A longitudinal investigation of morpheme acquisition by Indonesian learners of L2 English

This case study investigates variability in the use of inflectional markings by two Indonesian L2 learners of English. It aims to see whether the verbal omission of particular morphemes was related to the absence of specific morphemes in the learners first language or whether they already have morphosyntactic knowledge but fail to overtly mark morphological inflections. Spontaneous production data were collected longitudinally from two subjects through audio-taping them in naturalistic conversations with both native and non-native English-speaking interlocutors. Audio data were transcribed to analyze morphological development. The findings of the study indicate that the subjects frequently omit inflections for agreement marking and copula/auxiliary verbs. It has also been found that they over-generate be forms in utterances where progressive forms do not exist.