대한언어학회 전자저널

Choe, Mun-Hong & Jung, Mi-Ra. (2021). Current topics and controversies in the analysis of English L2 learners verb inflection errors. The Linguistic Association of Korea Journal, 29(1), 115-137. This article provides a synthetic review of current research on English L2 learners acquisition of verb inflection, focusing specifically on four topic areas: tense and aspect, subject-verb agreement, lexical and auxiliary verbs, and individual differences. The primary goal is to address the question of what to consider when analyzing ungrammatical forms produced by learners. An additional goal is to gain further insights into such questions as what challenges interlanguage researchers are likely to face in the analysis of the sources of inaccurate forms and what kinds of errors can be regarded as (non-)systematic. This review results in several observations that merit further investigation. First, in the acquisition of tense-aspect morphemes, some general tendencies have been recognized, of which most notable is the fact that L2 learners ability to use tense-aspect morphology tends to develop gradually while form acquisition normally precedes function acquisition. Second, L2 acquisition of subject-verb agreement has been a central issue in the debate over the role and representation of the innate language faculty. Third, regarding L2 learners ability to discern lexical and auxiliary verbs, a prevalent UG-based argument is that the mental grammars of L2 learners are organised in the same way as those of L1 speakers and that they differ only in the nature of their lexemes for surface morphology. Finally, since verb inflectional morphology explicitly demonstrates language learners grammatical competence, variations in its acquisition constitute the core of inquiry into age- and L1-related factors.

# error analysis # English as a foreign language # verb inflection

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