Chapter 1 the study of collocations

Table 6.  The acquisition of English morphemes 
Morpheme 
 -ing 
 plural 
 copula 
 auxiliary 
 article 
 irregular 
past 
 regular 
past 
 
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3rd person singular 
 possessive 
's 
(Krashen 1977). 
 
 
Dulay and Burt (1973), (1974) used the Bilingual Syntax Measure (BSM) 
to elicit speech data from 250 Spanish- and Chinese- speaking children learning 
English in the USA.  They found statistically significantly related acquisition 
orders for the two groups, but these were different from the order of 
acquisition for English L1 obtained by Brown (1973) in his longitudinal study of 
three children.  Dulay and Burt's findings were also confirmed by Bailey et al. 
(1974) in their study of 73 Spanish and non-Spanish ESL adults. 
 
Acquisition orders that were L1-neutral were also found by Larsen-
Freeman (1975).  She tested the acquisition of ten English morphemes by 24 
adults from four different L1 backgrounds (Arabic, Spanish, Japanese, and 
Farsi) using five different tasks: the BSM speaking task, a reading task, a 
listening comprehension test, an imitating task, and a writing test.  Larsen-
Freeman found that language background did not affect performance in 
morpheme ordering in a significant way, i.e. there were significantly high 
coefficients of concordance produced among the language groups on tasks 
within the study, and also the BSM elicited a very similar order of morphemes 
for learners from different L1 backgrounds.  The BSM ordering from Larsen-
Freeman's study and the ordering obtained by Dulay and Burt (1974) correlated 
highly at the .01 level of significance, rho = .87.  Also the ordering elicited by 
 
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the imitating task correlated significantly with the ordering obtained in Dulay 
and Burt (1974), rho = .60.  However, the morpheme orderings that the other 
three tasks produced had low correlations with Dulay and Burt's study, none of 
them reaching statistical significance. 
 
In an attempt to provide an explanation for the similar ordering obtained 
by the BSM in both the Dulay and Burt (1974) and the Larsen-Freeman (1975) 
studies, Larsen-Freeman suggested that input frequency could be one factor 
influencing the order along with other factors (Larsen-Freeman 1975, 1976).  
Also, other factors affecting morpheme acquisition by L2 learners are that the 
learner supplies certain morphemes correctly because she/he is trying to match 
the gestalt of the speech she/he hears, or that these certain morphemes occur in 
speech patterns that she/he has memorised (Larsen-Freeman 1978:100).  
 
Other morpheme studies involved learners from Indo-European and 
non-Indo-European L1 backgrounds (Mace-Matluck 1977; Fuller 1978), in both 
second and foreign language learning contexts (Fathman 1978; Makino 1979; 
Lightbown 1983), and on different tasks (Krashen et al. 1976).  Morpheme 
studies for L2s other than English (e.g. Spanish in van Naersen 1980; Quiche 
Mayan in Bye 1980; and a 'creoloid' (Singapore English) in Platt 1977) also 
proved the existence of accuracy orders.  
 
Evidence was also provided for strong similarities in the L2 acquisition 
process for learners involved in different learning situations and with different 
amounts of exposure (Makino 1979), and for the language acquisition processes 
utilised by adults and children (Krashen et al. 1976). 
 
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An alternative to the morpheme order studies is reported by Wode, 
Bahns, Bedey and Frank (1978).  They describe the stages that German children 
go through while acquiring one morpheme, i.e. plural in English.  The data for 
this study were from Wode's four children acquiring English naturalistically 
(without classroom instruction) during a 6 month field trip to the U.S.A.  There 
are three stages described: 
 
 
Stage 1: One form for both singular or plural intention 
 
Stage 2: Two forms for each noun reflecting target singular and plural 
 
Stage 3: Forms with plural target reflexes restricted to plural  intention; 
forms with singular target reflexes restricted to singular  
intention 
 
(Wode et al. 1978:178-179). 
 
 
Wode et al. argue that their approach of investigating morpheme order 
and language acquisition as a developmental process can provide more insights 
into the mechanisms of the process of language acquisition.  However, their 
approach was limited to the analysis of the acquisition of English plural 
inflections, and it can only be used for the investigation of the acquisition of 
morphemes that present a variety of allomorphs, like the English plural. 
 
Although these results strongly suggest that common accuracy and 
acquisition orders in morphemes are evident across L2 learners, there are 
certain shortcomings in the morpheme studies.  Research did not provide 
enough empirical support for a theoretical explanation of the developmental 
 
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sequences (e.g. for a critique of Krashen's Monitor Theory see Gregg 1984).  
Also, only a tiny portion of English grammar was studied, and the acquisition 
orders obtained represented a linguistically heterogeneous group of bound and 
free NP and VP morphemes.  The methodology was also criticised for using a 
limited number of elicitation methods (mainly the BSM for which claims have 
been made that it is not a valid instrument for measuring the sequence of 
morpheme acquisition; for a critique of the BSM see Porter 1977).  However, 
even though these orders are not rigidly invariable across studies, they are far 
from being random (Krashen 1977; Larsen-Freeman & Long 1991).