Accessibility hierarchy and acquisition of English relative clauses by Urdu EFL learners
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20253246 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Maria Niaz, M Shafi Niaz (University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir), Shahida Khalique (0000-0003-2782-9604, University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir), Arshad Ali Khan (0000-0002-4229-564X, corresponding author), Ishfaq Aurangzeb (University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2023-12-31 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cogent Arts and Humanities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2331-1983 • E-ISSN: 2331-1983 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/23311983.2023.2249629 |
| OpenAlex | W4386113049 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 18 |
This study aims to examine the errors committed by Urdu EFL learners in acquiring English Relative Clauses (henceforth RCs) by putting to test the predictions of hypothesis proposed by Keenan and Comrie’s (1977) Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (NPAH). It aims to inspect whether the NPAH constraint for the acquisition of English relative clauses be applicable to Urdu L2 learners or not. In order to accomplish the purpose of the study total 80 participants were selected from the University of Azad Jammu & Kashmir. Data were collected through questionnaire that was consisted of two tasks: grammaticality judgment task and sentence combining task. The study uncovered the fact that Urdu learners commit a number of errors in the production of English RCs. These errors are pronoun retention, head noun retention, shift of noun function, non-adjacency to head noun and relative pronoun, preposition stranding, and deletion, selection of wrong relativizer, change of lexical item, change of syntactic pattern, and deletion of comparative particle. Urdu EFL learners’ hierarchy of acquiring English RCs is partially consistent with NPAH. The present study confirms the difficulty of direct objective relative clauses compared to subject relative clauses and indirect relatives in Pahari, which strongly supports Comrie (2007) hierarchy that shows that the performance of Urdu EFL Learners for first three positions of hierarchy is consistent with NPAH while their performance for the remaining three positions is not consistent with NPAH. Urdu learners find it easy to perform on OCOMP RCs which is placed at the end in NPAH. Urdu EFL learners find Oblique RCs more difficult compared to genitive RCs
Grammar · Grammaticality · Hierarchy · Linguistics · Natural language processing · Noun · Noun phrase · Pronoun · Relative clause · Urdu · Computer Science · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism · Second Language Acquisition and Learning · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation · Artificial Intelligence
The role of parallel function in the acquisition of relative clauses in English
Linguistic complexity
Grammatical Processing of Spoken Language in Child and Adult Language Learners
Markedness, Discoursal Modes, and Relative Clause Formation in a Formal and an Informal Context
The partial availability of Universal Grammar in second language acquisition
Language Transfer and Universal Grammatical Relations
Markedness and the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis
Processing Difficulty in Comprehension and Production of Relative Clauses by Learners of English as a Second Language
A New Look at the Acquisition of Relative Clauses
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |