Second Language Acquisition of Quantifiers by Arabic Speakers of English:   Feature Reassembly Approach

This paper reports on an experimental study addressing second language acquisition of English quantifiers by Arabic speakers. Due to several differences found between Arabic and English regarding types, meanings and functions of quantifiers, Arabic learners encounter challenges in mastering them properly. Unlike English, Arabic does not make lots of distinctions among the different meanings that each quantifier might bear; using the same quantifier to bear two or several meanings at the same time. Arabic, for instance, does not differentiate between countable and non-countable nouns using the same modifier in contrast to English. According to the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere 2005, 2009; Choi & Lardiere, 2006), second language (L2) speakers must successfully reassemble existing features of their first language (L1) into the L2 feature-based sets in order to accommodate the L2 grammar. The researcher tests the validity of this prediction for the L2 acquisition of English quantifiers, which requires Arabic learners of English to remap semantic concepts of quantity onto new and different morpholexical configurations. Data from 40 L1 Arabic learners of English at different levels of proficiency and 20 native speakers who completed a picture/sentence matching task suggest that only the meanings which require different and new semantics-morphology remapping is difficult.

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Existential quantifiers in second language acquisition

Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism ◽

10.1075/lab.3.2.01gil ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 117-149 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Kook-Hee Gil ◽

Marsden Heather

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Second Language Acquisition ◽

Language Acquisition ◽

Native Language ◽

L2 Acquisition ◽

Polarity Item ◽

Feature Sets ◽

Feature Reassembly ◽

Explanatory Account ◽

Feature Based

Lardiere’s (2005, 2008, 2009) Feature Reassembly Hypothesis proposes that L2 acquisition involves reconfiguring the sets of lexical features that occur in the native language into feature bundles appropriate to the L2. This paper applies the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis to findings from recent research into the L2 acquisition of existential quantifiers. It firstly provides a feature-based, crosslinguistic account of polarity item any in English, and its equivalents — wh-existentials — in Chinese, Korean and Japanese. We then test predictions built on the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis, about how learners map target existential quantifiers in the L2 input onto feature sets from their L1, and how they then reassemble these feature sets to better match the target. The findings, which are largely compatible with the predictions, show that research that focuses on the specific processes of first mapping and then feature reassembly promises to lead to a more explanatory account of development in L2 acquisition.

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The second language acquisition of number and gender in Swahili: A Feature Reassembly approach

Second language Research ◽

10.1177/0267658313477650 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 29 (4) ◽

pp. 455-479 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Patti Spinner

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Second Language Acquisition ◽

Language Acquisition ◽

Future Research ◽

Production Task ◽

Recent Discussion ◽

Gender Assignment ◽

Feature Reassembly ◽

And Gender ◽

Formal Features

Much of the recent discussion surrounding the second language acquisition of morphology has centered on the question of whether learners can acquire new formal features. Lardiere’s (2008, 2009) Feature Reassembly approach offers a new direction for research in this area by emphasizing the challenges presented by crosslinguistic differences in the overt expression of formal features. In this study, I examine the acquisition of number and gender in Swahili by speakers of English and explore how the data can be described by a number of current approaches, including the Full Transfer Full Access Hypothesis (Schwartz and Sprouse, 1996), the Representational Deficit Hypothesis (e.g. Hawkins and Chan, 1997), and the Feature Reassembly approach. The results of an elicited production task and a written gender-assignment task indicate that learners have difficulty detecting the number feature on Swahili noun prefixes, and because of this they are initially unsuccessful at marking plurals. The findings are best described under a Feature Reassembly approach. I suggest some directions for expanding the Feature Reassembly approach in future research.

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A Variety of Turkish in Mid-south Turkey: Arabic-Turkish Inter-language

Journal of Education and Training Studies ◽

10.11114/jets.v5i1.1835 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 12

Author(s):

Eser Ordem ◽

Erdogan Bada

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Second Language Acquisition ◽

Language Acquisition ◽

Literature Review ◽

Language Variation ◽

Target Language ◽

Oral Production ◽

Arabic Speakers ◽

Natural Conversation

Studies on inter-language in the second language acquisition field have been of paramount importance in recent years. In line with such studies, thus with this study we aim to show oral production samples of adult Arabic speakers of Turkish (N=10) through elicited data in natural conversation settings, and to analyze the data morphosyntactically and lexically based on the inter-language hypothesis. Analysis of the gathered data indicates that the participants produced the target language quite competently and fluently by showing morphosyntactic and lexical variations in their output. The results obtained from intralingual communication, where only Arabic speakers are involved, suggest that the variety in question displays relative variations from the standard dialect in two domains mentioned above. Findings concerning Arabic and non-Arabic speakers present a rather different picture in that the variety gets much closer to the standard Turkey Turkish, and tend to support literature review emphasizing the importance of inter-language variation from socio-ecological and socio-cultural viewpoints. The study implies that second language acquisition might be attained in adulthood.

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