2025 IJRSE – Volume 14 Issue 1
Available Online: 1 February 2025
Author/s:
Amusan, Kayode Victor
University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA (Kayode.amusan1@louisiana.edu)
Abstract:
This study investigates how non-native English users arrange English adjectives, especially in languages with different Noun Phrase (hence NP) syntax profiles. It examines the challenges involved in L2 acquisition of adjectives and explores how L1 theoretical generalization (linguistic and psycholinguistic models) apply to L2 acquisition. Using survey and interview as instruments, the study collected data from 37 respondents which include 5 native speakers of English (as control group), and 32 non-native users of English who are Hindi (n=7), Nepali (n=7), Yoruba (n=9), and Igbo (n=9). Findings reveal that semantically close adjectives are difficult to acquire when combined (e.g., participle and color adjectives). Therefore, acquisition is easier when semantic categories are distant from each other (e.g., quality and nationality adjectives). Secondly, adjectives that have no sense of referent in learners’ L1 are often difficult to acquire. Negative transfer is often evident in the ordering patterns among Igbo L2 users. The study argues that the proposed orderings by researchers and linguists on adjectival patterns are not intuitively alike to descriptive outcomes of the native speakers. Thus, adjectival ordering could be considered more of a psycholinguistic phenomenon on one part and a linguistic phenomenon on the other part. This study posits that while curriculum planners and L2 teachers might propose models to help learners acquire adjectival order they should allow for flexibility in the approach. This would help learners to learn the specific rules to determine the syntax of a language and allow their psychology to participate in linguistic permutations.
Keywords: adjective ordering, acquisitional challenges, ESL, NP syntax
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrse.2025.25002
Cite this article:
Amusan, K. V. (2025). The acquisitional challenges of adjective order among non-native learners of English. International Journal of Research Studies in Education, 14(1), 63-74. https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrse.2025.25002