Learning Japanese as a Second Language: A Processability Perspect ...

One such approach is known as morpheme studies (Dulay & Burt, 1973, 1974); the idea proposed by this approach is referred to as the creative construction hypothesis, a nonbehaviourist view of language acquisition. The creative construction hypothesis regards the L2 learner as an active participant in language creation.

Morpheme studies originated with Brown’s (1973) study on child (first) language acquisition. In Brown’s study, the development of 14 English grammatical morphemes by three children was observed over time. The results indicated that there was a common path for development of these English morphemes. Dulay and Burt (1974) applied Brown’s study to SLA and looked at English morphemes in learners from various L1 backgrounds. In one of their studies, the oral performance of 60 Spanish and 55 Chinese children was measured using the bilingual syntactic measure (BSM). The results suggested that Spanish and Chinese children exhibit a similar pattern of relative accuracy in the production of English morphemes: -ing (progressive), Plural, Copula > Auxiliary, Article > Irregular past > Regular past, third person singular, Possessive -’s. The similarity in the pattern between the two groups indicates, according to Dulay and Burt, a fixed acquisition order of morphemes in English as a second language (ESL). Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974) duplicated the study with 73 adults from various L1 backgrounds (i.e., 33 Spanish L1 speakers, and 40 from various L1 backgrounds, such as Greek, Turkish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic). The results of this study also indicated that the learners showed similar patterns of relative accuracy of English morphemes regardless of their L1 background.

The results gained from these morpheme studies were very influential in the further development of SLA research, and the issue of ‘developmental sequence’ has since attracted great attention. One of its contributions was to widen the scope of what needs to be explained in learners’ language: It should encompass the whole performance rather than errors alone. It also permitted a clearer view of another strategy among learners, namely, which morphemes tend to be avoided. This is something that EA could not accomplish.