Noun Position Errors Among Iraqi Arabic-Speaking Learners of English: A Contrastive and Error Analysis

Abstract

The present study investigates Iraqi Arabic-speaking undergraduates’ mastery of noun position in English clause structure, with the aim of identifying the types, frequency, and sources of errors produced by learners whose first language exhibits significantly different syntactic and distributional patterns. Drawing on frameworks from Second Language Acquisition (SLA) — particularly Contrastive Analysis (Lado, 1957) and Error Analysis (Corder, 1981; 1982) — the study examines how cross-linguistic influence from Arabic affects learners’ production of English noun phrases and their syntactic placement within the sentence.

Data were collected through a 20-item diagnostic test comprising both objective and productive tasks designed to measure students’ ability to determine and generate correct noun positions in varied English sentence types. The participants were 34 fourth-year students in the Department of Translation, College of Arts, Mustansiriyah University. Both quantitative and qualitative procedures were employed following EA’s four analytical stages: (1) identifying erroneous structures, (2) classifying errors according to noun-position categories, (3) analyzing error sources (interlingual, intralingual, and developmental), and (4) determining error frequency and distribution.

The findings reveal that omission is the most prevalent error type, followed by mis-ordering and overgeneralization. The results further indicate that interlingual transfer — arising from differences between Arabic and English noun phrase placement, definiteness systems, and modifier order — is a primary contributor to error production. Intralingual factors, such as incomplete rule acquisition and overgeneralization within the developing interlanguage system, also play a significant role. The study contributes to the understanding of how Arabic native speakers negotiate English syntactic structures and highlights pedagogical implications for improving grammar instruction in Iraqi university contexts