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Demystifying inflectional push-pull in ESL pedagogy.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

This paper traces the historical development of English verbal inflections for a period of 1500 years covering the Anglo-Saxon, Medieval and Modern English phases. A selected group of verbs and their conjugations are analyzed in order to glean some insights on how their rated complexity in English Second Language acquisition can be demystified. The study shows that English has shifted from being a fully synthetic toward an analytic language through assimilation and analogy. However, there is still a blend of weak and strong verbal declensions whose 'push-pull' effect poses learning difficulties among ESL students who lack native intuition of inflectional grammaticality. As a result, this paper argues for a systematic approach to verbal inflections, drawing from their history of evolution, and then offers classroom recommendations for teaching and learning (1) past tense markers, (2) agreement markers and (3) copula verb.

1. Introduction

One area receiving little attention in English Second Language (hereafter ESL) pedagogy is the historical development of the verbal inflectional system. Yet, the inflectional morphology poses one of the frequently reported learning problems in ESL pedagogy (Makalela, 1999; Kachru, 1986; Lowenberg, 2002; Schmied, 1991). While English has made strides toward an analytic language in its present form, it cannot be literally assumed that it has lost all its irregular inflections (Baugh and Cable, 2002). It is this blend of a push-pull continuum between the regular (weak declensions) and irregular (strong declensions) inflectional propensities that compounds acquisitional difficulties among ESL learners who lack a native-like intuition of inflectional grammaticality.

The aim of this study is, therefore, to trace the story of selected verbal inflections--past, present singular indicative and 'to be'--from the Old English period to Modern English in order to shed some light on the inflections constituting common errors in ESL learning. Further, the study seeks to ferret out insights that can be adapted to demystify the complexity of teaching and learning verbal morphology in ESL and other comparable contexts.

2. Background of the study

Historical linguists operate on the principle of language development that argues that the older a language grows, the less complex it becomes. Stated differently, it is generally assumed that complex verbal conjugations are lost over time to the gain of a more regularized inflectional system. But whether languages change for worse or for better remain unresolved among historical linguists. Prescriptive grammarians, also known as purists, invariably associate language change with 'decay'. On the other hand, descriptive grammarians welcome changes in language as 'progress' (Atchison, 1991, p.3).

English went through a number of changes in the Anglo-Saxon period, which were not felt in everyday communication. One reason for the unnoticeable changes...

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