The Acquisition of English Prepositional Verbs by Jordanian EFL Learners at Al-Isra Private University

Abstract

The present study investigated the acquisition
of English prepositional verbs by 76 Jordanian EFL
learners at Al-Isra Private University, Amman –
Jordan. The study was intended to specifically find out
whether the null – prep phenomenon is significantly
observed in the Jordanian EFL learners’ interlanguage
grammar and whether the development of preposition
stranding and preposition pied – piping in wh-questions
and relative clauses would differ. A task involving
grammaticality judgement and correction of individual
sentences was given to the study subjects. Eight pairs of
verb + preposition (V + P) were tested in three sentence
types: declaratives, related wh-questions and relative
clauses, each with the obligatory preposition omitted.
Thus, the corpus consisted of 24 targeted sentences.
The study results indicate that the rise in the use of both
preposition stranding and preposition pied – piping and
the fall in the rate of the null – prep phenomenon occur
more in instances of wh – questions than those of
relative clauses across the three groups of proficiency.
Additionally, and more importantly, the null – prep
occurs rather similarly in both arguments and adjuncts.
Interestingly enough, the present study results receive
support from the studies reported in the literature and
reflect how prepositional verbs are taught in Jordanian
EFL classrooms.(