The acquisition of tense morphological features in Turkish and English: the case oftypological difference

The present study was an attempt to investigate the acquisition of past perfect morphological features byTurkish learners of English across three different levels of language proficiency and within a generativeframework. Hence, an attempt was made to test the claims and predictions made by a number ofgenerative theories specifically including Representational Deficit Hypothesis (RDH), Full access/Fulltransfer (FAFT), Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH) and Modulated Structure BuildingHypothesis (MSBH). To do so, Thirty-six Turkish learners of EFL at three levels of proficiency wererandomly chosen from Voice of Tabriz Institute. To see whether Iranian Turkish learners of English wereable to reset past perfect morphology in English language and whether language proficiency affectsIranian Turkish learners’ acquisition of past perfect morphology three tests, Translation Test; FunctionalTest and Grammatical Judgment Test respectively administered. The results indicated that there weresignificant differences among proficiency levels of language learners in Translation Test, Functional Testand Grammatical Judgment Test.

Keywords:

transfer , Turkish learners , EFL , reset , past perfect morphology , (RDH) , (FAFT) , (MSIH) , (MSBH)