Abstracts Language, Literature, and Linguistic

The Acquisition of Verbal Agreement and Tense Among L3 Learners of Arabic: Language Transfer and Other Contributing Factors

by Abdulaziz https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1024-2639 Alqasem

This dissertation explores first language (L1) transfer and second language (L2) transfer processes and models, such as the full transfer/full access model (FT/FA), the representational deficit/interpretability hypothesis, and the feature reassembly hypothesis (FRH). The typological proximity model (TPM), the cumulative enhancement model (CEM), the L2 status factor model (L2SFM), and the linguistic proximity model (LPM) are L2 transfer models explored. Evidence produced from previous studies on L1 transfer is not conclusive concerning verbal agreement because the investigated languages exhibit tense or verbal agreement. No language such as Indonesian was investigated that lacks agreement and tense. This is the important reason for conducting this dissertation research on Arabic third language (L3) participants with different language pairings. Indonesian exhibits neither verbal agreement nor tense features to isolate the processing of verbal agreement from tense. The reason for selecting the Turkish language was related to the fact that Turkish native speakers realize various types of verbal agreement and tense in their own language, similar to Arabic. Spontaneous data were collected from 86 participants divided into eight groups of Arabic L3 proficiency: beginner, intermediate, advanced, and near-native (four groups for each Indonesian and Turkish L1 participants). The data produced mixed evidence. Based on L1 factor alone, there was hardly any statistically significant difference between the two L1 groups. Significant differences obtained when proficiency alone or the interaction between L1 and proficiency was considered. Some Turkish L1 participants were found to outperform the L1 Indonesian participants and some L1 Indonesian participants were found to outperform the L1 Turkish participants on some target forms. Motivation seems to be at play in the case of the Indonesian groups, and taken together with the role of L1 transfer, can account for the full range of the data. These statistical differences add to the findings of earlier Arabic research in the literature. Regarding near-nativeness, there were numerous instances of participants who achieved the highest ceiling level (100%) and were able to perform on various target forms, suggesting that full Arabic proficiency is achievable. The results provide partial support for the FT/FA model. Based on how the research participants performed, it is possible that no language transfer model can adequately explain the results. However, L1 transfer hypotheses and L2 transfer models provide some explanations for the L1 group performances of the two L1s. The dissertation findings have implications for four important groups (students, teachers, authors, and Arabic second language acquisition researchers) primarily concerned with language acquisition and those who struggle with learning Arabic as an L2 or L3.