English Grammatical Morphemes 1({-s pl.}, {-s ps}, and {-s 3d}) by Iraqi EFL Learners: A Case Study
Meethaq Khamees Khalaf
University of Anbar, College of Education for Humanities Department of English
DOI: https://doi.org/10.25130/jls.1.3.2
Keywords: -acquisition -learning -grammatical morpheme -EFL - SLA
Abstract
Acquiring grammatical morphemes is the main part in language
acquisition. Brown (1973), de Villiers and de Villiers (1973) and Larsen-Freeman
(1975) mentioned that there is a natural order of acquisition of grammatical
morphemes in English. This study investigates the development of acquisition of {-s
pl.}, {-s ps}, and {-s 3d} by Iraqi EFL learners and to find out if Iraqi EFL learners
follow the same order of acquisition. It is also to differentiate between male and
female learners in their acquisition. The study was based on a grammaticality
judgment test that was administered for 30 participants each academic year
specifically in May 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 respectively. The results of analysis
present the average of the percentage of identification of grammatical morphemes
concerned. The average displays that the acquisition of {-s 3d} more fulfilled, with
an average (66.583%), than {-s pl.}, {-s ps} which are (58.083%) and (50.25%)
respectively. Also the results show that Iraqi male and female learners have the
same order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes but there is a difference in
the averages obtained which reveals that Iraqi female EFL learners acquire these
