INFLECTION IN SPECIFIC LANGUAGE AND
SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION∗
Madhavi Gayathri Raman and R. Amritavalli
CIEFL, HyderabadI
A difficulty in learning to read, traditionally known as dyslexia, has now been shown tobelong with a language-specific disorder that manifests in oral language difficulties predating
reading (Specific Language Impairment: Leonard, 1998), and may develop into SpecificReading Disability (Bishop and Snowling, 2004). This presentation is about identifying
populations at risk for SLI or SRD in a second language situation, specifically, English in
India. We report the results of a series of tasks designed to elicit inflectional morphology – inparticular, the regular and irregular past tense markings on verbs – in English and Malayalam.
Our subjects are 17 children between 8 and 9 years of age (mean age 8;5) in an “Englishmedium” school, who have been schooled in English for about 5 years (since their enrolment
at around 3 years). Their home language is Malayalam, of which they are fluent speakers butin which they are literate only to the extent of alphabet and word recognition.
The problem of identifying poor readers in a second language is compounded by the factthat they are still in the process of acquiring that language (unlike first language readers).
Indeed, normal Second Language Acquisition (SLA) populations have been shown to
manifest difficulties similar to SLI populations; we briefly discuss this in sec. II. To avoid
problems of “missed identity” (when a L2 learner with a language impairment goes unnoticed
because his poor performance is attributed to lack of sufficient exposure to the language) and“mistaken identity” (when a slow L2 learner is identified as language disabled) in reading or
language difficulties in a second language, we here assess the children simultaneously in aseries of parallel L1 and L2 tasks. (In this we anticipate a suggestion recently made in Paradis(2005). Our hypothesis is that language impairment is not language specific. Our datastrongly support this hypothesis that impairment in the second language context is typicallycharacterized by manifesting in first language as well. The “outliers,” i.e., children who
perform significantly below the “lower fence” in the second language (we statistically define
the lower fence below) also perform significantly below the lower fence in the first language.
The subjects in the study discussed here were assessed on a battery of tasks that included
noun plural production and judgment in English and Malayalam. “Outliers” were identified
based on their performance on nouns as well as verbs in English and Malayalam. In this paper,
We would like to thank the staff and students of the Choice School, Tripunithura, whose cooperation made this study possible.
∗

Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 1, Vol. 1, 85-104© 2007 Madhavi Gayathri Raman and R. Amritavalli

Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 1, Vol. 1

we restrict our data report to the tasks on verbs. However, our discussion of the outliers takes
into account their performance on the tasks on nouns as well as verbs.
Inflectional Morphology in SLI and SLA
Inflectional morphology is known to be problematic for children with Specific Language
Impairment (SLI) in English (Leonard, 1998), German (Clahsen, 1989), Greek, Japanese,
Hebrew, and Italian (Ullman & Gopnik, 1999). Rice et al (1995) and Rice and Wexler (1996)
have shown that children with SLI tend to omit tense morphemes (third person singular,
regular and irregular past tense) more than non-tense morphemes (progressive, prepositions
and plurals). This has led them to suggest that tense morphology could serve as a clinicalmarker of SLI in English.
Second language learners of English have difficulties that are similar to those of children
with SLI. Longitudinal case studies have shown that tense morphemes are more difficult than
non-tense morphemes, especially 3rd person singular and past tense (Paradis 2005). Ionin andWexler (2002) examine the omission of verbal inflection in child L2 acquisition of English.
They argue that omission of inflection is due to problems with the realization of surface
morphology, rather than to feature impairment, in accordance with the Missing Surface
Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH) of Prévost and White (2000). Research comparing monolingual
children with SLI and their L2 age-mates in Swedish (Håkansson and Nettelbladt, 1993) and
French (Paradis & Crago, 2000) has shown that both groups show strikingly similar patternsof error.
The insights into the parallels between SLA and SLI populations have so far come to us
from studies typically comparing second language populations with unimpaired and impaired
first language populations. The tests that have been given to the second language population
are those that are norm-referenced for monolingual speakers of that language. Suchcomparisons may result in the identification of a large number of second language children as
language impaired and/or learning disabled, rather than as typically-developing second
language learners. Indeed, Paradis (2005:184) notes that “the vast majority of the ESL
children performed within the clinical range” on the Test of Grammatical Impairment (TEGI),
standardized on monolingual speakers of standard American English, “even though they are
not language impaired.” She therefore stresses the need to simultaneously assess second
language populations in their own first language; and to compare the L2 performance ofchildren at risk for SLI with that of their own unimpaired peers in the second language. The
work presented, which antedates this recent suggestion of Paradis, has been an exploratory
attempt in this direction.
Task Types and Rationale
The tasks that we describe here were originally developed for English by Dr. Michael T.
Ullman and his team at the Department of Neuroscience, Georgetown University, Washington
DC, USA. Their Malayalam counterparts were developed by the first author. The tasks elicit- 86 -

Inflection in SLI and Second Language Acquisition (M. G. Raman and R. Amritavall)

production and grammaticality judgments of regular and irregular past tense verbs, further
subdivided into real (occurring) and novel (non-occurring) forms.
In the production task, a verb was read out, along with a sentence containing a presenttense occurrence of the verb.
(1)

a.

call:

Every day I call our uncle.

Next, a sentence was read out that provided a past tense context, which had the verb missing.
The subject had to supply the missing verb.
(1)b.

Yesterday I ____ our uncle.

The task was presented in one of four modes allowing for variation in the amount of context
provided in the sentences:
Mode 1: Every day I see a rainbow.
Yesterday I ____ a rainbow.
Mode 2: Every day I see a rainbow.
Just like everyday, yesterday I ____ a rainbow.
Mode 3: Every day I see a rainbow.
Just like everyday, yesterday also I ____ a rainbow.
Mode 4: This mode consists of only real verbs.
In the judgment task, sentences were read out and subjects had to say whether thesesentences were good English sentences or not, i.e., whether they sounded right or wrong tothem. The verbs used in this task were presented as:
(2)

a.
b.
c.
d.

past tense forms: Yesterday I pulled a wagon/Yesterday I shrelt a napkin.
stem forms:
Yesterday I ring our bell/ Yesterday I poy an eagle.
double-marked forms:
Yesterday I slippeded on ice
regularized irregulars:
Yesterday I telled a story

The task was presented in two modes:
Mode 1 contained both real and novel verbs
Mode 2 contained only real verbs.
We now briefly discuss the reasons for presenting verbs in the categories of regular andirregular past tenses, and real and novel verbs.
Pinker and Ullman (2002: 456) tell us that “(f)or fifteen years the English past tense has
been a subject of debate on the nature of language processing” between the connectionist andthe dual-mechanism theories (Rumelhart and McClelland 1986; Pinker and Prince 1988).
There are about 180 irregular verbs in English that do not take a regular past -ed suffix.

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Connectionism holds that a single mechanism represents and processes both kinds of pasttense verbs. The Words and Rules (WR) theory claims that irregular forms are words with thegrammatical feature ‘past tense’ incorporated into their lexical entries, whereas regular forms
are productively generated by rule, presupposing an analysis into stem and affix.
Ullman et al (1997) link the WR theory to a hypothesis about the neurocognitive
substrate of declarative and procedural memory, i.e. lexicon and grammar. They show thatanomic patients do worse with irregulars than regulars on past-tense production tasks, butpatients with agrammatism show more difficulty inflecting regular than irregular verbs.
Tasks on regular and irregular morphology serve as a probe for language impairment under
the dual-mechanism model of inflection. Children with SLI are hypothesized to haveproblems with rule-governed suffixation. Normally developing children (on the other hand)“should be better at producing regular past tense forms, which are rule-produced, thanirregulars, which are retrieved from memory” (van der Lely and Ullman, 2001: 185). In theabsence of intact suffixation rules, children with SLI may memorize both regular and irregularforms. Regular and irregular forms may be stored and therefore for such children we expect
performance on regular and irregular forms to be comparable (Ullman and Gopnik, 1999: 56).
With regard to real versus novel forms, normal children are predicted to regularize novel
forms that resemble an existing irregular form. I.e., a novel form crive is likely to produce a
regularized past form crived, rather than an irregular form crove (compare strive-strove).
Novel forms by definition have no representations in the mental lexicon. The only option isfor a default rule to apply and this results in a regularized form (van der Lely and Ullman,
2001: 203). SLI children who may lack a rule may show a lack of overregularization. Indeed
they might produce an irregular form on analogy with existing irregular forms.
So far, we have focused on the morphological representation and processing of
inflections, whether regular or irregulars in normal and non-normal populations. However,children with SLI also have other problems with inflectional morphology, such as the outrightomission of such morphology or the acceptance of inflection-less forms. SLI children may
produce and accept unmarked verb forms in past tense contexts. As van der Lely and Ullman(1996) note, this suggests that their impairment may extend beyond morphologicalcomputation, to the syntactic representation of tense.
II
Developing the tasks in Malayalam
We had to develop tasks in Malayalam that were parallel to the English tasks: verbs in
the Malayalam task had to represent the categories regular and irregular, and real (occurring)and novel (non-occurring) forms. In contrast to English, Malayalam has no readily
recognizable distinction between “regular” and “irregular” past tense forms, corresponding to
the difference between a “rule” and the listing of lexically associated pairs.

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Inflection in SLI and Second Language Acquisition (M. G. Raman and R. Amritavall)

Past tense is marked in two ways in Malayalam: (i) by adding -i to the verb root orderived stem, or (ii) by adding -u to it, preceded by one or another of a range of consonants or
consonant sequences. The selection of the appropriate past tense suffix depends on a
combination of morphological and phonological factors (Asher and Kumari, 1997: 286). The i suffixing and -u suffixing verbs correspond respectively to the traditional verb classes 13-16
and 1-12 listed in the appendix to Vol. 1 of Kunjan Pillai’s Malayalam Lexicon (Pillai, 1965).
Table 1.2 Malayalam verb classes: present- and past-tense forms

Class 1
Class 2
Class 3
Class 4
Class 5Class 6Class 7
Class 8Class 9Class 10Class 11Class 12Class 13Class 14Class 15Class 16Classes 1-12 (- u suffixing)
Present tense form
Past tense form
ceyy-unnu ‘do(es)’ceytu ‘did’
kaaN-unnu ‘see(s)’kaNDu ‘saw’
toD-unnu ‘touch(es)’toTTu ‘touched’
paRay-unnu ‘say(s)’paRaññu ‘said’koLL-unnu ‘get(s)’koNDu ‘got’viizh-unnu ‘fall(s)’viiNu ‘fell’
tinn-unnu ‘eat(s)’tinnu ‘ate’
koDukk-unnu ‘give(s)’koDuttu ‘gave’kakk-unnu ‘steal(s)’kaTTu ‘stole’kaDikky-unnu ‘bite(s)’kaDiccu ‘bit’
paDhikk-unnu ‘stud(ies)’
paDhiccu ‘studied’
tuRakk-unnu ‘open(s)’tuRannu ‘opened’
Classes 13-16 (- i suffixing)
kayaR-unnu ‘climb(s)’kayaRi ‘climbed’iRaŋŋ-unnu ‘get(s)down’iRaŋŋi ‘got down’pokk-unnu ‘lift(s)’pokki ‘lifted’
uNaRtt-unnu ‘wake(s)up’uNaRtti ‘woke up’

The use of both -i and -u is morphologically conditioned in terms of verb classes. The -i
suffix attaches to comparatively fewer verb classes but the classes differ among themselves insize: classes 1 and 6 are small, while 4, 7, 8, and 10 are comparatively large. Many of themore frequently used verbs belong to classes 11 and 13, straddling the -i and -u divide. Thus
frequency or productivity does not allow us to readily distinguish the two suffixes.
The Words and Rules theory nevertheless posits a “default rule” for morphologically richlanguages like Malayalam and German. Consider German. There are 8 plural suffixes inGerman. One of them acts as the default plural suffix, as it attaches to unusual-sounding
nouns (Plaupfs), to names that are homophonous with irregular nouns (die Thomas Manns), toirregular-sounding eponyms (Batmans), and foreignisms. Though few nouns in German
speech take an -s plural, children frequently overregularize the suffix, supporting its status asa default (Pinker, 1998: 24).1 The idea of a default rule does not necessarily correlate withfrequency. The regular (default) past tense rule in German applies to a minority of forms such

1

Page reference to the internet version of the paper.

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Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 1, Vol. 1

as rare verbs, unusual-sounding verbs, and onomatopoeic forms (op cit). In addition, children
overregularize in the direction of this suffix.
Under the WR theory, we may broadly speak of the -i suffixing and -u suffixing verbs in
Malayalam as “regular” and “irregular” verbs respectively, because the addition of -i to theroot or derived stem appears to be less constrained than the addition of -u; -i is lessmorphologically conditioned and appears to be more productive than -u. To the best of ourknowledge, it does not induce stem allomorphy in the stem that it attaches to. Consider thetwo -u suffixing verbs koDukk ‘to give’ and tuRakk ‘to open’. koDukk has the past tense form
koDuttu ‘gave’ and has a lexical entry koDukk- ~ koDutt-. tuRakk has the past tense form
tuRannu ‘opened’ and is listed as having the stem alternant tuRakk- ~ tuRann-. Both these -u
suffixing forms contrast with the more “regular” -i suffixing verb pokk- ‘to lift’ which has apast tense form pokki ‘lifted’ which does not exhibit stem allomorphy. Thus, -u suffixing
Malayalam past tense verbs must have lexical entries listing the stem and its past tense
allomorphic alternant Lieber (1980). These would have to be learnt and stored in the memoryin acquisition while -i suffixing verbs are not learnt and stored thus. Anticipating a little, ourdata support this view: novel forms designed to end in -u were often overregularized to -i.
Keeping in mind such various considerations, verbs were chosen for our tasks according
to the following criteria:
(i)

(ii)

(iii)

Real verbs were chosen from all 16 classes, so that the entire range of stems for thetwo past tense morphemes was covered. In the case of Classes 1 and 6 one member
was chosen (as class sizes were small). 3-4 verbs were chosen from verb classes with alarger membership (Classes 4, 7, 8, 10). Many of the more frequently used verbs
belong to the two classes 11 and 13 (as we said earlier). This was reflected in the
choice of verbs, in that these two relatively large verb classes were represented more
often.
All the real verbs chosen were those that are judged to be heard and used frequently inspeech. They were carefully chosen to ensure that they would be familiar to thesubjects. As we are not aware of any frequency counts in Malayalam, we relied on our
intuition in this matter.
The novel verbs were designed as to be phonologically similar to the entire range ofreal verbs. In order to check that the novel forms belonged to the class that they were
thought to represent and to check for naturalness and plausibility, past tense forms forthese were elicited from eleven adult native speakers of Malayalam.2 No discrepancies
were found between the forms expected and the actual forms given by adult responses.

Given the exploratory nature of this work, we not able to control the Malayalam tasks for2

The eleven adult speakers comprised three post-graduate professionals, three graduate housewives,
three doctoral research students and two graduate students.

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Inflection in SLI and Second Language Acquisition (M. G. Raman and R. Amritavall)variables such as equalizing the number of items on each task, item frequency, and syllabic
length of items.
Administration
The tasks were administered to 17 Malayalam-English bilinguals (6 girls, and 11 boys)of Class 3 (mean age 8 years 5 months) between March 19 – 24, 2001.
English past tense production3
The production task administered consisted of 75 verbs belonging to 4 classes:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)

21 real regular verbs (call-called),
29 real irregular verbs (dig-dug),
12 novel regular verbs (prap-prapped),
13 novel irregular verbs (freep-frept) whose stems are phonologically similar to thestems of real irregular verbs.

As mentioned earlier the verbs were presented in the following frame:[see]: Every day I see a rainbow. Yesterday I ____ a rainbow.
Table 1.1 and 1.2 present the real and novel regular and irregular verbs used along with their
expected past tense forms.

3

The original tasks in English had been carefully designed and constructed by Dr. Ullman and his
team to include an equal number of real “non-rhyming” regulars and irregulars. The task also included
real “rhyming” regulars. Due to the unexpected revoking of the time period initially allotted for testingby the school while testing was in progress however, we were unable to respect these considerations
completely.

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Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 1, Vol. 1

Table 1.1 Real Regular and Irregular verbs used
Real Regular Verbs (21)Stem forms
Expected pastmarked forms
whip
whippedstep
steppedpray
prayedpleasepleasedsighsigheddrown
drownedscreenscreenedslow
slowedstop
stopped
owe
owed
sway
swayedheap
heapedpass
passedsqueezesqueezed
scrapescraped
dry
dried
glow
glowedstray
strayed
cry
cried
blind
blindedcallcalledReal Irregular Verbs (29)
Stem forms
Expected pastmarked forms
slide
slid
break
broke
bind
bound
dig
dug
keep
kept
weep
wept
sell
sold
lose
lost
stringstrung
swim
swam
creep
crept
fling
flung
stridestrodeteachtaught
deal
dealt
lend
lent
freeze
froze
hold
held
flee
fled
catch
caught
stick
stuck
sink
sank
sling
slung
bleed
bled
hide
hid
spend
spent
seek
soughtbring
brought
telltold- 92 -

Inflection in SLI and Second Language Acquisition (M. G. Raman and R. Amritavall)

Table 1.2 Novel Regular and Irregular verbs presented
Novel Regular Verbs (12)Stem forms
Expected pastmarked forms
ploon
loy
plip
cray
zole
noop
wape
chay
chawl
proy
prass
prap

ploonedloyedplippedcrayedzolednoopedwaped
chayedchawledproyedprassedprappedNovel Irregular Verbs (13)
Stem forms Expected
Plausible
regularized
irregularized
past marked past marked
forms
forms
freep
freepedfrept
spreelspreeled
spreltscringscringed
scrungtreep
treepedtrept
shrakeshrakedshrokesplinksplinkedsplunkcleep
cleepedclept
blide
blidedblid
tring
tringedtrung
screepscreeped
screptfring
fringedfrung
cheel
cheeledchelt
stritestritedstroteWe note that for real irregular verbs, only an existing, real irregular past tense form wasconsidered an acceptable response. For novel irregular verbs, either an irregular form, or the
regularized form was considered acceptable (following Ullman and Gopnik, 1999). Thismethod of scoring presupposes that real irregular verbs have been encountered in the input
and stored in the memory, unlike unencountered novel forms. (We shall see however, that thechildren’s response patterns indicate little difference between real and novel irregular forms,
arguing that the distinction is nullified in the relatively input-poor L2 context.)
English past tense judgment
The judgment task administered consisted of 61 verbs drawn from 4 classes:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)

19 real regular verbs (pull-pulled)
21 real irregular verbs (tell-told)
15 novel regular verbs (spole-spoled)
6 novel irregular verbs (shrelt)

Real verbs were presented as past tense forms (pulled, bought), stem forms (walk, swear),double-marked forms (whippeded), regularized irregular forms (telled). Novel verbs were
presented as past tense forms (spoled, shrelt), and stem forms (poy).
All verbs were presented in the following frame: [pull]: Yesterday I pull a wagon.
Tables 1.3 and 1.4 present the real and novel regular and irregular verb forms used.

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Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 1, Vol. 1

Table 1.3 Real Regular and Irregular verbs presented
Real Regular Verbs (19) presented as
Real Irregular Verbs (21) presented as
Stem forms Past marked Double-marked Stem forms Past marked Regularized
Forms
forms
forms
forms
walk
pulledwhippededeatboughttelledstir
scoreddrowneded
swear
spun
weepedweigh
filedslippeded
feel
stole
bindedpourcrawledcallededring
built
sleepedbeg
scannedscrapeded
cling
bent
freezedusesharedstoppededstrikewrung
dealedglazed
swing
sent
run
Table 1.4 Novel Regular and Irregular verbs presented
Novel Regular verbs (15) presented as
Stem forms
Past marked
forms
poy
spoledswur
scurredyawk
hoiledplar
vawled
nace
sazed
slore
clazeddreck
splanned
crog

Novel Irregular Verbs (6) presented as
Past tense forms
shrelt
sprun
snote
stoze
fent
slent

Malayalam past tense production
The task we administered consisted of 35 verbs belonging to 4 classes:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)

14 -i suffixing real verbs (pokkunnu-pokki)
10 -u suffixing real verbs (paRayunnu-paRaññu)
5 -i suffixing novel verbs (saaDunnu-saaDi).
6 -u suffixing novel verbs (rannunnu-rannu)

As mentioned earlier the verbs were presented in the following frame:[pokkunnu]: ellaa diwasawum ñaan meeša pokkunnu. innale ñaan meeša ______. (Every day
I lift a table. Yesterday I _________ a table.)
Tables 1.5 and 1.6 present the real and novel -i suffixing and -u suffixing verbs used alongwith their expected past tense forms.

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Inflection in SLI and Second Language Acquisition (M. G. Raman and R. Amritavall)

Table 1.5 Real -i suffixing and -u suffixing verbs presented
Real -i suffixing Verbs (14)
Stem forms
Expected pastmarked forms
ooDi ‘ran’
ooDunnu‘run(s)’kayaRunnu ‘climb(s)’ kayaRi ‘climbed’kiiRunnu‘tear(s)’kiiRi ‘tore’
caaDunnu ‘jump(s)’ caaDi ‘jumped’taTTunnu ‘knock(s)’ taTTi ‘knocked’
paaDunnu ‘sing(s)’ paaDi ‘sang’
puuTTunnu ‘lock(s)’ puuTTi ‘locked’
muTTunnu ‘knock(s)’ muTTi ‘knocked’

Real -u suffixing Verbs (10)Stem forms
Expected pastmarked forms
kaaNunnu ‘see(s)’kaNDu ‘saw’
karayunnu ‘cry(s)’karaññu ‘cried’
paRayunnu ‘say(s)’paRaññu ‘said’tinnunnu ‘eat(s)’tinnu ‘ate’warunnu ‘come(s)’wannu ‘came’eDukkunnu ‘take(s)’ eDuttu ‘took’
koDukkunnu ‘give(s)’ koDuttu ‘gave’
paRikkyunnu
paRiccu ‘plucked’‘pluck(s)’iRaŋŋi ‘got down’ kaLikkyunnu ‘play(s)’ kaLiccu ‘played’iRaŋŋunnu‘get(s)down’uRaŋŋunnu ‘sleep(s)’ uRaŋŋi ‘slept’

paDhikkunnu‘stud(ies)’

paDhiccu ‘studied’waaŋŋunnu ‘buy(s)’ waaŋŋi ‘bought’
pokkunnu ‘lift(s)’pokki ‘lifted’uRakkunnu ‘put(s) to uRakki ‘put tosleep’
sleep’UNDakkunnu ‘make(s)’ uNDakki ‘made’
Table 1.6 Novel -i suffixing and -u suffixing verbs presented
Novel -i suffixing Verbs (5) Novel -u suffixing Verbs (6)Stem
Expected past Stem
Expected pasttense form
tense form
saaDunnu
bhaaDunnu
saTTunnutapaŋŋunnu
suRakkunnu

saaDibhaaDisaTTitapaŋŋi
suRakkilinunnu
rannunnu
SuDukkunnu
cakkunnu
yanakkyunnu
tunikkyunnu

linnu
rannu
SuDuttucaTTu
yanaccutuniccu

Past tense judgment
The Malayalam judgment task consisted of 26 verbs drawn from 4 classes:- 95-

Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 1, Vol. 1

(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)

10 -i suffixing real verbs (ooDunnu-ooDi)
8 -u suffixing real verbs (karayunnu- karaññu) presented as:
4 -i suffixing novel verbs (saTTunnu-saTTi) presented as:
4 -u suffixing novel verbs (rannunnu-rannu) presented as:Real verbs were presented as present tense verbs (ooDunnu, karayunnu) and past tenseverbs (kayaRi, karaññu). Similarly, novel verbs were also presented as present tense verbs(saTTunnu, rannunnu) and past tense verbs (bhaaDi, linnu)
As before, all verb were presented in the following frame:[pokki]: innale ñaan meeša pokki.
Tables 1.7 and 1.8 present the list of real and novel forms -i suffixing and -u suffixing verbs
forms used.

Table 1.7 Real -i suffixing and -u suffixing verbs presented
Real -i suffixing Verbs (10) presented as Real -u suffixing Verbs (8) presented as
Present tense forms Past marked forms Present tense forms Past marked forms
taTTunnu ‘knock(s)’ kayaRi ‘climbed’ paRayunnu ‘say(s)’ karaññu ‘cried’
koTTunnu ‘knock(s)’ caaDi ‘jumped’varunnu ‘come(s)’ tinnu ‘ate’
paaDunnu ‘sing(s)’ puuTi ‘locked’
koDukkunnu
eDuttu ‘took’‘give(s)’ooDunnu ‘run(s)’uRaŋŋi ‘slept’kaLiccu ‘played’uRakkunnu ‘put(s) to iRaŋŋi ‘got down’paDhiccu ‘studied’
sleep’
Table 1.8 Novel -i suffixing and -u suffixing verbs presented
Real -i suffixing Verbs (4)presented as
Present tense Past marked
forms
forms
tapaŋŋunnu
bhaaDiReal -u suffixing Verbs (4)presented as
Present tense Past marked
forms
forms
rannunnu
yanaccu

saTTunnu

tunikkyunnu

suRakki

SuDuttuIII
Results and discussion:
In this section, we analyze group and individual performances on the English and Malayalamtasks.

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Inflection in SLI and Second Language Acquisition (M. G. Raman and R. Amritavall)Group performance: English tasks
Table 1.9 and Figure 1 present the group’s scores on tasks in English (in percentages)
Fig. 1English
Verbs
Real
Novel
Production

Judgment

63.2
r 95.2
ir 39.9

92.7
r 96.6ir 89.1

78.3
r 80.5
ir 76.5

75.9
r 82.4
ir 60

120

100

real regular80

real irregularnovel regular

60

novel irregular
40

20

0

Past tense
production
judgm ent

Malayalam tasks
Table 1.10 and Fig. 2 present the group’s scores on tasks in Malayalam (in percentages)
Malayalam
Verbs

Production

Real

Novel

99.8
r 100
ir 99.4

83.4
r 87.1
ir 80.4

Fig. 2
120

100

80

real -i suffixing
60

real -u suffixing
40

Judgment

94.4
r 94.1
ir 94.8

91.9
r 94.1
ir 90.5

novel -i suffixing
novel -u suffixing

20

0

Past tense
production
judgm ent

Note: the figures in bold indicate the overall score obtained by collapsing across thecategories of regular and irregular verbs.
From Table 1.9, we find that past marking on real regular verbs is almost at ceilingshowing that the group has acquired the past tense marking rule and is using it productively.
However, the group’s poor performance on irregular verbs is comparatively poorer, with our- 97-Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 1, Vol. 1

subjects tending to produce regularized past tense forms rather than the irregular past tense
forms we expect them to have stored as lexical items in the memory. Not a single child failed
to produce an overregularized form. An unpaired t-test revealed a significant difference at the0.01 level of significance (df = 32, t = 10.77) between regular and irregular past tense
production. Past marking on novel regular verbs was almost at ceiling and irregular verbs
were regularized at a high rate suggesting that the regular rule had been acquired by all our
subjects.
We expect performance on the judgment task to be equal to or better than that on the
production task. However, we find that performance in this task is consistently lower in all
categories with the exception of real irregulars. A possible reason for this unexpected result
could be a response bias (a tendency of the subjects to give a “yes’ answer irrespective ofwhether it is right or wrong (Wenzlaff and Clahsen, 2004)) due to the fact that the items were
presented by the researcher who assumes a position of authority vis-à-vis the child.
In keeping with our expectations, performance on the production task in Malayalam (L1)
is at ceiling (see Table 1.10). Though judgment appears to be slightly lower than production,
the difference is not significant. This is in contrast with the result obtained for English,
suggesting that the response bias of accepting incorrect forms is not operative in the stronger
language or L1, i.e., Malayalam.
Outliers:
Recall that we also wish to identify potential language impairment in the L2 by normreferencing the performance of children at risk to that of their unimpaired peers. We therefore
proceeded to identify “outliers” on 16 tasks: regular and irregular past tense and plural,
production and judgment, in English and Malayalam. Commonly, such individuals are
identified by first calculating the Interquartile Range (IQR). Any value that is 1.5 interquartile
ranges (1.5 times the distance between the 25th and the 75th percentiles) below the 25th
percentile (lower fence), or above the 75th percentile (upper fence) score of the group, is apossible outlier.
Seven subjects (2 girls, 5 boys) were identified whose performance on was below thelower fence on parallel tasks in both languages:
JJ, VF: on verbs only,
JG, JE, RA, LA: on verbs and nouns,
LV: on nouns only.
Our data show that where a subject is below the lower fence in English, (s)he is so in
Malayalam as well. This provides strong support for our hypothesis that children who are at
risk for SLI will show poor performance on inflections in L1 as well as in L2.
Significantly, similar lexical categories pose problems in English and Malayalam.

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Inflection in SLI and Second Language Acquisition (M. G. Raman and R. Amritavall)

The outliers account for more than two-thirds of the errors on all the tasks. Even In tasks
where they are not identified as outliers, they account for most of the errors. The errors madeby them consist of production of unmarked forms, rejection of past marked and plural marked
forms, and acceptance of stem forms. Such errors are typical of the SLI profile.
Errors:In the past tense production task for English, subjects’ errors were coded as:
(i)
(ii)

Unmarked: the unmarked verb form (e.g., look-look, dig-dig, plam-plam, crive-crive)
Alternatively marked: an overtly marked form other than a past-marked oroverregularized form of the prompted verb, including -s suffixed (e.g., make-makes), ing suffixed (soar-soaring), or -en suffixed (give-given).
(iii) Overregularized: -ed suffixed irregular stems (dig-digged)(iv) Irregularizations: inappropriately irregularized irregular (e.g., bring-brang, stringstrang)4(v)
Phonologically proximate: a real word not conceptually plausible in the sentence
context but phonologically similar to the prompted word (e.g., whip an egg - wept)(vi) Double marked: a form marked twice (e.g., owe-oweded, sink-sanked)(vii) Unclear: an unclear response that could not be classified.
(viii) No response: no response to the prompt or subject responded with “no.”The lower fence value obtained for production of regular verbs task is 88.1. Unmarked
responses accounted for errors on this task.
Given the group’s poor performance on production of irregular verbs, it was not possible
to calculate a lower fence value (as it became a negative value). There were no outliers
beyond the upper fence value which was calculated at 93.
In the production of past tense forms of novel irregular verbs, the lower fence value
calculated is 61.5. Of the errors, production of an unmarked verb was characteristic of theoutliers, who produced 7 out of 8 such errors.
In the judgment task, the errors have been classified according to the following responsetypes:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
(v)

Past marked form correctly judged
Past marked form wrongly rejected (e.g., dug, plammed)
Stem form wrongly accepted (e.g., walk, poy)
Double marked form wrongly accepted (e.g., stoppeded)
Overregularization wrongly accepted (e.g., telled)

4

Our data include 2 instances of irregularization of regular verbs: 1 in the real verb category (heaphept) and 1 in the novel verb category (plip-plept). Neither of these were made by any of the subjects
who manifested problems in Malayalam as well as English.

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Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 1, Vol. 1

(vi)
(vii)

No preference indicatedNo response: no response to the prompt or subject responded with “no.”The lower fence value is 28.9 and no outliers were identified on the judgment of real
regular verbs. But if we consider the two categories of error “rejection of past marked forms”
and “acceptance of stem forms,” 14 of the 15 errors, and 13 of the 16 errors respectively werecommitted by subjects who were identified as outliers on other tasks. This group was also
responsible for 21 of the 29 errors in the category of accepting a double-marked form. Overall,
the outliers were responsible for 48 of the 63 errors on the judgment of real regular verbs.
The lower fence value obtained on real irregular verbs is 38, and we identified LA (whoaccounts for 19 % of all the errors on this task) as an outlier on this task The outliers were
responsible for 52 out of a total of 84 errors on real irregulars. In the error categories“rejection of past marked forms” and “acceptance of stem forms,” the outliers accounted for
14 of the 18 errors, and 10 of the 17 errors respectively. This group also accounted for 28 of
the 44 errors in the category of accepting a double-marked form.
The lower fence value obtained on the judgment of novel regular verbs is 60.1. The
outliers account for 18 of the 20 errors rejecting past marked forms, and 14 of the 22 errors
accepting stem forms.
The lower fence value on novel irregular verbs is 25.1. Once again, we find that theoutliers account for 26 of the 39 errors. In the past tense production task for Malayalam, thesubjects’ errors were coded as:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
(v)
(vi)

Present tense marked: the present tense marked verb form (e.g., pokkunnu-pokkunnu;
saaDunnu-saaDunnu)
Alternatively marked: an overtly marked form that is not the past marked form
(pokkunnu-pokkum)
Overregularized: a form suffixed with an -i ending instead of an -u ending (tinnunnutinni)Wrong stem allomorphy: past marked form with a wrong stem allomorph(SuDukkunnu-SuDuccu instead of SuDuttu).
Phonologically proximate: a real word not conceptually plausible in the sentence
context, but similar to the prompted word (e.g., cattu ‘died’ instead of caTTu).
Unclear: an unclear response that could not be classified by the coder.

The lower fence for the production of real -i ending verbs is calculated at 100 and there
were no outliers on this task.
The lower fence for real -u ending verbs is calculated at 100 and the two errors(unmarked responses) were made by outliers.
In the production of novel -i ending verbs, the lower fence value obtained is 80. The- 100 -

Inflection in SLI and Second Language Acquisition (M. G. Raman and R. Amritavall)outliers produced all the errors in the category “present tense marked forms”. This group was
also responsible for all the unclear responses as well.
For novel -u ending verbs, the lower fence value is identified at 25.1. 4 subjects
identified as outliers account for the 8 errors in the category “present tense marked” forms, 1
alternatively marked form, 1 phonologically proximate form and 2 of the 3 unclear forms.
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
(v)
(vi)

In the past tense judgment task for Malayalam, subjects’ errors were coded as:
Past marked form correctly accepted
Past marked form wrongly rejected (tinnu)
Present tense form wrongly accepted (pokkunnu)
No preference indicatedNo response: no response to the prompt or subject responded with “no.”The lower fence value on the judgment of real -i ending verbs is 100 and the outliers
make all the errors in the categories “rejection of past marked forms” and “acceptance of stem
forms”.
The lower fence value on real -u ending verbs was calculated at 68.8. There are no
outliers on the -u ending judgment task. However, all the errors are made by this group.
The lower fence value for novel -i ending verbs is at ceiling. Once again, the outliers
account for the errors in the categories “past marked form rejected” and “present tense form
accepted”.
Once again, in the novel -u ending task, the outliers make all the errors in the categories“past marked form rejected” and “present tense form accepted”.
A brief discussion of three subjects (JG, VF, AG) will show that the results obtained do
not seem to be an artefact of our testing tools and procedures. JG’s problems in production are
confined to Malayalam: novel regular verbs, and real and novel regular nouns are problematic.
We find an unusual number of wrong stem allomorphy errors on novel regular verbs andnouns, arguing that they have a listed status in his grammar. He also shows a tendency toirregularize real regular nouns. JG’s problems do not show up in the judgment and productionof real forms in English. This could be attributed to conscious rule learning. An informal
conversation with his mother (also a teacher at the school) during the course of testing
revealed that he had been receiving extra help at school and home, as he appeared to havedifficulties with reading. Coincidentally with the period of our research, he was identified as adyslexic by a psychologist attached to the school.5 It is therefore possible that the extra
assistance provided to him has led to his improved performance in the judgment andproduction of real regulars in English. Support for this assumption comes from a similarfinding in Ullman and Gopnik (1999), where a language impaired subject AW, produced
5

To the best of our knowledge, this was done using an English test norm-referenced for monolingualEnglish populations.

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overregularizations but failed to produce novel regular past-marked forms which is attributed
to an explicitly learned strategy of suffixing -ed to forms retrieved from memory. VF was
identified as a probable dyslexic by the class teacher who informed the researcher that heseemed to experience difficulties in class while reading texts aloud, a common classroom
activity. AG, who was identified as an outlier in Malayalam but not in English, was repeating
the class and this could have had an effect on his performance in English. During testing, hisconversations with me were almost entirely in Malayalam ruling out the possibility that thepoor performance in Malayalam might be due to insufficient exposure to the L1.
Conclusion:
We began with the hypothesis that language impairment is not language specific. Ourdata strongly support the possibility that impairment in the second language context typicallymanifests in first language as well. The “outliers,” i.e., children who perform significantly
below the lower fence in the second language also perform significantly below the lower
fence in the first language. It is particularly striking that the difficulties across first language
and second language are matched according to the lexical categories of verb and noun.
One prediction about impairment that follows from the WR theory is that difficulties
with rule-governed suffixation will serve to distinguish between impaired and unimpaired
populations. This prediction is irrelevant to the L2 situation because the English irregularverbs, like novel verbs, are overwhelmingly overregularized in our data. However, the WR
theory is validated to the extent that the rule appears to have been acquired by all the subjects
including those identified as at-risk for SLI. The application of the rule to both real and novel
irregulars leading to overregularizations may also be a pointer to the role of conscious rulelearning in an instructed L2 context.
Thus, it is their error patterns that serve to distinguish between the two groups. The
production of unmarked forms, the incorrect acceptance of present tense and plural forms, therejection of past and plural marked forms differentiated between the two populations. On
some English tasks, we were unable to identify the lower fence or outliers. All our subjects
made errors, but still we found that the group identified as outliers were responsible for morethan two-thirds of the errors. In contrast, all the errors in the Malayalam tasks are attributable
to the outliers. Thus, if we see normality and impairment as two ends of a cline, then children
prone to errors, outliers and those at risk for SLI would form progressive points on the cline.
Not all the subjects identified as outliers would be language impaired. It appears that our tasks
are capable of degrees of discrimination, separating out populations who are prone to error
from those who are at risk for SLI. SLI appears to manifest as an accumulation of difficulties
on many aspects of morphological tasks.
As regards Malayalam, we have suggested that although there is no clear cut distinction
between regular and irregular past tense, the -i ending verbs being comparatively less subject
to stem allomorphy, have the status of “regular” verbs. This conjecture is supported by thefact that novel verbs designed as -u ending verbs were “overregularized” by -i suffixation.

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Inflection in SLI and Second Language Acquisition (M. G. Raman and R. Amritavall)

There were 31 such “errors” on -u ending verbs. Thus, our subjects appear to be assigning‘add -i to the stem’ the status of a default rule very much like the regular rule in English. In
this they differ from the adult Malayalam speakers who produced the more restricted -u
ending on novel verbs designed to end in -u. A possible explanation for this could be that
adult responses were affected by literacy or conscious learning.
In conclusion, the results we have obtained on the first language and the prominence of
their ‘fit’ with the second language are particularly interesting. We believe that this finding
requires validation from more extended testing both within ESL groups, and across L1 and L2.

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