Investigating Iraqi EFL Learners' Mastery of Passive Constraints in English | ||
| Anbar University Journal of Languages & Literature | ||
| Article 22, Volume 14, Issue 1, January 2022, Pages 552-572 PDF (426.09 K) | ||
| Document Type: Research Paper | ||
| DOI: 10.37654/aujll.2022.176326 | ||
| Author | ||
| Mohammed Nadheer Mahmood* | ||
| Mosul University/ College of Arts | ||
| Abstract | ||
| Voice is a grammatical category which makes it possible to view the action of a sentence in either of two ways active or passive, without a change in the fact reported. In many cases, active sentences can be easily transformed into passive. However, there is a limited number of cases in which active cannot be changed into passive. This paper tackles specifically the phenomenon of passive constraints in English, i.e. the cases in which active can never be changed into passive. The study aims at shedding light on the cases of passive constraints such as: verb constraints and prepositional verbs constraints, object constraints, agent constraints, and meaning constraints as well as the students' ability to recognize those constraints. Thus, other types of passive are excluded out of this study. The study is confined to fourth year students who are expected to be aware of the cases of passive constraints and therefore try to change any possible active sentence into passive. By doing so, they consequently produce ungrammatical sentences. The question raised by the present study is: Are Iraqi 4th -year college students aware of the passive constraints in English or not? The most important conclusion the study came out with is that most students could not recognize prepositional verb constraints and, though cannot be changed into passive, changed them incorrectly into passive. The procedure and data analysis of the study were implemented on forty 4th -year-college students from University of Mosul/ Department of English/for the academic year 2021-2022 who were the subjects of the present study. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Passive Constraints; Grammatical category; Meaning Constraints; EFL | ||
| References | ||
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