A Morphosyntactic Analysis of the Interlanguage of Kiswahili Speaking Learners of English

This morphosyntactic study focused on analyzing the interlanguage of Kiswahili speaking learners of English at secondary school level. Guided by Corder’s Error Analysis theory and Selinker’s Theory of Interlanguage, the study analyzed the non-target-like syntactic sequences and morphological forms in the interlanguage of the learners in order to determine the strategies they use to navigate in English. The data was collected using a Grammatical Task covering a variety of grammatical concepts appropriate for the learners. Students’ essays, written independent of this study, were also analyzed to corroborate the findings from the grammatical task. The population sample consisted of 173 form 1, 2 and 3 students from six secondary schools in Malindi Town of Kilifi County, Kenya. The data collected was qualitatively analyzed according to Error Analysis and the Theory of Interlanguage frameworks by Corder and Selinker respectively. The non-target-like syntactic sequences and morphological forms in the sentences of the learners revealed deviations in word order, negation, interrogatives, tense and aspect, auxiliaries, clause linkages, word derivations, singularization, pluralization, and prepositional phrases. The non-target-like syntactic sequences and morphological forms came about as a result of strategies such as communication, overgeneralization, transfer of training and language transfer which learners employed to navigate in the English language. The findings of this study contribute to the field of knowledge with regards to Second Language Acquisition.