There is a considerable linguistic debate on whether phrasal verbs (e.g., "turn up," "break down") are processed as two separate words connected by a syntactic rule or whether they form a single lexical unit. Moreover, views differ on whether meaning (transparency vs. opacity) plays a role in determining their syntactically-connected or lexical…

This paper investigates the distribution of imperfective and perfective verb inflections in Kuwaiti Arabic. Spontaneous speech of three children (1 ; 8-3; 1) was analyzed for accuracy and error types. The results showed that the verbal inflections appeared correct almost all the time (89-97% of the time). Agreement errors appeared 3-11% of the…

Purpose: To establish whether the predictions of the extended optional infinitive (EOI) hypothesis (Rice, Wexler, & Cleave, 1995) hold for the language of Afrikaans-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and whether tense marking is a possible clinical marker of SLI in Afrikaans. Method: Production of tense morphology was…

Learning inflectional morphology is a vexing problem for second language (L2) learners. Children acquiring their native language also experience some difficulty, which results in their committing overgeneralization errors. Long after individuals have achieved a high level of proficiency in the L2, they are still plagued by uncertainty when it…

This study examines the storage versus composition of Spanish inflected verbal forms in first language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers of Spanish. L2 participants were selected to have mid-to-advanced proficiency, high classroom experience, and low immersion experience, typical of medium-to-advanced foreign language learners. Participants…

In two experiments using the action-sentence-compatibility paradigm we investigated the simulation processes that readers undertake when processing state descriptions with adjectives (e.g., "Die Schublade ist offen/zu". ["The drawer is open/shut"]) or adjectival passives (e.g., "Die Schublade ist…

Two approaches to grammar instruction are often discussed in the ESL literature: direct explicit grammar instruction (DEGI) (deduction) and indirect explicit grammar instruction (IEGI) (induction). This study aims to explore the effects of indirect explicit grammar instruction on EFL learners' mastery of English tenses. Ninety-four…

The present study intends to assess the ESL students' performance in tenses at secondary school level. Grade 10 students were the target population of the study. A sample of 396 students (255 male and 141 female) was selected through convenience sampling technique from the District of Bahawalnagar, Pakistan. A test focusing on five different types…

This study examined the linguistic competence in Korean of Korean heritage language learners (HLLs), compared to English-speaking non-heritage language learners (NHLLs) of Korean. It is unclear and controversial as to whether heritage languages learners are exposed to early but are interrupted manifest as L1 competence or share more…

Morpho-syntactic features of Modern Standard Arabic mix intricately with those of Egyptian Colloquial Arabic in ordinary speech. I study the lexical, phonological and syntactic features of verb phrase morphemes and constituents in different tenses, aspects, moods. A corpus of over 3000 phrases was collected from religious, political/economic and…

The present study is premised on Anderson's ACT model that proposes declarative knowledge is automatizable through practice (1982). The research examined the extent to which declarative knowledge of one morphosyntactic structure, namely present perfect, can be automatized 2 days after practice and can be retained 2 weeks after practice. Twenty…

The purposes of the study were to determine (a) the ability of two spontaneous language measures, mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLU-m) and number of different words (NDW), to identify African American preschool children at low and high levels of language ability; (b) whether child chronological age was related to the performance of either…

In this work, I offer a unified analysis of all the constructions that involve a reflexive clitic SE in Slavic and Romance languages. Next to canonical constructions, in which the reflexive clitic semantically identifies the two arguments of a transitive verb, cf. "John" SE "wash" means "John washes himself," there are constructions in which it is…

Purpose: This prologue introduces the clinical forum, briefly discusses the importance of morphology in literacy, and informs the reader of the scope of the included articles. Method: The concept of morphology is reviewed, contributing authors are introduced, and a brief summary of each of the 5 forum articles is provided. Conclusion: The studies…

Agrammatic aphasic individuals exhibit marked production deficits for tense morphology. This paper presents three experiments examining whether a group of English-speaking agrammatic individuals (n = 10) exhibit parallel deficits in their comprehension of tense. Results from two comprehension experiments (on-line grammaticality judgment studies)…