A Cross-Linguistic Transfer Study of Plural Nouns after Numerical Adjectives and Quantifiers in English by Turkish and Persian EFL learners

Abstract

English grammar obligates usage of plural nouns after numerical adjectives and quantifiers, whereas languages like Persian and Turkish require that bare nouns be used in that case. This study investigated sixty EFL learners who were Turkish or Persian native speakers to find out whether or not there was a negative transfer in their interlanguage in terms of using bare nouns instead of plural nouns. Two tests of oral and written form were conducted to collect the data. The results revealed that there is almost no negative transfer in written sentences of the both experimental groups. However their oral test utterances were affected by their related L1 structure and bare nouns were used after numbers or quantifiers.