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ERIC Number: EJ1474810
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: EISSN-2149-1135
Available Date: 0000-00-00
Grammatical Number in Arabic-English Bilingual Children
Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, v9 n2 p170-185 2023
This study examined the developmental trajectories of Arabic grammatical number in Arabic-English bilingual children. The samples consisted of 80 individuals (40 monolingual children residing in Jordan and 40 bilingual children residing in the USA), aged between 5 and 9 years. Data was collected through two tasks involving picture able objects and naturally occurring communications. Although bilingual children's accuracy in plural processing demonstrated an age-related improvement, the findings reported a notable delay in plural form acquisition within the bilingual age-related trajectories. Transparency, frequency, and productivity contributed to shape the acquisition patterns of plural form among 5-7-years-old children, while predictability becomes a salient factor for the older trajectories. The study also highlighted the productivity of bilingual children to employ the feminine sound plural (FSP) as a default mechanism in generating diverse plural nouns. Prominent strategies in producing plural forms by bilingual children encompassed over-generalization of the FSP, code-switching between plural patterns, and utilization of the English plural morpheme [-s] and English quantifiers. The study, therefore, concludes that children predominantly adopt a single route mechanism during the processing of the inflectional system. Finally, the study offers noteworthy pedagogical implications pertinent to the instruction of Arabic-English bilingual children.
Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics. Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Anafartalar Campus Faculty of Education Department of Foreign Language Education, Canakkale 07100, Turkey. e-mail: editor@ejal.info; Website: https://ejal.info/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Jordan; United States
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A