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AN EXPLANATION FOR THE MORPHEME ACQUISITION ORDER OF SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS
Author(s) -
LarsenFreeman Diane E.
Publication year - 1976
Publication title -
language learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.882
H-Index - 103
eISSN - 1467-9922
pISSN - 0023-8333
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-1770.1976.tb00264.x
Subject(s) - morpheme , linguistics , psychology , second language acquisition , language acquisition , developmental linguistics , first language , comprehension approach , natural language , philosophy
Second language acquisition researchers (Dulay and Burt 1973, 1974a; Bailey, Madden and Krashen 1974) have claimed there exists an acquisition order of English morphemes to which ESL learners, despite their different ages and language backgrounds, adhere. Thus far, however, an explanation for the occurrence of such a morpheme order has eluded researchers. A study by this author was designed to yield data which would hopefully suggest a reason for the reported morpheme sequence. After analyzing the data in light of possible explanations, a significant correlation was found between the common morpheme difficulty order of the learners and the frequency of occurrence of these morphemes in adult native‐speaker speech.