How Does the Acquisition of English Affect the Word Order of Arabic in Arabic-English Bilinguals?

Abstract

This research is designed to investigate the influence of the acquisition of a second language’s sentence structure on the sentence structure of the mother language. Using a qualitative method that takes participants’ narration of the picture-based story “Frog, Where Are You?”, this research finds evidence that shows that the acquisition of a second language has an effect on the sentence structure of the mother language. With a sample of 12 participants that are divided equally between monolinguals and bilinguals, a comparison was done between the two groups to find the necessary evidence. The bilinguals are those whom first language is Arabic (basic sentence structure is Verb + Subject + Object (VSO)) and their second language is English (standard sentence structure is Subject + Verb + Object (SVO)), and monolinguals are those who only speak Arabic. While the SVO sentence structure is accepted in Arabic, it is not the normal way of structuring a sentence. An analysis was done on the frequency of times that each participant used each sentence structure to compare the two groups of participants. The results showed that bilinguals provide three times as much SVO sentences as monolinguals. This shows that acquiring a new language have tendency to affect the way a sentence is structured in the mother tongue, for the case of Arabic as a mother language, and English being the acquired language.