeneralized
iii. Regular past forms were

seldom produced

126

d. Future inflection as well as
verb + en forms were not

produced at all

e. Plural I-sl began to be used in
period III

f. Possessive ['5] did not appear
at all

g. Third-person singular l-sl
appeared only at the end of
period III
h. 'Do' was mainly used as a
transitive verb and not as a
tense carrier in the affirmative
i. 'Can', 'can't', and 'could'
started to be produced at the
end of the first observation
period
5. Sami (one of the four children, or 25% of the
data) showed similar develOpmental stages to those
mentioned in No. 4 above, but significantly different
results regarding the rate of progress. Generally, he
started at a much slower pace, then ended up even with
the other three subjects in some syntactic features and

further developed in others, as discussed in Chapter IV.

127

6. The four children used the following communica-
tive strategies in the process of English language
acquisition:
A. Repetition and intonation
B. Gestures
C. Noises
D. Simplification
E. Imitation
7. Three standardized tests have been
administered. These tests were:
A. Elicited Imitation test. The results
revealed that the subjects modified
most of the model sentences in the
three imitation tests to agree with
their own grammar during that period
of test.
8. Translation test
a. Revealed interference from the
children's native language
which was not normally observed
in their spontaneous speech

b. The test was another important and
useful source of information on
the children's syntactic

development

128

C. Berko's morphology test

a. It showed that Arabic children
acquire certain syntactic
allomorphs in a way similar to
most L1 and L2 learners

b. The subjects learned the allo-
morphs l-zl and I-sl before
they learned I-izl and the past

tense allomorphs I-dI and l—tl

before |~ed|

 

Recommendations for Further Study

The present research has provided general
information regarding how Arabic children may go about
acquiring English as a second language in a natural
environment. It was an observational study that
considered the stages of language acquisition, the rate
of children's progress, and the variation in the
subjects' data. Interesting and significant results
were obtained. These results, however, cannot be
generalized, considering the effects of different
variables involved in such a study. In order to come up
with more definitive conclusions, this study could be
extended into several directions that are suggested

below for future study:

129

l. A longer observational period is necessary to
cover a larger span of development.

2. This study can be replicated with other Arabic
subjects to substantiate the present findings.

3. It would be useful to select a wider range of
children's ages to study the age effect on the data.

4. The study may also be extended to Arabic
adults with different educational backgrounds. The

subjects of the present study did not have formal

 

training in Arabic grammar, and the question arises as I
to whether this factor may have had an effect on their
approach to learning English.

5. The classroom in which formal English instruc-
tion is given should be observed simultaneously.

6. Human factors such as intelligence, intro-
version, gender difference, and others could also be
considered in further studies.

7; Exact school regulations should be ascertained
before the study begins, and an effort be made to
involve and raise the school administration's interest
in the project. In this way, the researcher would be
able to engage in a greater number of aspects of the
study.

It is hoped that the present study will encourage

further fruitful investigtions in this area.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

Data obtained from Tarek's free

period April 11 - July 11, 1986.

April

11, 1986

 

April

Me no draw.
That no Ali.
Is red.
Brown.

I got one cat.

14: 1986

 

No, no pink.

I don know.

No, he no milkman.

I got blue.

purple.

look at the book.

I no can see the family.
No, two fish.

What that.

I no like fish.

130

speech

in the

131

No, fish.

eat (an answer to: “What's she doing?")

I got five (an answer to: ”How old are you?")
No me.

Yes, mine I blue.

No, black.

Get a pencil.

That, blue.

April 18, 1986

 

 

Yellow (an answer to: 'What color is that?')
Red. Orange. Oh, yellow, no color.

Black.

No.

This dress.

That cat.

That my balloon.

The girl like cookie.

This blue dress.

April 21, 1986
I know. From the school.
That one?
What color?
Not here.

No come yet?

132

April 25, 1986

 

Ali eat cookie.

I eating cookie.

Look at this two flower.

This kite high.

He sweating, he is so hot.

The boy ran after (for chase) the dog.

This one have no water.

He throw and catch. Boy is got it.

He steal. (a response to a picture that displays a
man with big bags of money)

Boy can swim.

That his dog.

The boy play with balloon.

The boy ate ice cream.

No, he cry.

That, that girl.

Many many lion.

Thats . . . color red.

That lion and lion and lion (for three lions)

We go now?

I know I do it.

Look at the dog.

I know. I know. Not you. Not you.

That they teacher.

She's thirsty.

133

The Christmas?

Oh, she sitting on the desk.

Hey, you, you, gimme two.

You have the boy jumping?

I have two surprise for Annahita.

I got a surprise him (for her).

April 281 1986

 

A little boy (an answer to: “Who's this?')
Dog. The house (an answer to: ”Where's the dog?')
To the house

Bike? Bike?

See the little girl room. Little girl.
Yeah, what lshel time?

Look at my flower.

This no flower.

My friend come to me today.

I know all of my friend.

I boy head. You buy (coloring his picture)
I got blue.

All a blue.

Yes. I finish.

May 2: 1986

 

This one big.

Today story?

134

He just wait to me.

He say you like some cookie.

I can see it . . . big. (describing a big picture)

I know what now.

That fly.

That a bird.

I don know. There no bus.

No, I cry. (for he cries)

Wanna go first.

Can't go.

Bus come and no can't got it.

I don know who talk a policeman.

Not like they.

Look it. I know it.

No this.

Talk. I know do it.

Go like that . . . oh, like that. Leave it!

No English. That's no English (refers to a boy
that doesn't speak English).

One book.

That girl. She cry.

Look it. The she cry.

One pig. Two pig. Too many pig.

We go now?

 

135

May 5, 1986
Whats this?
This what color?
No, this blue. What color this?
Orange, no. This yellow?
Yeh, this is orange. And this one?
Pretty?
This one?
The bus to school.
No this. I do it.
I found it. I got it.
In house (an answer to: 'Where did the dog live?')
No, no do no move.
K know that one. I got it here.
No say me. (Don't tell me!)
What you doing?

I win John. Go on. I beat you John.

May 9, 1986
Look, this is brown. Yellow, green and red.
No . . . no crayon.
This . . . milk (for cow)
Sleeping (an answer to: ”What's he doing?”)
Good morning. What time?
What your name?

That's baby?

 

136

No me. Red no more.

I want more star. I not got two star.
one star - like that.

I don have my birthday.

I no got sister.

Two. I got two brother.

I don know how to write the name.

Yesterday I go to the swing.

Go like that . . . (makes gestures for

go like this.

May 12, 1986

 

No talk in this.

This is the animal.

I got this animal.

No, not like that.

No, this animal.

Why he have it right there?

No, no black.

No, is red.

Two picture.

Time to leave?

Leave me my pencil. No take it.
I can write now.

He no wanna write. You wanna see?

I write. I write now.

Look. I got

swinging) I

. T

 

137

You see that red? (points to a picture)

What you doing?

May 16, 1986

You no take it. That put in here.

Not girl. A boy. (an answer to: "Is this a little
girl?')

No. Is an apple. (an answer to: ”Is this an
orange?') This is an apple.

Ah, you see is a carrot.

You go get it the yellow one. (To his friend)

On the chair. On the big chair (an answer to:
“Where's he sitting?')

With two boys (an answer to: “Where's he?')

Go like that . . . (gestures)

You like? No. No. This is big.

Snowman? This is big snowman.

That?

I wanna go play.

Tina no playing.

Ali want crayon. He can't get crayon.

He no can't draw.

I wanna make that.

What that?

Oh, can't get paper. Can no, can't get paper.

Look it Mohammad.

138

Like that. Picture like that (makes gestures while
describing picture of a girl)

Let me see. No look it.

The pencil. It broken.

No, not that pencil.

I no got that a dog. I no dog now. I no got.

You got two. One red. One blue.

He wanna no give me the crayon.

I can do that. I know do. I know do flower. Look

it. I know do one. I wanna draw it.

 

May 19, 1986

 

Working (an answer to: 'What are they doing?')

Sit down. (an answer to: “What's he doing?')

Yes. He hungry. (an answer to "What's he eating?')

Run . . . catch butterfly. I can't see the
butterfly.

I found two crayon.

Grandma. Birthday. (an answer to: ”What's this
story about?')

Pencil. I want pencil.

Draw the picture. I want paper. (an answer to:

'What are you doing?')

May 23, 1986

 

No me. No tell me.

139

That mine. That Ali. That Anna. (an answer to:
'Whose paper is this?')

He drawing.

He draw picture.

I like draw that. That blue, red, white.

I don wanna draw that.

I don know. I don know house.

That not mine.

I got a hurt.

I go over here. (I will . . .)

 

Put my name. I can't do it. I don know nothing.

He say. He say. What he say that?

You see red? (describing the girl's red dress in
the picture)

Put water on the flower (an answer to: “What's she
doing?')

She no happy.

Tree. She like tree. (an answer to: “Where's
she?')

Where the mother?

I don see the mother.

May 26 I 1986
I no have dinner.
I don no have it. I don no have it now.

You have for Ramadan (asking his friend if he got

140

a present for Ramadan, which is a holy
Islamic month and feast)

I don like play now.

No, not my story. (an answer to: 'Is this your
story?')

I don wanna go outside.

Oh, it raining! I wanna go outside.

No, my coat this. (an answer to: 'Is this your
coat?')

I know do the car.

 

Look it. Now go like that (car noise)

Not my car. (for my car is not like that)

I got yellow. I got three orange.

What color that?

I finish. Now, I go do another picture. I go do
this picture.

You color no my picture.

No, hair black. (describes a girl's hair)

Mom! No put down mine.

Look it. That nice. Do it again?

No, not here. You do it like that (points to his

picture)

May 30, 1986
I got this bike!

I have this bike.

141

He no have a nothing bike.

Let me see it.

I got bigger (refers to his brother's bike)

I have a one friend. He have a that yellow. Yellow
bike.

You can do tape recorder (you can play . . . )

I can do it.

I can't do it.

You know what that (points to a big tree)

 

We got that in my house in Egypt.

 

You wanna try this?

The car in school.

Look this. Flower come from the tree.

Hurt. Fell down (an answer to: 'What happened to
your foot?')

I got two. I got two.

June 2, 1986
I never see like that lion. That big.
I haven't like that.
C'mon, Open up. Open it.
I know what is it. Chocolate.
Eat. No me.
Ali, that your? (asks about a book)
I go get three crayon. I paint it. I know.

I can play now.

142

Ali. Go away!

I like that. You need me? You got some mine
(refers to his pencils)

I draw it. I finish. Is a dog. A baby dog.

Me first. Look it. Look it.

Me do that, do that one.

I do it. One minute. One minute (I'll do . . .)

I could do it two times. I do it two times.

I know read that one. I gonna read it.

I could do it. A minute.

June 6, 1986

 

You making a pig.

He draw. I know. I know whats that.

This is for me. Because he need this.

This ain't nothing.

That's difficult for draw.

No, no the picture of dog is this one.

I could do this?

I could take this?

You hurt my finger.

Where I gonna sit?

I wanna play with that. I wanna do it. I wanna do
it.

She fell down!

She crying! She cry!

 

143

Play (an answer by: "After I leave what you wanna
do?')

No, six night (for I wanna play until six at
night).

They playing, singing.

That you book?

June 9, 1986
Can I make my brother picture? ( . . . brother's
picture)
Here's you picture.
I tell you the story?
It's here. The story is here.
I can do my brother picture . . . my picture.
I gonna tell you about my mother.
I wanna show you picture.
This is a beautiful picture. Look!
I play football.
You playing too fast! (To his brother)
That a ball. That go in here. Look it.
Mohammad. StOp hitting me!
I can't catch the ball. Come on. Not fast!
I can get it very fast.
You have one at your house?
You know what that? (shows an insect)

No, I no play any more.

144

No, no me. That too fast for me.

I do that one. I gonna do that one. OK?

Three bird! What that? That one?

I got it. Look it. Two butterflies (repeats after
his American friend). I like butterfly. I
got it now. I gonna get that big one.

Time to go. (repeats after the investigator)

June 13, 1986

You wanna do this one or that? (refers to two

 

books)

She sit and play the swings (describes a picture).

This one bigger?

This two are not.

Those are not bigger.

Oh no . . . they're not big (describes a picture
of three cats).

Why the girl is in the garden? To get flower.

Whose this?

But why . . . mother is not in the house (still
talking about the story's pictures).

She swing fast!

Let's see this one.

I no want that.

My mother don't be here (won't).

145

Do it like that. Draw it like that. Those things
go like that (gestures).

He can have this (to his brother).

No, not can have this.

He can come over here and play with me.

Where she go?

She goes there?

Why she go?

I going now. What you eating?

Want to help you? (asks a friend if he needs help

in collecting his toys)
I go get coke?
You coke? (You want coke?)

Now we playing game? What game?

June 16, 1986

He don't play with me no more.

He play with him a lot.

You have 3 ball. Gimme one. Better than the bike.

'Let me show this word. Can you keep my book. I'm
leaving.

You know that story?

He don't know it. That story. He know nothing.
You know the story? OK, you know this
game? Like that? You know what that game?

No, know it.

146

I'm not gonna play with you. I no want. I want
that one. What you doing? That ain't no big
ball. That you Souheila?

My brother, he fell . . .

No, not that game not again.

Oh, I like that. Flower and flower.

You don't got any flower?

I got this white.

I can give you flower. What color?

June 20: 1986

 

What's that?

You no want to go ShOprite?

I don't want. No, I don want any cookie.

I can make one.

He go to his house today? (asks about his friend
who's not in the playground yet)

Can I have cookie now?

That car . . . I gonna buy a car.

What that? There something yellow.

He got bike. Blue bike.

We going to shopping?

No, that no good. That stealing. (talks to his
brother)

OK. I can play this. No you, no play like that. I

gonna kick you. I won this game! I won! I

June 23, 1986 F

147

won! We gonna get him!
I no wan be your friend. No, we no play. We gonna
go softball. All the boys here?

I give you two cookies.

 

I can do that. Mohammad, what you doing here?
That my ball. You know his sister? Him. Do

his picture. That his sister. That his. I

 

know her.

I is here. I gonna do it again Miss Sabra. No
again. I can do flower again. I wanna play
hopping.

I go that way and that way. I go like this and
like that (gestures)

I can hOp no more. I haven't nothing like that. He
got my book.

What she say there? What say there?

That's a big big fly.

Yeah, I know how to make my brother picture.

My brother Mustafa. The same name my friend in
Cairo.

I get chocolate (I want)

Today. I go to the playground.

Look, what he making.

Look at my father car.

148

I know how to drive it.

You wanna play.

That your teddy bear.

He be mine (in my team).

I gonna play right here.

Look out the kite. Let take that to Miss
Souheila. Let give that to her.

Gimme my cookie, you no want it.

You know what he tell me.

That your kite.

June 27, 1986

(Counting candies). I wan it. My brother get
four. I got five. Wait. I get four.
Everybody get four. You got five. No, I got
four.

No, I make a tree . . . you make a horse. (draw)

I don wanna play now.

Look, Ali make this? Is a horse?

How you know? How come my book?

I did a tree. No say me. That too hard.

Naughty, what naughty?

That mine. Who got it? You?

You know what color? Blue. I gonna do it blue or
red.

Who gonna gimme my red. Who gonna gimme . . .

149

I can't have this. I can't have.

How you make this?

I not gonna do it orange.

Oh, no not that. You know what? I need purple.

You draw your picture. I draw my picture. You
dumb! I finish. What to put the colors F.
(where).

My . . . again. Wait a minute. You got two

pictures. You want two more?

 

What you look for? L.
What you laugh about? w
How you gonna make this?

He say pen.

The boy fall the swing.

I could do this.

I got that butterfly. I got a big one my friend.

I go show you. Right over there.

No there. That too big.

I can't believe it. That too big.

Don't tell me no. Playing. Now my turn. You can't
play. Let's play. He can't play. The boy
want to go to the swing. He going to swing.

The bus go!

Why they are here? What for?

150

June 30, 1986

I got clock . . . like that (looking at his watch)

Mine is not the Seiko.

Know my little brother? You know my brother? (To
his friend) How you know?

Whats he play here?

What he read?

He is a boy? Why he put that? (He refers to a
picture of a boy wearing mask)

Where his brother?

He brother don play.

And this his bike? What he get this? Why we
don't go to the swing?

You know, he say a bad word. I know whats that
word in Arabic.

What she get in the purse?

He look sad. He look mad.

July 4, 1986

I think he's hiding (repeats after researcher)

I help him. But why he look mad? Look his, his
face (points to his friend's face). Like
crazy, like this (gestures).

There his bike?

That little boy got a bike (refers to a picture)

Look his hands. Why his hands go yellow? (refers

 

 

 

x!)

.1

O

151

to a lion picture). He close his eyes.

The other heads don't look this. Because they're
not lions.

This like a bird. But this big. All are bigger.
I don scare of him. He don scare. But the
boys are scare.

He no have a ball (refers to Ali).

He is on the swing.

July 7, 1986

Can you draw it for me?

Whose is this on?

He don wanna play someplace to school?

Miss Souheila want me. She need me.

What were you doing?

Reading some stories.

I got one back home (book).

Who is it? I can make his picture. What have here?

My brother say me to go like that (swings). Then
I get tired. He told me to go like that.
Higher. He don know nothing. Wan me to
swing with him? Look how he higher. He go
more higher. Look how higher he is. I'm
going more higher. I'm the same higher
now. I not get off now. I no have to get
off.

I don wan nobody to push me.

152

I didn't did that. He did.

I know how to make a kite.

There ain't a big fly like that. This is a big,
big fly.

What you say?

Why she have to be like that. She swings over
there. How do she swing like that. This

ain't the same fly.

July 11, 1986

 

 

Where his bike?

Wait, I can ride (with you . . .)

We already see it. The bike goes sh ... sh ... sh
and I run so fast.

You know whats a zoo? You know where . . . where
lions and all that and all monkeys.

Lion have big hands.

No, not those who have these things. No those
things. Not those kind . . . (describes
picture of elephants).

What do you need those? What that? In the
playground is that one? The bike is this
one? (points to the playground).

Can I use this paper? On this one the yellow
are. I forget it was the elephant.

Here the bike. Who he the bike (whose bike is

this?)

153

Why he look like the monster. The monster? (makes
fun of his brother's drawing).

He have this big ball and he throw it over there.

Why he don't play? Are you going to the shOp?
Where he going?

Why he's mad? Mustafa? Yeh.

You know the word wolf? I know the word wolf.

The wolf in the bed (refers to the story of
"Little Red Riding Hood"). His nose is
bigger. His nose is bigger.

What he not doing nothing. (an answer to: "What's
he doing?')

He have a big nose, and big eyes, and big arms.

No, I didn't take nothing.

No, me stronger than the wolf. No, me bigger than
the wolf.

Who . . . where Mustafa? He cry?

Let turn the page. Let see how to her house (how
she will get to her house).

Wolf like a granma. Yeh, like a granma.

I don know (an answer to: "Where are the men?').
Now your turn (to this brother). No, you
finish?

Whats that thing. The name. The name. That. Look
it. One stick. Two sticks. Four sticks in a

hand (refers to a picture in the story). And

 

154

two feet. And mans feet. That who got big
ears? I know who he is. He is a wolf.

The girl, the granma, and the wolf (an answer to:
”Who was in the story?').

You know, you know nothing (speaking to his

friend).

155

APPENDIX B
Elicited Imitation Tests

Test I
I showed you the book.
I am very tall.
It goes in a big box.
Read the book.
I can see a cow.
I will not do that again.
I do not want an apple.
Do I like to read books?
Is it a car?
Where does it go?
Where shall I go?
He said that I am too old.
They played with big yellow balls.
Ahmad wants to riding the bus.
Muna and Ahmad went to Shoprite.
The boy who running fell down.
Ali wants to play in the yard.

Ahmad could have lost the game.

156

Two of the boys rode their bicycles.
Mine old green coat has holes.

Not Tina but Ali speaks English.

Seven of the cars were bought.

The teacher who teaches English is sick.
Mother, father and ate dinner.

Mohammad did not have a bike last year.
Mrs. Smith but Sally is from Panama.
How hot is it today?

We have gone to the mall yesterday.
What kind of exercises did you do?

What did you do in gym?

I don't know his name?

Who speaks to you here?

What does Mrs. Smith teach?

Do you play bingo with Ali?

How many times did Ali win?

Can Ali beat you in bingo?

He is your brother and your friend.
What time do you go home today?

Do you have a lot of homework to do?
Do you speak English with your mother?
Will you go to Meijer's this afternoon?
Is it sunny outside?

What is she doing?

What TV channel do you watch?

157

How many hours do you watch TV every day?
Do you watch cartoons?

She has one toy?

Is your sister's toy big?

I like to play in the yard.

I always play on Saturdays.

Can you ride your bicycle?

She played with me in the yard.

Do you know where Ali is?

Test II
(Michigan has many lakes.
Cats can drink milk.
The big boy is eating some ice cream.
Ali who cried came to my party.
The boy is eating and singing.
There are the red bicycles.
The students at school can play games.
The story the boys read is very sad.
Where, where are you from?
How do you say this in English?
Michigan is very good in baseball.
Tomorrow there will not be any English classes.
The store the man bought is in East Lansing.
The red desk is not here and the black desk is

here.

 

 

158

Ahmad likes big girls and Ali likes Chicago.

The chair is white. The pencil is white.

The red desk and the black desk are in the
classroom.

Mrs. Smith eats at McDonald's and Tina eats at the
Taco Bell.

The pencil and some paper are on the desk.

The yellow chairs and yellow pencils are at the
school.

There is a big dog, and there are five students
from Saudi Arabia.

I gotta go and the red bicycle is in the room.

The bird ate the bread and the ice cream.

The bicycle is red and white and is new.

The boy rode the bicycle, played chess, and spoke
English.

Cairo has many peOple, and it is the capital of
EQYPt .

The boy and his friends are eating, singing, and
swimming.

The game the boys are playing is bingo.

When is your birthday? Where are you from?

Ahmad, who is from Egypt, is a student at school.

He knows how to speak English, but does he read it?

The girl in the little red dress sat on the chair.

The teachers are in the office and are eating

chocolate.

 

 

159

Three of his friends are very nice.

You have too much ice cream to eat.

I'm not old, but I don't have any hair.

He eats eggs, chicken, bread, milk, ice cream.

All my friends are studying today, and they're
busy.

The boy who playing fell down.

The school has many big classrooms.

Ten of the cars were bought.

The student has a pencil, but can he write?

The girl asked the boy what he was doing?

The game will be in school, but I won't go there.

She asked me to close the door, window and box.

Tomorrow morning they will give him the big yellow
balls.

The houses are green, white, red, yellow, blue.

Michigan is colder than Egypt but is smaller.

The book the boy is reading is very good.

Test III
Who is Ali and where is he from?
The book is on the chair, the chair is in the
room.
He knows how to play chess. But can he beat Ali?
The children are sitting in the classroom making

their toys.

 

 

160

Two of my friends, one of my teachers, and my
mother speak Arabic.

He likes to ride bicycles very much.

What time will he give me mine book?

I don't like Tina and I don't speak to her.

He is riding, singing, talking, drawing today.

If I write a letter, do you want to read it?

The girl who talking didn't see me.

Five of the books on the desk I bought.

The people in Cairo speak Arabic and are very
intelligent.

Tomorrow at 9 o'clock I don't have a class.

The boy has a bicycle, but can he ride it?

Yesterday he Opened the door when she closed the
window.

The girl told the boy that she didn't understand
him.

Tomorrow I'm going to go to Detroit, and I'm
coming back Thursday.

She asked the teacher to tell me where to go.

Last week the big yellow balls were given to me.

I don't watch TV when I'm studying.

Don't you know when you went to Detroit?

You didn't understand me but don't go home now.

Do they go to school on the bus everyday?

Are you sitting in your chair now?

7

161

We don‘t ride our bicycles to school when it's
raining.

They are walking, talking, riding, singing.

Don't you think that I'm going to go to Egypt?

He doesn't like to watch wrestling on Friday
night.

Didn't they tell you to go home on the bus?

.. .....ieq

Can I go to play with my friends?

I like to swim, ride my bicycle, watch TV.

 

When are you going to visit your friend?

Does he look like a student, a teacher, or a
doctor?

Why don't they talk to Mr. Smith if they want to
go?

Now he's walking to the playground with his dog.

We don't like to buy a new car every year.

How much milk do you drink every week?

Did they play with him before I came back?

Which country makes the best cars, Japan or
Germany?

They're going to go shopping at 5 o'clock.

Am I drinking your coffee and eating your eggs?

How are you going to go to Saudi Arabia?

Can't you do it?

162

APPENDIX C

Translation Test

(Sentences were given in Arabic, and then

translated into English by the subjects).

Negative Statements

1. Tell

2. Tell

3. Tell
everyday.

4. Tell

5. Tell
name.

6. Tell
tomorrow.

7. Tell

8. Tell

9. Tell

him
him

him

him

him

him

him

him

him

not to sell his car.
that you don't know his family name.

that you don't sit on your chair

that you don't like coffee.

that you don't know your friend's

that you won't go to the store

that Ali doesn't beat you at any game.

that you didn't go to gym today.

you're not sitting on your chair.

Interrogative. Yes/No

10. Ask him if he drinks cola.

 

11.

12.

13.

14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.

20.

21.
22.

23.

Ask him if he

Ask him if he

8-year-old.

Ask him if he

is.

Ask

Ask

Ask

Ask

Ask

Ask

Ask

him
him
him
him
him
him

him

if
if
if
if
if
if

if

Company"

Ask him if

Ask

Ask

him

him

Neg-Interrogative

24.
25.
Smith.

26.

Ask

Ask

Ask

Interrogative

27.

28.

Ask

Ask

him

him

him

if

if

Yes[No

he

he

163

likes ice cream.

is a 7-year-old and if Ali is an

knows what your mother's name

likes to ride a bicycle.

washes his bicycle every week.

Mrs. Smith has a tape recorder.

Mrs. Smith likes ice cream.

he

he

he

on

he

he

he

rode his bicycle yesterday.
studied English in school.

saw the program called ”Three's
TV.

ate breakfast yesterday.

can swim.

has eaten already.

if he doesn't go to gym anymore.

if he didn't give his book to Mrs.

if he isn't going home.

- What/What + Do

him what he read yesterday.

him what he did yesterday.

164

29. Ask him what he saw on TV yesterday.
30. Ask him what he will do tonight.

31. Ask him what he's going to do tomorrow.

Wh-Interrogative - Where

 

32. Ask him where he buys chocolate bar.
33. Ask him where Mr. Smith went to school.
34. Ask him where he's going tonight.

35. Ask him where he will read his English book.

Wh-Interrogative - Who

 

36. Ask him who the principal is.

37. Ask him with whom he's going to study
tomorrow.

38. Ask him who he saw yesterday.

39. Ask him with whom he talked yesterday.

Wh-Interrogative - When

 

40. Ask him what time he returned from Detroit.
41. Ask him when you can see a soccer game.

42. Ask him when he goes to bed.

43. Ask him when he ate dinner yesterday.

44. Ask him when he will study Arabic.

Wh-Interrogative - Why + Neg.

 

45. Ask him why he doesn't read.

 

46.

47.

48.

49.

50.

Ask

Ask

Ask

Ask

Ask

him
him
him
him

him

165

if he doesn't go to school on Tuesday.
why he doesn't have a bicycle.

why that door doesn't open.

why he doesn't live in Detroit.

why he didn't go to Detroit today.

166

APPENDIX D

Berko's Test (1958)

 

Each item is accompanied by a pictorial representa-

tion of the objects and/or actions described.

Plural. One bird-like animal, then two. ”This is a
wug. Now there is another one. There are two of
them. There are two _____.'

Plural. One bird, then two. 'This a gutch. Now there
is another one. There are two of them. There are

two .'

 

Past tense. Man with a steaming pitcher on his head.
"This is a man who knows how to spow. He is spow-
ing. He did the same thing yesterday. What did he
do yesterday? Yesterday he_____.”

Plural. One animal, then two. “This is a kazh. Now
there is another one. There are two of them. There
are two______.'

Past tense. Man swinging an object. "This is a man
who knows how to rick. He is ricking. He did the
same thing yesterday. What did he do yesterday?

Yesterday he .'

167

6. Diminutive and compounded or derived word. One
animal, then a miniscule animal. 'This is a wug.
This is a very tiny wug. What would you call a
very tiny wug? This wug lives in a house. What
would you call a house that a wug lives in?”

7. Plural. One animal, then two. 'This is a tor. Now
there is another one. There are two of them. There
are two_____,'

8. Derived adjective. Dog covered with irregular green
spots. 'This is a dog with quirks on him. He is
all covered with quirks. What kind of dog is he?

He is a dog.”

 

9. Plural. One flower, then two. ”This is a lun. Now
there is another one. There are two of them. There
are two_____ .'

10. Plural. One animal, then two. "This is a niz. Now
there is another one. There are two of them. There

are two .'

 

11. Past tense. Man doing calisthenics. ”This is a man
who knows how to mot. He is motting. He did the
same thing yesterday. What did he do yesterday?
Yesterday he ____ .'

12. Plural. One animal, then two. 'This is a cra. Now
there is another one. There are two of them. There

are two .'

 

 

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

168

Plural. One animal, then two. 'This is a tass. Now
there is another one. There are two of them. There
are two _____.'

Past tense. Man dangling an object on a string.
'This is a man who knows how to mot. He is
motting. He did the same thing yesterday. What did

he do yesterday? Yesterday he .'

 

Third-person singular. Man shaking an object. ”This
is a man who knows how to naz. He is nazzing. He
does it every day. Every day he.____.'

Plural. One insect, then two. 'This is a heaf. Now
there is another one. There are two of them. There

are two .'

 

Plural. One glass, then two. "This is a glass. Now
there is another one. There are two of them. There
are two _____.'

Past tense. Man exercising. 'This is a man who knows
how to gling. He is glinging. He did the same
thing yesterday. What did he do yesterday?
Yesterday he._____.'

Third-person singular. Man holding an object. 'This
is a man who knows how to loodge. He is loodging.
He does it every day. Every day he ____.'

Past tense. Man standing on the ceiling. 'This is a

man who knows how to bing. He is binging. He did

169

the same thing yesterday. What did he do
yesterday? Yesterday he______.'

21. Singular and plural possessive. One animal wearing a
hat, then two wearing hats. "This is a niz who
owns a hat. Whose hat is it? It is the_____hat.
Now there are two nizzes. They both own hats.
Whose hats are they? They are the_____hats.

22. Plural. A bell. “This is a bell that can ring. It
is ringing . . .'

23. Singular and plural possessive. One animal wearing a
hat, then two. "This is a wug who owns a hat.
Whose hat is it? It is the_____hat. Now there are
two wugs. They both own hats. Whose hats are they?
They are the_____hats.

24. Comparative and superlative of the adjective. A dog
with a few spots, one with several, and one with a
great number. ”This dog has quirks on him. This
dog has more quirks on him. And this dog has even
more quirks on him. This dog is quirky. This dog
is . And this dog is the .'

25. Progressive and derived adjective or compound. Man
balancing a ball on his nose. “This is a man who
knows how to zib. What is he doing? He is_____.
What would you call a man whose job is to zib?‘

26. Past tense. An ice cube, then a puddle of water.

'This is an ice cube. Ice melts. It is melting.

170

Now it is all gone. What happened to it? It .'
27. Singular and plural possessive. One animal wearing a
hat then two. 'This is a bik who owns a hat. Whose

hat is it? It is the hat. Now there are two

 

biks. They both own hats. Whose hats are they?

They are the hats.

 

REFERENCES

'1

 

 

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