Patterns in verbal morphology

Learner	Task	Line	Sentence
Fereshteh	Question	48	hum,…,um,….aa…bæche gorbe, koja miræveh?
	Question	61	……sab kon……um, kho, dokhtær, chera dokhtær birun miræveh?
	Retell	13	Bæ?d sina, um…….<laugh> birun pænjareh miræveh,
	Comparison	29	aa, mænæm hæmintor fekr mikonæm, um, un næfær-e be shæhr ba atobus miræveh.
	Comparison	77	bæleh, mædresæ mirævænd, amma felæn aa,
	Comparison	78	(yek, do, se:whisper) , se bæche,um, doctor,aa olum-e siasi, væ zæban-e farsi dærs mikhunæn.
Pari	Retell	6	pir zan-o zan-e dige um harf mizane, mizanan. um ba ham harf mizanand
Pari	Comparison	72	Ah..         ..aa, rævanshenasi dærs khunde. Dærs mikhaneh
Pari	Comparison	76	væ bæcheh-haye an-ha tu, um, be mædrese um,mirævæn, mirævæn…….. Doroste?

• Highlight all their durative utterances. What do you notice?

It seems that Pari and Fereshteh do fairly well attaching formal and informal morpheme suffixes to third person singular and plural durative verbs. But what we notice here is that sometimes they are successful and other times, not. We think there is a pattern whereby formal and informal suffixes are correct more often than the formal and informal stems.

• What morphological problems do they have in their language?

In Persian, “Ræftæn” means “to go” where “ræft” is the stem. In durative forms, the prefix “mi-“ which is a bound morpheme should be added to the stem; the stem “ræft” converts to the “ræv”. So far we have “mi-ræv” and the third person’s singular suffix should be added to it. Then, based on level of formality we can choose either a formal ending “-æd” or informal ending “-eh”. In the latter case, however, we should omit the formal “æv” from the stem “ræv” and add the “-eh” to “mi-r”à “mi-r-eh”.

Both learners are successful in changing the stem from “ræft” to “ræv” but they fail to omit the formal stem “æv” when using the informal suffix “eh”. So they produce something between formal and informal which is not acceptableà “mi-ræv-eh” instead of “mi-r-eh”. Pari makes the same mistake (line 76) for the third person plural, “mi-ræv-æn” instead of “mi-r-æn”.
Similarly, when Pari uses the verb “khandæn” in third person singular she picks the wrong (formal) stem but the correct informal suffix and produces “mi-khan-eh” instead of “mi-khun-eh”.

Surprisingly, Fereshteh produces that verb correctly in line 78. She uses the correct informal stem with the correct informal suffix and says “mi-khun-æn”.  “dærs khandæn” means “to study”, “khan” is the formal stem and “khun” is the informal stem; “-ænd” is the formal suffix and “-æn” is the informal suffix which should be added to the informal stem.

• Why do you think they made these errors?

The more complex the task becomes (e.g. distinguishing between formal and informal forms, not only of suffixes, but also of stems), the more difficulty the learners encounter. It seems that both learners have more trouble choosing between formal/informal stems than formal/informal suffixes. The interlanguage pattern we see above is that they tend to overgeneralize and keep constant the use of formal stems while at the same time correctly selecting between formal and informal suffixes. This pattern is consistent with Clahsen’s (1981, 1984) Initialization-Finalization strategy, which permits changes to the beginnings and ends of a sequence (e.g. a verb) while blocking changes to an internal position (e.g. a verb stem).