Arabic Second Language Acquisition of Morphosyntax

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Table of Contents

Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction xv
Transliteration Symbols xix
Abbreviations xxi
1. Description of Target Morphosyntactic Structures 1
1.1 Arabic Word Structure 1
1.1.1 Root and Base Form 1
1.1.2 Gender of Nouns and Adjectives 4
1.2 Nominal Inflectional Agreement Features 8
1.2.1 Agreement within NPs 8
1.3 Equational (Verbless) Sentence Structure 10
1.3.1 Past Tense of Equational (Verbless) Sentences 12
1.3.2 Negation of Equational (Verbless) Sentences 13
1.4 Verbal Inflectional Agreement Features 14
1.4.1 Verbal Agreement, Tense, and Null Subjects 14
1.4.2 Verbal Negation 16
1.5 Summary 19
2. Existing Arabic Second Language Acquisition Research 21
2.1 Contrastive and Error Analysis Studies 22
2.2 Performance/Developmental Studies 24
2.3 Developmental, Interlanguage, and Current Models 30
2.4 Second Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar 42
2.5 Summary 48
3. The Acquisition of Gender Agreement 49
3.1 Methods (Longitudinal Data) 50
3.1.1 Results of Nominal and Verbal Gender Agreement 54
3.1.1.1 Applying an Emergence Criterion 54
3.1.1.2 Applying a 90 Percent Correct Acquisition Criterion 58
3.1.1.3 Production of Gender Agreement in Non-Contexts 61
3.1.1.4 Noun-Adjective Word Order 64
3.1.2 Results of Demonstrative Gender Agreement 65
3.1.2.1 Applying an Emergence Criterion 66
3.1.2.2 Applying a 90 Percent Correct Acquisition Criterion 67
3.1.2.3 Production of Demonstrative Gender Agreement
in Non-Contexts 73
3.2 Methods (Cross-Sectional Data) 73
3.2.1 Results of Verbal (Gender) Agreement 77
3.2.2 Results of Nominal (Gender) Agreement 79
3.2.2.1 Results of Natural versus Grammatical Gender
Agreement 81
3.2.2.2 Rule Application of Nominal Agreement in
Non-Contexts 82
3.2.2.3 Word Order of Nominal (Noun-Adjective)
Agreement 84
3.2.3 Results of Nominal versus Verbal Agreement 86
3.2.4 Results of Demonstrative Gender Agreement 91
3.2.4.1 Rule Application of Demonstrative Gender
Agreement in Non-Contexts 98
3.3 Summary 99
4. The Acqusition of Tense/Aspect and Verbal Agreement 101
4.1 Methods (Cross-Sectional Data) 102
4.2 Results 105
4.2.1 Tense (Narrative Tasks) 105
4.2.2 Verbal Agreement (Narrative Tasks) 108
4.2.3 Tense and Verbal Agreement (Random Task) 110
4.3 Summary 113
5. The Acquisition of Null Subjects 115
5.1 Methods (Cross-Sectional Data) 115
5.2 Results 118
5.2.1 Null Subjects Production 118
5.2.2 Null Subjects and Verbal Agreement Production 122
5.3 Summary 124
6. The Acquisition of Negation, Mood, and Case 125
6.1 Methods (Longitudinal Data) 127
6.1.1 Participants 127
6.1.2 Formal Classroom Input 128
6.1.3 Data Collection and Coding 131
6.2 Results 131
6.2.1 Emergence Criterion 131
6.2.2 Negation Construction with la and the Indicative Mood 133
6.2.3 Negation Constructions with ma and lam and the Jussive
Mood 134
6.2.4 Negation Construction with Ian and the Subjunctive Mood 136
6.2.5 ?an Construction and the Subjunctive Mood 139
6.2.6 Case within kāna and laysa Constructions 142
6.3 Summary 145
7. Theoretical Implications 147
7.1 L2 Learnability and Processability 147
7.2 LI Transfer and UG Access 153
7.3 Ultimate Attainment and Near Nativeness 157
7.4 The Split-INFL Hypothesis: More on L1 Transfer 163
7.5 Null Subjects and Setting of Parameters: More on UG Access and L1
Transfer 167
7.6 Summary and Areas of Future Research 170
8. Pedagogical and Applied Implications 173
8.1 Acquisition Tendencies of the Target Structures 173
8.1.1 Gender of Nouns 173
8.1.2 Gender of Adjectives 174
8.1.3 Gender of Demonstrative Pronouns 174
8.1.4 Verbal Agreement 175
8.1.5 Tense (Past and Present) 175
8.1.6 Negation 175
8.1.7 Case and Mood 176
8.2 Other Contributing Acquisition Factors 177
8.3 Who Can Benefit from the Findings 178
8.3.1 Syllabus Construction: Scheduling Learning Objectives 178
8.3.2 Arabic Foreign Language Pedagogy and Teacher Preparation 179
8.3.3 Foreign Language Proficiency Testing 179
8.4 Summary and Areas of Future Research 181
Notess 183
Glossary 199
Referencess 205