Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (2000) - The University of ...

K ALJENAIE
The asterisk indicates that Sara used incorrectly the 2 nd feminine
inflection and it is of interest to notice two important issues. Firstly, Sara
omitted the prefix of the 2 nd feminine and retained the suffix. Secondly,
although she had this type of substitution errors in the present tense, she
never erred in the past tense where she always used the 1 st singular when
was asked in 2 nd feminine. In contrast, Osama did not use 2 nd masculine
instead of the 1 st singular as Sara sometimes had when she was asked a
question; however, he usually replied appropriately. To summarize, the
table exhibits the frequent correct use of the present tense inflections 83-
89% of the time, and agreement errors occurred 11-17% of the time.
Turing to the past tense, it is clear from the table below that there are
differences between the two children. Osama irregularly realized the past
Table 6 Past tense correct and incorrect use a
Inflection
1S
1P
2M
Sara
Osama
Corr. Incorr Corr. Incorr
78
96%
2
100%
3
4%
2
100%
11
92%
1
8%
8
100%
2
1
2F
100%
100%
11
18
48
29
3M
38% 62% 62% 38%
64
8
14
3
3F
89% 11% 82% 18%
6
2
3P
100%
100%
Total
singular; p=plural.
163
84%
31
16%
76
65%
41
35%
a
1= 1 st person; 2= 2 nd person; 3=3 rd person; m= masculine; f= feminine; s=
tense suffixes 76 times in comparison to the 137 times in the present tense
with a high percentage of errors (35% of the time). On the other hand, Sara
shows a similar pattern with the present tense where she showed high
frequency and low errors. Since the 3 rd masculine is the unmarked form
and it is homophonous with the stem, the correct uses of that form can not
12