The aim of this study is to investigate crosslinguistic influence in the Arabic language of Iraqi Arabic-Swedish bilingual children (5-7) who live in Sweden. The scope is to study lexical, morphological and syntactic uses in the children’s speech that do not belong to the Iraqi Arabic variety (IAV). The used research method was interview method that has been applied in a descriptive framework without any normative evaluations. The interviews were based on a series of narrative pictures that had already been designed for the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN). The primary material is a corpus which totals 164 recorded minutes that were obtained from twelve Iraqi Arabic-Swedish bilingual children who are 5-7 years old. The secondary material was sociolinguistic background information that was obtained from the children’s parents by using a questionnaire. The results revealed the following main points: (1) Most of the children’s linguistic uses that did not belong to IAV occurred mainly on the lexical level, less on the morphological level and least on the syntactic level. (2) Not all linguistic uses that do not belong to the IAV indicate a crosslinguistic influence in the children’s language development, because some of these uses occur occasionally. (3) Many linguistic uses that do not belong to the IAV were related to Modern standard Arabic (MSA), other Arabic varieties and Swedish, but some of them, e.g. morphological observations, were not related to a specific language. (4) Diglossia and bilingualism have led to different crosslinguistic influences on the children’s speech. Diglossia has led to lexical influence and bilingualism has led to lexical and syntactic influence. (5) The combination of diglossia and bilingualism can increase the crosslinguistic influence on the bilingual children compared to other bilingual children that do not experience this combination of both phenomena. (6) The fact that the children use MSA spontaneously along with their mother tongue shows that they learn MSA before they start school. (7) Use of other Arabic varieties by the children along with their mother tongue can bring these different Arabic varieties closer to the IAV and may also create a mixed variety in the future, if there is continuous and intensive language contact. (8) The results indicate the possible types of language acquisition for all children’s languages/varieties but without normative evaluation as the following: IAV as L1 (first language/mother tongue), Swedish as L1 or ESLA (early second language acquisition), MSA as ESLA or L2, and other Arabic varieties as ESLA or L2.

<p>This dissertation examines direct and subordinate questions, as well as verb morphology in L2 Swedish, from a developmental perspective. The study is cross-sectional, containing data from Iraqi Arabic, Persian and Somali adolescent learners representing three different levels of proficiency. The data are analysed on the basis of two theories: The Markedness Differential Hypothesis and Processability Theory. Data elicited through four different techniques are examined with the aim of examining the possible impact of different data types on the results. The different elicitation techniques used in the study are: oral production, written production, grammaticality judgement and a receptive skills task. Two of the elicitation techniques, written production and grammaticality judgement, include all three structures in focus in the study, whilst the oral production and the receptive task is centred on direct questions.</p><p>The results suggest that there are implicational relationships regarding the order in which the grammatical structures are acquired. On the whole, predictions based on the two theories used as a basis for the analyses find support in the material. Having a wide scope for predictions at the morpho-syntactical level, the results meet the claims in particular of Processability Theory. The predictions and the results do not contrast the two theories with each other. A comparison of the different data types clearly indicates that the grammaticality judgement task substantially diverges from the other data types providing less consistent data and exhibiting trends that are in conflict with the data obtained through the three other elicitation techniques.</p>

This dissertation examines direct and subordinate questions, as well as verb morphology in L2 Swedish, from a developmental perspective. The study is cross-sectional, containing data from Iraqi Arabic, Persian and Somali adolescent learners representing three different levels of proficiency. The data are analysed on the basis of two theories: The Markedness Differential Hypothesis and Processability Theory. Data elicited through four different techniques are examined with the aim of examining the possible impact of different data types on the results. The different elicitation techniques used in the study are: oral production, written production, grammaticality judgement and a receptive skills task. Two of the elicitation techniques, written production and grammaticality judgement, include all three structures in focus in the study, whilst the oral production and the receptive task is centred on direct questions. The results suggest that there are implicational relationships regarding the order in which the grammatical structures are acquired. On the whole, predictions based on the two theories used as a basis for the analyses find support in the material. Having a wide scope for predictions at the morpho-syntactical level, the results meet the claims in particular of Processability Theory. The predictions and the results do not contrast the two theories with each other. A comparison of the different data types clearly indicates that the grammaticality judgement task substantially diverges from the other data types providing less consistent data and exhibiting trends that are in conflict with the data obtained through the three other elicitation techniques.