Omission Additions Misformation Surface Strategy Taxonomy

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2. Surface Strategy Taxonomy

Dulay et al. 1982: 150 state that this taxonomy “highlights the way surface structures are altered.” Johnson and Johnson 1999: 111 add that this taxonomy classifies errors by “the structural deformations the utterance undergoes.” This taxonomy is then divided into four sub-classifications, namely omission, addition, misformation and misordering.

a. Omission

An error is classified into this category when there is an absence of an item that must be present in a well-formed sentence, e.g.: Mary president new company instead of Mary is the president of the new company.

b. Additions

Contrary to omission, addition is characterized by “the presence of an item which must not appear in a well-formed utterance.” Three types of addition are double-marking, regularization, and simple addition. Double marking refers to an error in an utterance containing two or more items which are marked for the same feature. For example, He doesn’t knows my name instead of He doesn’t know my name. According to Dulay et al. 1982: 157, regularization errors that fall under the addition category are “those in which a marker that is typically added to a linguistic item is erroneously added to exceptional items of the given class that do not take a marker,” e.g.: sheeps and putted. The third category of addition is called simple addition. An addition error is a simple addition if it is neither a double marking nor regularization. 13

c. Misformation

Dulay et al. 1982: 158 state that misformation errors are characterized by “the use of the wrong form of the morpheme or structure,” e.g.: the word ‘eated’ shown in The dog eated the chicken. There are three sub-classifications of misformation, which are regularization, archi-forms and alternating forms. Regularization that fall under the misformation category are “those in which a regular marker is used in place of an irregular one,” as seen in runned for ran and gooses for geese. Archi-forms refer to forms selected by the learner. Dulay et al. 1982: 160 state that “a learner may temporarily select only one of the English demonstrative adjectives this, that, these and those, to do the work for several of them,” as seen in that dog and that dogs. Johnson and Johnson 1999: 111 name this kind of error overgeneralizing. The third category, alternating form, refers to fairly free alternation that the learner makes, as seen in those dog and this cats.

d. Misordering