The Order of Emergence of the Morphological Markers of Temporal Expression in the Croatian EFL Learners’ Longitudinal Speech Production Data

Abstract

This study addresses the acquisition of the morphological markers of temporal expression in the interlanguage of Croatian primary school learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). The acquisition of morphological markers was documented regarding the order of emergence of nine grammatical morphemes. The emergence of these morphemes was examined following the obligatory occasion analysis (R. Brown 1973) which identified the obligatory contexts for each morpheme and the number of their correct suppliance. The order of emergence was obtained by the group score method (H.C. Dulay/ M.K. Burt 1974) according to which the morphemes were ranked in decreasing order of accuracy. Additionally, the study documented the order of emergence of four verb tenses. The data collection period comprised three generations of Grade 8 learners thus yielding a total of 56 transcribed recordings. The learners’ language samples were gathered via task-based activities. Although the findings displayed discrepancies in the ranking orders obtained for different generations of Grade 8 learners, the Spearman rank order correlations suggest that there seems to be a homogeneous order of emergence across three generations of the eighth graders. The results revealed not only that Present Continuous emerged after Simple Present but also showed that Present Perfect emerged after Simple Past.