A morpheme study in a corpus of secondary school EFL: The “-(e)s” morpheme for 3rd person, plural and possessive

Abstract

This study about the order of acquisition of morphemes in the L2 English brings to the morpheme order studies a new element which had never before been researched, that is, the use as a means of analysis of the data of a written learner corpus created by L1 Spanish learners of L2 English in classroom environments. As well as previous studies such as the ones carried out by Dulay and Burt (1973), Bailey, Madden and Krashen (1974) or Pica (1983), this study demonstrates that there exists a natural order in the acquisition of morphemes, which implies that some morphemes will be acquired earlier than others. Moreover, an-in depth analysis of the “-(e)s) morphemes, that is, plural, third person singular and possessive, shows that despite being three morpho-phonologycaly similar morphemes, they are acquired in different stages, as previous studies had shown.