Article: Demystifying inflectional push-pull in ESL pedagogy.

Abstract

This paper traces the historical development of English verbal inflections for a period of 1500 years covering the Anglo-Saxon, Medieval and Modern English phases. A selected group of verbs and their conjugations are analyzed in order to glean some insights on how their rated complexity in English Second Language acquisition can be demystified. The study shows that English has shifted from being a fully synthetic toward an analytic language through assimilation and analogy. However, there is still a blend of weak and strong verbal declensions whose 'push-pull' effect poses learning difficulties among ESL students who lack native intuition of inflectional ...

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