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# The acquisition of English irregular inflections by Yemeni L1 Arabic learners: A Universal Grammar approach

**Authors:** Muneef Y. Alsawsh, Mohammed Q. Shormani · **Year:** 2026 · **Venue:** arXiv:2602.13816 (to appear in URJ, 2026) **Link:** [arxiv.org/abs/2602.13816](https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.13816) · **Licence:** [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) (arXiv) — summary only; nothing copied into a release

[**0** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W7129295846) openalex-snapshot · 2026-10-14[arXiv:2602.13816](https://openalex.org/S4306400194)[licence](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.13816)
- [PDF](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.13816)
- [arXiv 2602.13816](https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.13816)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W7129295846)

**Authors (2)**

1. Muneef Y. Alsawsh [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2411005428)
2. [Mohammed Q. Shormani](https://openalex.org/A5121622407) [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/70044091) · h 1 · 2 citations · 33 works

Citations and author metrics from openalex-snapshot (2026-10-14); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

The study follows 30 Yemeni Arabic-speaking undergraduates learning English, tested at two points of their degree (academic level 3 in 2023 and level 4 in 2024). The test has four parts: error identification and correction, plural forming, a sentence-building task with ten given verbs, and a paragraph of up to 150 words. Responses are coded as well-formed or ill-formed, and ill-formed ones as omission, addition, misselection, or left undone (the last is dropped). The authors read well-formed irregular forms as access to Universal Grammar and ill-formed ones as L1 transfer or overgeneralisation. At stage 1 there are 288 well-formed and 193 ill-formed occurrences of seven irregular types, of which 108 are additions. A one-way ANOVA shows a significant gain from stage 1 to stage 2. Consonant change, zero-morpheme, and the -a plural remain hard. The analysis is based on frequency counts and percentages, with no computational model.

## Ideas

- I1. Error taxonomy for pupil answers: `world/src/knowledge.rs` exercises on irregular past forms can label each wrong answer as omission, addition, misselection, or wrong class, with a rule that says which. This is the explainable feedback the school student needs ("you added -ed to a strong verb").
- I2. Use the paper's seven irregular types (consonant change, vowel change, zero, suppletion, -a plural, -en plural, vowel plus consonant) as the class labels in `en/src/morph.rs`, so that a lookup failure reports its class.
- I3. Measure the "addition" error (overgeneralising -ed, such as "goed") on a fixed list of strong verbs: count how often `en morph` inflects a strong verb with -ed, and report it per class. The paper's 108 additions are the pattern to look for.
- I4. Negative control: score a set of answers with the errors inserted at random and check that the classifier does not invent a class; a classifier that labels correct answers as errors must fail the test.

## For Mova

The chapter is [14. Irregular verbs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/14-irregular-verbs/), with [13. Verbs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/13-verbs/) for the regular -ed rule. The code is `world/src/knowledge.rs` (exercises and tests for the school student) and `en/src/morph.rs`. The measure: label accuracy of the error classifier on a hand-checked answer set, run twice to confirm identical output. The study's data are small and its licence is share-alike, so use only the taxonomy and the design; do not copy its tables.

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [arXiv 2602.13816](https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.13816)

```
@misc{alsawsh2026acquisition,
  title = {{The acquisition of English irregular inflections by Yemeni L1 Arabic learners: A Universal Grammar approach}},
  author = {Alsawsh, Muneef Y. and Shormani, Mohammed Q.},
  year = {2026},
  eprint = {2602.13816},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.13816}
}
```

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