Moroccan University Students’ Use of the English Regular Past and Plural Allomorphic Variations

Abstract

The objective of this study was to assess the phonetic use of the allomorphic variations of the past [+ed] and plural [+s] morphemes by a sample of 45 EFL semester one students at Ibn Tofail University, Morocco, using error analysis approach. To collect relevant data, two written tests were designed and distributed to a randomly selected sample to be filled in separately during 40 minutes: the first test consisted of a set of past regular verbs including some adjectives ending in ed, and the second one included a number of English nouns requiring the regular plural [+s]. Further, the participants were given an adapted list of nonce words from Berko " s study (1985). The principle was if they could provide the plural marking of the unfamiliar words correctly, it would be concluded that they knew how to pluralize words in different phonological contexts. The findings of the study demonstrated that the majority of the subjects failed to use the allomorphic variations /t/ and /id/ in different phonetic environments, substituted the latter allomorphs with the allomorph /d/, and erroneously generalized the allomorph /d/ to the adjectives that end in ed. In the second test, a great number of the subjects performed better in pluralizing the nouns that require the voiceless alternant /s/, but found the allomorph /iz/ more complex than the others since it requires a vowel insertion rule to break the cluster of two consonants having similar point of articulation, and overgeneralized the allomorph /-z/ to the nonce words requiring /-iz/. Introduction: In foreign language teaching classrooms, learners come into contact with a foreign language and experience its linguistic features. Because languages influence each other, learners of English as a foreign language are exposed to cross-linguistic differences between their mother tongue and English and thus may make different types of errors. Lado (1957), in this respect, emphasizes on learners " transfer from their native language to the foreign language in that " individuals tend to transfer the forms and meanings, and the distribution of forms and meanings of their native language and culture to the foreign language and culture " (p. 2). In other words, learners transfer the knowledge from L1 (first language) acquisition into the target language which may result in producing ill-formed sentences in the target language if the two languages are characterized by linguistic differences. Indeed, transfer from L1 into L2 (second language) or foreign language has received much interest in applied linguistics since identifying learners " errors gives deep insights into how learners learn a second or a foreign language. English as a foreign language (EFL) learners often make a number of errors which often range between phonological or phonetic, morphological, and syntactic ones. Since EFL learners are non-native speakers of English, it is widely observed that they make different sorts of errors in their first stages of learning English. For instance, non-native speakers of English are commonly reported to generalize the regular plural [+s] to other regular or irregular plural forms. In this respect, Akande (2005), conducting a study on senior secondary school pupils in Nigeria, argued that the subjects could not distinguish between the allomorphs /s/ and /z/. That students cannot make a distinction between the allomorphs /s/, /z/, and /iz/ may be explained by their low competence in English morphology. In addition to the findings by Akande, students " confusion between the three allomorphs may be due to their lack of exposure to these allomorphic variations. Therefore, the present study assesses the regular past and plural morphemes " usage by first year students at Ibn Tofail University, Morocco. Particularly, it evaluates their performance in the past allomorphic realizations /d/, /t/, and /id/ as well as regular plural alternants /s/, /z/, and /iz/ in different phonological contexts. Literature Review A great body of literature in applied linguistics has extensively shown that certain language structures of learners " mother tongue are transferred into their learning of a foreign or second language. Numerous studies have concluded that non-native speakers of English failed to correctly use some aspects in a foreign or second language due to the transfer of phonological, morphological, or syntactic rules of their mother tongue (L1). For instance, in his study of Saudi BA students at King Khalid University, Al-Badawi (2012) concluded that a great number of students made phonetic, morphological, and syntactic errors. For example, 60% of the sample substituted the voiced bilabial sound /b/ for the voiceless bilabial /p/. It was observed that this phonetic error is due to the absence of the sound /p/ in Arabic language system. Odisho (2005) also argued that native Arabic speakers misarticulated certain English vowels especially vowels which have no close counterpart in Arabic. Similarly, some speakers of Arabic who tend to learn English may make syntactic errors as in (John he went to school yesterday‫)٭‬ in which they erroneously include two pronouns (John and he) as the subject of the sentence, which is an error transferred from Arabic. Such errors are attributed to the influence of learners " L1, which is a fundamental view of the contrastive analysis hypothesis in its explanation of learners " errors.