Markedness Theory and Conditional Clauses: An Interlanguage Developmental Study of Iraqi EFL Learners

Abstract

    This study investigates how the linguistic factor of markedness theory affects Iraqi EFL Learners’ acquisition order of English conditional clauses.Three research questions are formulated to achieve the aim of this study, and these are; (i) How do Iraqi EFL learners acquire the syntactic structure of conditional clauses?, (ii) In what ways the developmental route followed by Iraqi EFL learners is similar to or different from that followed by English learners of other linguistic backgrounds?, and (iii) What is the role of markedness theory in the acquisition of conditional clauses by Iraqi EFL learners? To answer these questions, a random sample of 100 Iraqi EFL learners at four different developmental stages is tested on three written tasks. Results reveal that real conditionals are the easiest type to produce but the most difficult one to comprehend. This lends a partial support for the predictive power of markedness theory in explaining the acquisition order. Besides, linguistic form and function in L2 acquisition process are acquired at different developmental stages. Due to the limitations of the present study, future research is suggested