The acquisition of dative constructions by Iraqi university learners of English : a pilot study

Abstract EN

The present study investigates the problem of the acquisition of the English dative constructions at the college level with the aim of answering the following two basic questions; firstly, whether a complete mastery of the dative structures is managed by the learners at the end of their four-year study of English at the university level, and secondly, how the learners' developmental sequence of the dative constructions evolves through time, and whether this route is subject to the constraints of the theory of markedness or not.

To answer these questions, a random sample of two groups of Iraqi EFL students in the English Department at the College of Education of Baghdad University has been tested in (35) grammaticality judgment items, and (30) completion items.

The first group consists of sixty subjects from the first year and the second group thirty-eight students from fourth year at the aforementioned department.

Results have revealed that the acquisition route of Iraqi university learners of English precedes in the same way that L1 and L2 learning does.

That is, Iraqi EFL learners acquire dative prepositional phrase complements before double-NP complements.

This order of acquisition corresponds to the predictions of markedness theory.

Results achieved have lead to the validation of the study hypotheses postulated.

Due to the limitations of the present study, further future studies are suggested within the same area.