Analyzing Azerbaijani /Persian Bilinguals’ Errors in Persian Verb Production based on 4-M Model

This paper studies the errors produced by Azari-Turkish/Persian bilinguals using the inflectional morphemes of Persian verb, on the basis of 4-M model. The data were collected from 50 primary bilingual students’ writings in Meshkinshahr villages. The inflectional morphemes of Persian verb were classified in two types: early system morphemes (negative, causative, imperative and passive morphemes) and late outside system morphemes (person/number, tense, aspect, subjunctive morphemes) according to 4-M model. The data Analysis indicates the late outside system morphemes of Persian verb are acquired harder and later than its early system morphemes by bilingual students. It seems there is a relation between different morpheme nature and their acquisition order. Late outside system morphemes are activated later in the production process as required by the grammatical frame of the target language. While early system morphemes are indirectly elected at the same time that content morphemes are directly elected by the speaker’s intentions. The results match Wei (2000) explanation of different morpheme acquisition order based on 4-M model.

This paper studies the errors produced by Azerbaijani /Persian bilinguals using the inflectional morphemes of Persian verb, on the basis of 4-M model. The data were collected from 50 primary bilingual students’ writings in Meshkinshahr villages. 50 subjects were native speakers of Azerbaijani but they had learned Persian (language of instruction) as a second language.The inflectional morphemes of Persian verb were classified in two types: early system morphemes (negative, causative, imperative and passive morphemes) and late outside system morphemes (person/number, tense, aspect, subjunctive morphemes) according to 4-M model. The 4-M model specifies four types of morphemes: content morphemes, early system morphemes, and two types of late system morphemes. The model further subcategorizes late system morphemes into two types: bridges and outsiders. Early system morphemes are activated at the lemma level together with their content morpheme heads for their maximal projection. Unlike content morphemes and early system morphemes, late system morphemes depend on other types of information for their activation, and this information is only available at the level of the formulator, where language specific morphosyntactic patterns must be realized. Information about all types of morphemes is present in lemmas, information about content morphemes and early system morphemes is salient at the conceptual level, and information about late system morphemes becomes salient at the positional level of the formulator.

The data analyzing indicates the late outside system morphemes of Persian verb are acquired harder and later than its early system morphemes by bilingual students. The differences across abstract lexical entries in the mental lexicon cause different degrees of difficulty in acquiring different types of morphemes. The descriptive statistics of the data showed that not all morphemes are produced with equal accuracy. Learner errors with the late system morphemes (person/number) are more frequent than other system morphemes. Both third and 4^th grade learners had almost no difficulty in acquiring some early system morphemes (such as negative, causative, imperative and passive morphemes), but they had serious difficulty inaccurately producing the late system morphemes. So the late outside system morphemes of Persian (person/number) are acquired with more difficulty and later in comparison to early system morphemes. It seems there is a relation between different morpheme nature and their acquisition order. Late outside system morphemes are activated later in the production process as required by the grammatical frame of the target language. While early system morphemes are indirectly elected at the same time that content morphemes are directly elected by the speaker’s intentions. So it is the sources of morphemes that can effectively explain why certain learner errors are more frequent and common than others and thus determine the order of second language morpheme accuracy/frequency acquisition. This paper results match Wei (2000) explanation of different morpheme acquisition order based on 4-M model. Wei (2000) concluded that Interlanguage data from early adult Chinese and Japanese learners of Englishas a second language indicate an implicational hierarchy of morpheme acquisition: content morphemes areacquired before any system morphemes, and early system morphemes are acquired before late systemmorphemes