Proposal for PhD in English

Name: Abid Karam

Title: An Analysis of the Problems in Learning English Nouns by Undergraduate

Students

Introduction

The present study will focus on the analysis of the problems in learning English nouns. Noun is
traditionally regarded as one the eight parts of speech (Huddleston, 1984). Under this
categorization of part of speech, pronoun is considered a sub part of noun. One of the reasons
which are most relevant to the present study is the similar application of grammatical categories
to both noun and pronoun. The importance of noun/pronoun in the English language is self-
evident. Communication in the English language is not possible without the acquisition/learning
of English noun. That is why the study specifically focuses on the analysis of morphological,
semantic, syntactic and functional issues in learning English noun.

Noun or pronoun acts as the head of the phrase in noun phrase. Head word determines the
features of the noun phrase such as number (singular and plural), gender (masculine and
feminine or neuter) and case (Nominative, Accusative and possessive) (Huddleston, 1984) . The
following are the examples of the noun as head word.

[The blue car] that Ali bought yesterday.

[The yellow car] that is parked outside my office.

[A French car] with four-wheel steering.

On the basis of grammatical features noun can be classified into different subclasses e.g.
common nouns, proper nouns and pronouns. The subclass common noun is identified as the
unmarked (default) one while the proper nouns always act as the head word in the noun phrase.
Application of Grammatical Categories to Noun

The term "grammatical category" refers to specific properties of a word that can cause that word
and / or a related word to change in form for grammatical reasons (ensuring agreement between
words). These grammatical categories such as number, gender and case are applicable to English
nouns.

Grammatical Categories of Number

Grammatical Categories of Number means singular and plural forms of a noun. In number plural
are made of a singular noun by applying inflectional morphemes. There are different lexemes to
which inflections are added thus becomes plural lexemes e.g. a lexeme “boy”, by adding an
inflection “s” to lexeme boy, we make plural. It is the inflectional expression of number
(Gleason, 1965).

The functional property in which the morphological process of making plural form is different,
within the letter the singular form is the lexical stem and the plural is formed by adding suffixes.
e.g. /iz/, /z/ -churches, garages and roses, /s/ - hates mints and ropes etc. Another method of
making plurals of irregular noun is the changing of letter(s) e.g. man to men, child to children
and there are some other nouns having the same singular and plural called syncretism e.g. sheep
and fish (Huddleston, 1984).

Grammatical Categories of Gender

Gender is a grammatical category which is applied to English noun. In the languages that have
grammatical gender—according to a representative typological sample, almost half of the
languages in the world separate nouns into classes. These classes are often meaningful and often
linked to biological sex, which is why many languages are said to have a “masculine” and a
“feminine” gender. In everyday speech, the word “gender” is associated with the biological and
social differences between women and men. In addition, people might know that languages have
masculine and feminine words. So, it seems that grammatical gender is a reflection of natural
gender in grammar (Audring, 2016).
Grammatical Categories of Case

Case is a grammatical category which is applied to English noun. The difference between
lexemes and inflectional forms is more complicated to apply to the close class of pronouns than
to the open class of ordinary nouns, verbs or adjectives, where the systematic correspondence
over large sets of forms. The clearest example of an inflectional category in pronouns is case,
with nominative I and accusative me being forms of a single lexeme. The syntactic rules specify
when the pronoun may or must appear in one or other case, and the morphology specifies the
form - though we cannot give any worthwhile rules for deriving the forms (Huddleston, 1984).
The forms are shown in the table.

Personal pronoun Possessive pronoun

Nominative Accusative Attributive Absolute

I me my mine

we us our ours

You your yours

he him His

she her her hers

It Its

they them Their theirs

Table 1 shows grammatical categories of case

The Objectives of the Study

The present study has the following objectives

i. To analyze the problems in learning English noun by undergraduate students

 ii. To analyze the frequency of errors in the use of English noun.

iii. To analyze the problems in the application of grammatical categories to English

noun.

iv. To investigate the Problems in the learning the application of the grammatical

category to English noun for Undergraduate level Students.

Research Questions

i. What are the Problems in the learning English noun by Undergraduate Students?

ii. How frequently students commit errors in the use of English noun?

iii. Which grammatical category is more problematic for students in terms of its

application to English noun?

iv. How to classify the types of errors in the application of grammatical categories to

English?

Significance of the Study

This study is highly significant for the students learning English grammatical categories and for
English teachers, teaching the same. The study would contribute to the existing knowledge about
the problems in the correct use of English noun. The findings of the study would highlight the
problems in the application of grammatical categories to English noun. It will help the teachers
to teach English noun in the light of the findings about the application of grammatical categories
to English noun. Similarly, the material developers and course designers could benefit from the
findings of the present study.

Literature Review

Noun is the most important part of the grammar. Its arrangement is with verb, helps to form the
sentence core which is essential to every sentence. Most of the previous works written on the
noun is centered on the usage, learning and the error analysis of the noun. Some of these works
are the work by Huddleston (1984), Gleason (1965), Stone (1993), Corbett (2000), Corbett
(1991), Kibort and Corbett (2008), Greenberg (1963), Plank and Schellinger (1997), Greenberg
(1963), Quirk (1972), and Quirk and Greenbaum (1973).

In many languages, the wide variety of items in the referent of a noun phrase is obligatorily
encoded via an inflectional characteristic on the head noun or different lexical category in a
clause. For example, in English we have big difference between the book, which must refer to a
single book, and the books, which have to refer to more than one.

A lot of languages have the same distinction that English does because this not the only attested
system in all the languages. Another fairly frequent type of language distinguishes between the
SINGULAR (exactly one), the DUAL (exactly two), and the PLURAL (more than two). For
example, in Upper Sorbian (a Slavic language spoken in Germany), we find singulars like hród
‘castle’ and d´zˇełam ‘(I) work’, duals like hrodaj ‘two castles’ and d´zˇełamoj ‘(we two) work’,
and plurals like hrody ‘castles’ and d´zˇełamy ‘(we) work’ (Stone, 1993) and (Corbett, 2000).
The biological differences between women and men are linked with the word “gender”. So that
people may know that most of the languages in the world can have masculine and feminine. It
may seem that grammatical gender is a reflection of natural gender in grammar.

The opinion that the grammatical gender reflects the natural gender and it has been widespread
since the ancient times and is still clear in the terms “masculine,” “feminine,” and “neuter”
(historically which means “neither”), which are accustomed to label individual gender
distinctions, particularly in Indo-European languages. Most of the languages show a similarity
between natural and grammatical gender. Examples of different languages are Dizi in Ethiopia,
Tamil in India, and Bagvalal in the Caucasus (Corbett, 1991) and (Kibort & Corbett, 2008). Like
these many other languages in the world, nouns representing male persons are masculine and
those nouns which represent female persons are feminine. The rest of the nouns are treated in
different ways. Some of them may be added to masculine or feminine or they may create one or
many genders of their own. Gender interacts in a range of approaches with different grammatical
features, specially person, number, and case, however additionally tense. These interactions
regularly manifest themselves in the form of terms; gender marking can also be limited to a part
of the paradigm. A well- known term has been formulated as one of Greenberg’s universals: “A
language never has more gender categories in nonsingular numbers than in the singular”
(Greenberg, 1963). While a lot of other examples have been found (Plank & Schellinger, 1997),
many languages mark fewer genders in the plural than in the singular, or that they neutralize
gender completely in non-singular environments. Same terms can be found between other
features. Another recommended universal is that “if a language has gender distinctions in the
first person, it always has gender distinctions in the second or third person or in both”
(Greenberg, 1963).

Sources of Error in L2

All scholars agree that the learners’ always commit mistakes while learning a language whether
they are learning L1 or L2. Error Analysis (EA) states that learners’ errors are inherent and these
errors are not because of native language. Sources of these errors can be:

Types of Error

A. The Learners: The learners commit errors due to their inborn ability to learn languages by analogies with
overgeneralization after observing a few paradigms (Hubbard et al, 1995; Doff, 1995; Corder,
1974; Dulay and Burt, 1974; Stern, 1995:325). The mentalists assist the above opinion and claim
that errors are unavoidable due to the fact; they replicate different stages in the language input in
the mind and produce guidelines for the production of input. Overgeneralizations cover
occasions where learner creates deviant structures on the bases of their experiences of other
structures.

B. Teaching Materials or Methods: In the above paraghraph mentalism was associated to

overgeneralization, now behaviorism can be related to these errors which looks like that these
errors are produced due to the teaching processes. According to behaviourists the errors are
proof of type of failure, lack of control and ineffective teaching. The behaviourists clain that
there might be no error of the materials for teaching are well selected, categorized and taught
with proper care. Hadely (1993) also claims that due to some types of teaching techniques the
frequency of over-generalized structures are increased.

C. Difficulties inherent in the language: there is no language difficult than the other regarding
Richards (1974), for the difficult language he gave the example of Latin Language. Headbloom
and Ubahakwe (1979), and Senders (1992) also claim that there is complexity in particular
language system and these are inherent in the target language (TL) and it will cause learners to
commit error.

D. Interference from L1 into L2: Some errors are observable due to interference from L1 into L2.
Some of the structures from the native language have similarities with the some structures of
target language so the learner carries over the habits of their native language into the target
language (Corder, 1974). However, negative transferences (interferences) take place when the
use of a native structure produces an error in the target language.

Types of Error

Corder (1974), Littlewood (1984) and Hadley (1993) categorized errors into two major groups.

1) Inter-lingual

2) Intra-lingual

Inter-lingual error is the error that arises from conflicts between the mother tongue and target
language while intra-lingual error is the error that the learner encounters in the target language
such as overgeneralization and false analogy.

Methodology

Population and Sampling Procedure

The population of the present study will be all undergraduate level students in University. The
findings though be generalized to all undergraduate level students in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. A
representative sample from the target population will be selected for the study. The sample will
consist of 100 students from University. The sample will further be divided into two groups. One
of the groups will be English major from the department of English and the other group will be
English non-major students from other departments of University. These students will be
selected non-randomly through convenience sampling. The selected students will be form 5 th, 6th
and 7th semester. These students will be aged between 20 to 23. They all will have almost the
same educational background.
Research Design

The current study will adopt a descriptive research design. The data will be collected from the
participants on the problems face in the learning of the grammatical categories of noun. The data
collected will be analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The qualitative analysis will
include the analysis of the numerical data. The qualitative approach will highlight the real
problems under investigation. The descriptive design will be used because this design is an
appropriate design to describe the state of affair of any problem.

Research Instrument

A proficiency test will be used as an instrument in the study. The test will contain twenty items
about different uses of grammatical categories to English nouns. These items will specifically
focus on the issues in the use of number, gender and case. Along this test, another test will be
taken where the students will be asked to write an essay. The essay will be written by the students
to check their English production and the correct and incorrect uses (problems) in the application
of grammatical categories to English nouns unlike the other test where the comprehension of the
students will be checked.

Data Collection

First the students will be asked to write an essay of 200 words on any topic. They will be given
30 minutes for the essay writing. After the essay, the students will be given a test of multiple
choices where the comprehension of the students will be checked. The grammatical mistakes in
the essay will be underlined and noted for analysis. Only those mistakes will be highlighted
which are about the misuse of the grammatical categories to English nouns, while other types of
mistakes will be ignored. The second instrument (comprehension test) will specifically ask
questions about the grammatical categories to English nouns.

Data Analysis

After collecting the data, an appropriate statistical measure will be applied to analyze the data.
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