Analysis of the first 4 months of word combinations recorded for an Estonian-English learning child suggests that meaning-based generativity may play a role in this important transition in that mixed language utterances, sequence reversals, and errors revealing early attempts at analysis provide clear evidence that distributional learning alone…

This study examined the interlanguage syntax of Arabic speaking learners of English in the area of the noun phrase, focusing on the closed system elements that can occur before or after the noun head, the noun head and pronouns in line with Quirk and Greenbaum's (1977) treatment of the noun phrase. Participants were 25 Arabic speaking English…

Based on a review of research, the most common syntactic errors made by native Arabic-speaking learners of English as a second language are discussed. Seven categories of error are distinguished and described: verbal errors (use of tense, phase, aspect, voice, verb formation, concord, finite/non-finite verbs); relative clauses (interlingual and…

A study investigated patterns in the apparent syntactic errors of native English-speaking, upper-level learners of Arabic as a foreign language. One hundred writing samples, including summaries, criticisms, and free composition, were gathered from a number of university courses. Error types analyzed included articles, subordinate clauses, two-word…

This is a contrastive analysis of Dari and Pashto, both official languages of Afghanistan, with a view toward outlining the difficulties faced by speakers of Dari learning Pashto as a second language. The main focus is on morphological structures, although phonology is also briefly dealt with. The brief phonological comparison, with emphasis on a…

A study examined the relationship between syntactic complexity and overall accuracy in the written English of 30 advanced learners of English from five different native language groups. Results show similar patterns of error distribution, a similar level of relative strength in syntax, and relative weakness in morphology. (Author/MSE)

An examination was conducted of the planned and unplanned speech of 24 native speakers of Mandarin and Korean who were serving as teaching assistants at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Each was videotaped on two occasions two weeks apart in a preparation course for international teaching assistants (ITAs), in which instruction in the use of…

A collection of papers on contrastive linguistics includes: "Prototypes and Equivalence" (Tomasz P. Krzeszowski); "Comparing the Incomparable? English Adjectives in "-able" and Their Rendering in Modern Chinese" (Arthur Mettinger); "Classification and Distribution of Lexical Errors in the Written Work of German Learners of English" (Rudiger…