Lindsay Kaye Ohlert Ling 5501 Error Analysis August 3, 2009 Page 1 of 8
Learner Description The speaker is a college-educated adult Egyptian male who immigrated to the United States approximately four years ago. His L1 is Masri, the Egyptian variety of Arabic, and all of his formal education took place in Egypt. Prior to moving to the US, he studied English as a foreign language in school and corresponded with L1 English speakers over the internet, but had limited contact with native speakers in person. He believes that this schooling provided him with a well-developed knowledge of English grammar. He works in accounting, and uses English as the primary language for both his work and personal life, as his wife is an American-born English monoglot. His wife states that he is very determined, and spends a good deal of his leisure time studying English in order to improve his career prospects.
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Task Description The purpose of this analysis is to determine what, if any, systematic errors are present in the phonology and syntax of the speaker, and to propose possible explanations
for these errors. The speaker was recorded completing three linguistic tasks. In the first, he was presented with six different sets of photographs, each of which was arranged in sequence to tell a simple story. He was asked to describe each photo and relay the story told by the pictures. In the second task, he read aloud three informative passages that contained vocabulary related to the photographs from the first task. The third task was to read two brief poems that contained vocabulary related to the photographs.
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Personal interview, July 18, 2009
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Data Analysis Table 1: Pronunciation when speaking freely Word/Phrase Standard English pronunciation2 There (repeated) ðɛər animal æn ə məl The (repeated) ði or ðə Third (repeated) θr ̩ d Together tə gɛð ər Something sʌm θɪŋ Inside ɪn saɪd Understand ʌn dər stænd Asian eɪ ʃən Behind bɪ haɪnd
Smashed They Squooshed (slang) Sidewalk (I) think… (repeated) (I) think… (repeated) Throw Stuff That With Chairs Ear
smæʃt ðeɪ skwʊʃ saɪdˌwɔk θɪŋk θɪŋk θroʊ stʌf ðæt wɪθ tʃɛərz ɪər
Table 2: Pronunciation when reading aloud Word/Phrase Standard English pronunciation Giraffes (repeated) dʒə ræf Form fɔrm Birth bɜrθ Offspring ɔf sprɪŋ Three θri Of ɒv Giraffes (repeated) dʒə ræf Calf kæf 2
Standard English IPA pronunciations taken from Dictionary.com
Speaker’s pronunciation h
*ʒ ɛər *a ni mʌl h *ʒ ʌ θr ̩ d h *tə gɛʒ ər h *sʌm ʒ ɪŋ h * ɪ n ʒ aɪ d *ʌn dər sænd eɪ ʃən *beɪ haɪnd smæ h ʃt * ʒ eɪ skwʊʃ saɪd wɔk θɪŋk h *ʒ ɪŋk θroʊ stʌf h *ʒ æt h *wɪʒ tʃɛərz *ɛər
Speaker’s pronunciation
*greɪfs *frɔm bɜrθ *ɔp sprɪŋ θri *ɒf *g̩ rfs *kalf
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Half Giraffes (repeated) Thirty-five Something
hæf dʒə ræf θɜr ti fa ɪv sʌm θɪŋ
hæf *g̩ r feɪs θɜr ti fa ɪv *sʌm sɪŋ
Through Clothes Thrown Cheese Curdles Other Intolerance There The
θru kloʊðz θroʊn tʃiz ˈkɜrdls ʌð ər ɪnˈtɒl ər əns ðɛər ði or ðə
θru *klo ðəz θroʊn tʃiz *kr ɜ dls ʌð ər *ɪnˈtɒr əl əns ðɛər ðə
The speaker clearly struggles with the interdental fricatives. He frequently replaces the both the voiced and voiceless interdental fricative with an aspirated voiced palatal fricative. This error occurs in multiple environments. The only environment in which he consistently pronounces this phoneme correctly is when it appears word initial
and is followed by [r], such as in “three,” “through” and “thrown.” He also appears to be occasionally experimenting with using a voiceless alveolar fricative in the place of the voiceless interdental fricative, as in *[s ʌm sɪŋ]. However, he definitely has the capacity to pronounce the sound in other environments, as when narrating freely, he sometimes
pronounces “think” [θɪŋk] and other times *[ʒhɪŋk], even when the w ords appear in identical surrounding contexts. Also, several of the interdental fricative-containing words that he struggled with when freely narrating he is able to pronounce correctly when reading aloud. This error is easy to explain; in Masri phonology there is no interdental fricative, but there is a voiced palatal fricative. Presumably the speaker is aspirating the voiced palatal fricative in an attempt to approximate the sound of the interdental fricative using a
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sound that is more readily available to him. The interdental fricative-alveolar retroflex liquid blend may be easier to pronounce due to the [r] having a place of articulation further forward; alternatively, the speaker may simply have practiced this blend deliberately at some point in his English development. The fact that he sometimes pronounces the interdental fricative and sometimes does not suggests that his interlanguage is in a transitional phase between the approximated pronunciation and the correct one; I suspect that in the near future he will be consistently using the interdental fricatives properly. A related pronunciation issue is that he sometimes pronounces the voiceless
alveolar fricative as an aspirated voiced palatal fricative as well; for example, “inside” h
becomes *[ɪn ʒ aɪd]. On the face of it, this doesn’t make much sense, as Masri does have a voiceless alveolar fricative. The simplest explanation would be that in the speaker’s h
attempt to master the interdental fricative, he has overgeneralized his application of [ ʒ ] and is using it in inappropriate contexts. The speaker also appears to be occasionally engaging in consonant deletion in
order to simplify consonant blends; for example, “understand” becomes *[ʌ n dər sænd]. This does not appear to be a systematic error, however, as the vast majority of the time, the speaker pronounces the [st] consonant blend correctly. It may simply be an artifact of rapid speech, not a second language acquisition-related error. A few interesting errors arose when the speaker read aloud from a prepared text.
The pronunciation of “of” as *[ɒf] and “clothes” as *[klo ðəz] suggests that the English orthography was interfering with correct pronunciation, as does the pronunciation of
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“calf” as *[kalf]; note that the speaker pronounces the similar but more commonly used word “half” correctly. When reading aloud, the speaker also occasionally engaged in metathesis, such as pronouncing “form” *[frɔm]; given that he did not do this when speaking freely, I assume this is simply the result of sight reading in a less familiar alphabet; it may be related to the fact that Arabic is written right to left.
The widely varying attempts at pronouncing “giraffe” are easily explained; when the speaker did the storytelling exercise, one of the photos featured a monkey and a
giraffe. The speaker did not know the word “giraffe,” describing it as a long-necked, yellow and brown spotted animal instead of using a specific noun. When he encountered the word in the read-aloud text, it was apparently entirely new to him, and the pronunciation of the word is not readily apparent from its spelling. The speaker mispronounced the vowel sounds of a few words, but only very occasionally and not systematically, which suggests that where both monophthongs and dipthongs are concerned, his interlanguage is approaching Standard English. Interestingly, the speaker does not appear to have any difficulty with the [t ʃ]
sound, despite the fact that there is no voiceless palatal affricate in Masri. All in all, the speaker’s English phonological development is, with very few exceptions, sufficiently native-like as to be entirely understandable, and all the errors appear to be correctable.
Table 3: Syntax when speaking freely Speaker’s phrasing There is a lady, and she wears gloves, and she tries to plant something…
*She tried to bought some dirt or
Intended meaning in Standard English
She tried to buy some dirt [potting soil] or
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something *I don’t know exactly what she want to bought *In this picture, she already done with it
something I don’t know e xactly what she wanted to buy In this picture she’s already done with it
*He tried totobesteal ready to shot the person He wanted a ring to give it to her *Is, like, romantic behavior *I think also was in winter. There’s a tank that smashed them. That’s better *That is seat for garden
He tried to be ready to shoot the person It is, like, romantic behavior I think it also was in winter.
That is a seat for a garden
There appear to be three primary types of errors in the speaker’s syntax. The first involves determiners; the second, the use of an infinitive verb following a conjugated verb; and the third, the combination of the word “is” and pronouns. At one point, the speaker omits determiners, as in “*that is seat for garden.” This is not surprising, as Masri does not contain definite or indefinite articles. The fact that the speaker otherwise uses determiners accurately suggests a good deal of careful study of this grammatical topic on his part. The second type of error occurs when the speaker attempts to use the subject + conjugated verb + infinitive verb sentence construction in the past tense , as in “*He tried
to be ready to shot the person” and “*She tried to bought some dirt.” The confusion here appears to be that the speaker understands that the particle “to” is necessary, but does not understand that the second verb should not be put into the past tense. In short, he appears to be attempting to make the verbs agree with one another, which makes logical sense but is unfortunately not a correct grammatical construction.
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The third type of error occurs when a sentence should include the subject pronoun and the word “is.” The speaker sometimes leaves one or the other ou t, as in “*she
already done” and “*is, like, romantic behavior.” This error seems to occur when “it” would have no clear reference and/or when “is” is an auxiliary. The relative paucity of errors suggests that the speaker was correct in his selfassessment that he has a strong knowledge of English prescriptive grammar. What syntactical errors are present are not grave enough to interfere with understanding.
Conclusion
Given that the speaker’s L2 acquisition history includes both several years of formal education in an environment with other language learners and several years of complete immersion among native speakers, it is difficult to say how the various theories of second language acquisition apply to this subject. Had a similar analysis been done shortly before or after his arrival in the United States, more definitive conclusions could probably be drawn. The only statement which can be made definitively here is that the
speaker appears to have had “the best of both worlds,” a solid academic footing in the L2 as well as extensive conversational practice, and that these advantages are apparent in his advanced phonemic and syntactic L2 development.
Similarly, as the speaker’s L2 acquisition appears to be ongoing – there is no evidence of interlanguage fossilization – it is impossible to say whether his late acquisition of the L2 will ultimately result in an inability to develop native-like abilities.
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It would be interesting to revisit this speaker in a few years to see whether his rapid phonemic and syntactical development continues apace.
Works Cited Bergman, Anouschka, Kathleen Currie Hall, and Sharon Miriam Ross. Language Files: Materials for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics . 10th ed. Columbus,
OH: Ohio State University, 2007.
Dictionary.com. 2009. Retrieved 3 Aug 2009 from < http://dictionary.reference.com>.
Watson, Janet. The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic . New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.