Overgeneralisation of derivational rules by EFL secondary students

dc.contributor.authorMorakabi, Maseriti Lineo Hyacinth
dc.contributor.supervisorKolobe, Maboleba
dc.date
dc.date.accessioned2022-08-09T09:30:42Z
dc.date.available2022-08-09T09:30:42Z
dc.date.issued2020-07
dc.description.abstractThis study investigated overgeneralisation of derivational rules by EFL secondary learners at ‟Mabathoana High School. The study used a triangulation of three instruments to collect data: online focus groups, online interviews, and documents (compositions) with a qualitative research design. Premised on Aronoff‟s (1976) word formation theory and EA procedures, the study examined and analysed a corpus of one hundred learners (30 grade 9, 30 form E, 40 form E students) and nine (9) English teachers. The findings revealed that students mostly overgeneralised the derivational prefixes un-, in-, and dis- which are reversative and negative prefixes. The suffixes that were mostly overgeneralised were -ness, -tion, -ment, -ful, -able -ify and -ise which are nominal, adjectival, and verbal forming suffixes. The study further discovered that the causes of these overgeneralisations are that EFL teachers and learners do not know derivational rules and restrictions of these rules. Another cause is that students lack a reading culture and therefore are not familiar with the English vocabulary, hence the overgeneralisations of the rules. The corpus also evidenced that these overgeneralisations have a detrimental effect on the students‟ language proficiency as such errors are regarded as very serious.en_ZA
dc.description.degreeMA English Languageen_ZA
dc.description.sponsorshipNational Manpower Development Secretariaten_ZA
dc.identifier.urihttps://repository.tml.nul.ls/handle/20.500.14155/1702
dc.language.isoenen_ZA
dc.publisherNational University of Lesothoen_ZA
dc.rightsMorakabi Maseriti Lineo Hyacinthen_ZA
dc.sourceOnlineen_ZA
dc.subjectOvergeneralisation, derivational morphology, derivational rules, morphemes, affixationen_ZA
dc.titleOvergeneralisation of derivational rules by EFL secondary studentsen_ZA
dc.title.alternativeThe case of Mabathoana High Schoolen_ZA
dc.typeThesisen_ZA
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