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Attainment of Syntactic and Morphological Accuracy by Advanced Language Learners

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2008

Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig  and
Theodora Bofman
Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig
Affiliation:
Indiana University
Theodora Bofman
Affiliation:
Northeastern Illinois University
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Extract

The present study examines the relationship between syntactic development, or complexity, and overall accuracy evidenced in the written English of advanced adult foreign language learners. Similar acquisition profiles were found to exist for 30 learners across five language groups: Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Malay, and Spanish. Syntactic complexity, measured in number of clauses per T-unit, is found to be similar in all five groups. These advanced foreign language learners, who show similar patterns of error distribution, all show relative strength in syntax, what Newport, Gleitman, and Gleitman (1977) call a universal design feature of language, but relative weakness in morphology, which is always a language-specific system.

Type
Articles
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 17 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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