Morphology/Semantics Project
TSL 6250 Applied Linguistics
Objectives
To give students and opportunity to develop a reference source containing examples of morphological
change and semantic relationships that may be used to help decode meanings in English language
communication.
(This project will be completed in groups)
For this assignment, you will tape-record the natural speech of an English as a second-language learner.
Choose your learner wisely. You don’t want someone with a bilingual competence or a near-native
speaker. In both these cases, the grammar proficiency of the speaker will be too high for the purpose of
your analysis. Ideally, you will have someone who is at the intermediate level.
You will then analyze the morphological development of his/her interlangauge. In other words, what
affixes (derivational and inflectional) as this learner already acquired? Make a list of them showing
the examples of words in which they have been used. What morphological errors does this learner
make? (Again, make a list of them containing examples from the actual speech samples.) What
affixes have not been acquired? Please note anything else that might be of grammatical interest, for
example, word order in sentences, etc.
(I have a handwritten note here saying to “focus on grammar….grammatical inflectional morphemes”)
You will need to present the transcribed speech (approximately 15-20 minutes of learner’s talk) along
with the final report for this project.
To elicit a speech sample, you can ask any questions that are socially appropriate and not offensive. The
content of your speaker’s sample is not important. You will be analyzing his/her morphological
development. You may ask them about their country of origin, hobbies, pets, school, or another topic
they may select themselves. Please be patient! You will find that you need a warm-up in the beginning
of your conversation, so while your speech sample should be 15 minutes long, you will actually speak
with them longer.
Please remember to include a brief description of your learner (age, education, first language, etc.)
Briefly describe how each member of the group contributed to the project.