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Title:
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Language Transfer and the Acquisition of the English Dative Alternation by Native Speakers of Arabic
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Author:
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Jihad Hamdan
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Email:
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click here to access email
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Degree Awarded:
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University of Reading
, Department of Linguistic Science
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Degree Date:
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1994
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Applied Linguistics
Psycholinguistics
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Subject Language(s):
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Arabic, Standard
English
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Director(s):
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Paul Fletcher
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Abstract:
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This study investigates the role of L1 in the acquisition of the English dative alternation by native speakers of Arabic. The subjects are 100 learners of English belonging to two different proficiency levels:intermediate and advanced. All of them are native speakers of Jordanian spoken Arabic (JSA) who also know modern standard Arabic.
The results of the study suggest that the subjects acquire the English dative alternation through successive modification of an initial lexical redundancy rule that applies to JSA. The modification of the initial lexical rule takes the form of adjusting constraints as more L2 input becomes available to the learners until it becomes similar to the adult L2 grammar one. This is basically done through positive evidence and may be enhanced through negative evidence and explanations provided by competent teachers.
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