Tense and Passive feature/morphology in the transitional English interlanguage of Persian monolingual and K rdish-Persian bilingual EFL Learners

The issue of cross-linguistic influence in non-primary language learning has long been an important topic. Studies conducted in this area suggest that a form of L۱ or L۲ transfer is evident in the language produced by third language learners (Cenoz ۲۰۰۱; Leung ۲۰۰۳; White ۲۰۰۳, among many others). On the nature of this transfer; however, there seems to be no consensus. Whether the acquisition of syntactic structures is a matter of mere parameter setting from a minus value in one language to a plus value in another or a rather painstaking process of reassembling the relevant features from the way they are conditioned and realized in the L۱ to that of the L۲ or L۳ is not yet revealed. While, Hawkins (۲۰۰۳) supports a "Representational Deficit Hypothesis" (RDH) whereby interlanguage grammars are confined to L۱ feature values and hence any problem in L۲ or L۳ initial state is attributed to problems in resetting syntactic features of L۱, Lardier (۱۹۹۹, ۲۰۰۰, ۲۰۰۳) argues for a Missing Surface Tnflection Hypothesis (MSTH) in mapping lexical entries onto overt phonological forms. Still there is a third argument which claims that the entire L۱ grammar (in the sense of all abstract properties) constitute the initial state in L۲ acquisition. Based on this stance, Schwartz & Sprouse (۱۹۹۴, ۱۹۹۶) argue that changes to the initial grammar can take place to the effect that the L۲ learners are not confined to representations based on L۱ steady state. Finally, Hawkins proposes a moderate modulated structure building Hypothesis (MSBH) which claims for an incremental leaning mechanism for L۲ and L۳. Inspired by the given issue, the present study attempts to see what effects the interaction of Kurdish and Persian have on Kurdish EFL students' acquisition of syntactic and morphological properties of tense and passive structures in English. To this end, ۱۲۰ Persian monolingual and Kurdish-Persian bilingual EFL Learners took part in this study. They were assigned to three proficiency bands (after taking a general proficiency test, OPT) and received a grammaticality Judgment and a contextualized functional production tasks. The results showed no significant difference between the performance of monolinguals and bilinguals at each level of proficiency beyond the initial state. Nonetheless, significant differences were found across the levels of proficiency. The findings, interpreted in terms of the viewpoints of the current generative models of L۲A, revealed a dominant role for L۱ settings in L۳ interlanguage grammar especially at the initial state and were more in line with the claims of MSBH.  

Keywords:

The Representational Deficit Hypothesis , Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis , Full Access/ Full Transfer , Modulated structure building hypothesis , Reassembling , tense , Passivization