IRALlnternational Reviewof Applied Linguisticsin Language Teaching

EditorGerhard Nickel

Offprint

Mouton de GruyterBerlin ' New York

Grammatical agreement errors in L1lL2 translations

REIMA AL.JARF

Abstract

159 grammatical agreement errors collected from the translation projects ofnine Saudi graduating seniors majoring in translation were analysed. A gram-matical agreement error was defined as the incorrect inflection of nouns, verbs,

adjectives, anaphoric pronouns, and determiners to show a mismatch in singu-

lar dual, or plural forms or a mismatch in masculine and feminine gender incorrespondence with a subject, modified noun or antecedent. There were more

disagreeing verbs than pronouns than adjectives. There were more gender than

number agreement errors and more interlingual than intralingual. 27 Vo of the

errors were due to incorrect gender assignment to the controller or target, 3 Vo

were due to inability to determine the number of the controller or target, 24 7o

were due to inability to associate the verb, pronoun or adjective with its correctreferent. There were more agreement errors when the controller was singularand plural, when the plural controller was non-human and when the controllerwas feminine.

1. Background

Studies that analyse student' errors in translation are very few. In a comprehen-

sive bibliography compiled by Spillner (1991) and consisting of 5398 studies

on effor analysis, 108 studies (fewer than 2%o) focused on 'translation'. Those

studies tried to catalogue all errors in an output translation such as Kim L995;Ishakawa 1995; Altman 1994; Farghal and Shunnaqlg9Z; Vivanco et al. 1990,Saraireh 1990, Al-Najj ar 1984; and others. Few studies reported the percentage

of gender and number effors among other types of grammatical errors.

Although grammatical agreement has been found to constitute a major diffi-culty in the acquisition of Ll and L2, studies that analyse grammatical agree-

ment effors in translation are lacking. Several studies have investigated the ac-

quisition of grammatical gender in English, Spanish, French, Gertnan, Czech,

00t9042w2a00rc38-001rRAL 38 (2000), 1-15

2 Reima Al-Jarf

Arabic and Japanese (Hardison l99Z;Perez-Pereira 1991; Sakata I ggl; Labadi1990; Shaw 1988; Cain, Weber-Olson and Smith 1987; Rogers lg87; Henzel1975; Tucker, Lambert and Rigault 1977). Others have studied the acquisitionof grammatical number by native and non-native speakers of English, German,Hebrew and Lou (Mervis and Johnson 1991; Blount 1988; Levy 1983, Berman1981; Philips and Bouma 1980).

The present study attempted to analyse grammatical agreement errors in thetranslation of texts from English into Standard Arabic (SA) by advanced col-lege students majoring in translation. Specifically, the present study aimed tof,nd out the percentage of number and gender agreement errors in English-Arabic (LZ|LL) translation; the percentage of disagreeing verbs, adjectivesand anaphoric pronouns, the percentage of strict, dual, deflected and equivocalagreement errors; the percentage of errors attributed to transfer from Englishand that attributed to inadequate competence in SA. In addition, this studyexamined the kinds of environments in which grammatical agreement errorsoccurred.

This study attempted to assess L}leamers's ability to produce correct formsof number and gender agreement to get some idea about their transfer compe-tence inL2tLl translation; to identify the difficulties that they face in the flnalstage of their training as translators, and to describe their system of grammat-ical agreement errors. Since the purpose of the translation program is to trainstudents to produce translations that are grammatically and lexically correctand are of an acceptable style and register, the present study will shed light onthe psychology of translation and will carry implications for translation peda-gogy.

2. The Arabic grammatical agreement system

SA has three forms of number: singular, dual and plural. It has three types ofplural: masculine sound plural, feminine sound plural and broken plural. Verbsand subjects, demonstratives and adjectives and modified nouns, and relativeand anaphoric pronouns and antecedents show number agreement. Dual andplural suffixes are added to the singular base form of the verb or adjective toconvert it to dual, masculine sound plural or feminine sound plural. Some ad-jectives are converted to broken plural by derivation. Demonstratives, personaland relative pronouns have dual and plural forms. The definite article is notmarked for number. Unlike English, gender in SA has both a semantic anda grammatical function. Every noun in SA is either masculine or feminine,whether animate or inanim ate, human or non-human, singular, dual or plural,marked or unmarked. Verbs and subjects, demonstratives and adjectives andmodified nouns, and relative and anaphoric pronouns and antecedents showgender agreement. A feminine suffix is added to the base form of the verb or

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adjective which is masculine to convert it to feminine. Singular, dual and plu-ral demonstratives, personal and relative pronouns have a set of masculine and

feminine forms. The deflnite article is not marked for gender. Grammaticalagreement rules in SA are summarrzedbelow. Those rules were adopted fromFerguson (1989) and Qabawa's (1988).

1. Strict Agreement: When the target follows its controller, it agrees with itin number and gender, except for plural nouns of a non-human referent. Instrict agreement, the plural controller always has a human referent.

2. Dual Agreement: It is a subtype of strict agreement. A dual target (verb, ad-jective, demonstrative, relative or anaphoric pronouns) agrees with its con-troller (subject, head noun, modified noun, or antecedent) in number and

gender.

3. Equivocal Agreement: When the verb precedes the subject in VSO sen-

tences, it is typically singular whether the subject is singular, dual or plural.If the subject is singular or dual, the verb agrees in gender; if it is plural, itmay be masculine or feminine. When the verb follows the subject, the strictagreement rule applies.

4. Deflected Agreement: In deflected agreement, a singular verb, adjective,demonstrative, anaphoric or relative pronoun is used to agree with pluralhead nouns of non-human referents. If the head noun is a feminine brokenplural of a non-human referent, the target is feminine; if it is a masculine,the target is masculine, i.e., the target agrees with the head noun in genderbut not in number.To conclude, the choice between the singular, dual and plural form or the

masculine and feminine form of the agreeing verb, adjective, demonstrative,relative or anaphoric pronoun depends on the number, gender and humannessof the controller. The grammatical number of the head noun and the occur-rence of inherent gender in SA are instances of obligatory choice comparedwith minimal or zero choice in English. Unlike English, where gender and

number choices are somewhat logical, with limited grarnmatical consequences,

SA requires a choice with every adjective, verb, demonstrative, anaphoric and

relative pronoun used.

3. Subjects

Subjects for the present study consisted of 9 female graduating seniors ma-joring in translation at the College of Languages and Translation, King Saud

University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. They all completed 20 hours in Arabic lan-guage (including 12 hours of grammar), 28 hours in English language and 34required hours and 10 elective hours in Translation. Graduating seniors are re-quired to submit a translation project in partial fulfilment of the requirementsfor the B.A. degree in translation.

4.

Reima Al-Jarf

Data collection and analysis

The effor corpus was collected from the translation projects of nine transla-

tion students. The English source texts were selected from the New Book ofKnowledge encyclopedia. They covered topics in history, geography, science,

education, sociology, art history and architecture. Translations were between

100-120 pages.

Errors were collected from the first translation of the English text. A gram-

matical agreement error was defined as a mismatch in number, gender, case

or person between the subject and verb, adjective and modifled noun, demon-

strative and head noun, anaphoric or relative pronoun and antecedent (Spears

lggl; Semmelmeyers and Bolander l99};Hollander 1993; Langendoer 1987).

Only elrors in number and gender agreement were analysed. To classify elrors

into number and gender agreement errors, a number agreement error was de-

fined as the incorrect inflection of verbs, adjectives, demonstrative, anaphoric

and relative pronouns that shows a mismatch in singular, dual, or plural form

in correspondence with a controller; and a gender agreement error was defined

as the incorrect inflection of adjectives, verbs, demonstrative, anaphoric and

relative pronoun that shows a mismatch in masculine and feminine gender in

coffespondence with a controller (Spears 1991; Semmelmeyers and Bolander

1990; Hollander 1993). The list of deviant stretches of discourse was sub-

mitted to a panel of 3 Professors at the Arabic Department to verify the effor

data.

Corpus analysis started by classifying the disagreeing elements into verb, ad-

jective and anaphoric pronoun. The controller for each verb, adjective and pro-

noun was highlighted. A controller is the referent or head noun which serves to

control the feature specification of the agreeing term or targer (Comish 1986).

Controllers were classified into simple, conjoined, and complex; into singular,

dual and plural; and masculine and feminine. Plural controllers were classified

into human and non-human.

To identify the error source, each error was classified into interlingual, in-

tralingual, or perfofinance error. Interlingual errors are those due to transfer

from English (LZ). Intralingual errors are those due to inadequate competence

in SA (L1). They cover instances where the student fails to reco gnrze the con-

ditions under which the dual, deflected and equivocal agreement rules apply.performance errors cover instances of occasional lapses in performance due to

memory limitations, fatigue and the like. Perforrnance effors were excluded.

To deflne the syntactic context in which a gender and number disagreement

occurred, the number of head nouns preceding a target, the NP in which the

controller is contained, the number of targets sharing the same controller, the

position of the target in relation to the controller, and the syntactic distance

between the controller and tatgetwere examined.

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Grammatical agreement errors 5

The percentage of gender and number effors; faulty verbs, adjectives andpronouns; strict, dual, deflected and equivocal agreement errors; interlingualand intralingual errors and syntactic context variables was calculated. Inter-analyst reliability was calculated.

5. Results and discussion

Results of the analysis of 159 grammatical agreement errors are presented inTables 1 and 2. Table 1 shows the percentage of gender and number agreementelrors; strict, dual, deflected and equivocal agreement errors; interlingual andintralingual elrors; and disagreeing verb, pronoun, and adjective under each.Table 2 shows percentages of controller features and the syntactic context vari-ables that affect the incorrect association of controllers and target verbs, pro-nouns or adjectives.

5. 1. Percentages of gender and number agreement errors

Table 1 shows that students made more gender (60 7o) than number agree-ment effors (40 7o), i.e., they have more difficulty assigning the correct gen-der marker to target verbs, pronouns and adjectives, although the gender andthe number agreement rules in SA are almost the same. This finding is sup-ported by previous research on the acquisition of grammatical gender in otherlanguages. In a study with English-speaking children in a French immersionprogram, Swain ( 197 6) found that gender effors in French were constant whilenumber, person and case effors were unstable over the first three grades. Onthe basis of examples from Russian and Serbo-Croatian, Slobin ( 1973) claimedthat in languages requiring agreement between adjectives and nouns, case andnumber agreement is assigned before gender agreement. Mikes and Vlahovic

Table l. Percentages of grammatical agreement eruors

Error Type Verbs

Type of Faulty Target

Pronouns Adjectives Total

Number agreement

Gender agreement

Strict agreement

Dual agreementDeflected agreementEquivocal agreement

InterlingualIntralingual

21

23

t404

19

07

3l13

t2L9

10

01

20

2t10

07

18

t205

08

08

17

40

60

36

10

47

07

60

40

6 Reima Al-Jarf

Table 2. Percentages of controller features

Error Type

Type of Faulty Target

Verbs Pronouns Adjectives Total

Gender identificationNumber identification

Controller before targetController After target

Simple controllerConjoined controllerComplex controller

Masculine controllerFeminine controller

Singular controllerDual controllerPlural controller

Human controllerNon-human controller

09

02

24

20

13

0922

15

29

15

05

24

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06

01

0328

08

06t7

t417

11

02

18

0328

07

10

07

l8

10

05

10

1tl408

04

t3

25

22

13

34

66

3t20

49

40

60

32

11

57

16

84

(1966) noted that children stopped themselves before expressing gender muchmore frequently than for other decisions.

An examination of the markers of faulty verbs, pronouns and adjectivesshowed that students overgenerali zed the masculine gender, although 40 7o ofthe controllers were masculine and 60 Vo were feminine requiring a femininemarker on the target (= Table 2). For example, the controller 9aa?ila (family)in (1) is feminine;1 yet, the target verb s yu-naDHDHif-uu (c\ean), yu-b9id-uu(remove), Thbax-uu (cooked), ?akal-uu-haa (ate tt), ThraH-uu (threw) and thetarget pronoun -hum (their) are masculine.

(1) Let's suppose that a familv lived in the mouth of a cave, never cleanedup their chamber, and ashes from the flre were never removed, animalswere cooked and eaten; their bones were thrown to one side.wa lnafriD ?anna 9aa?ila gaasat fii madxali lkatif wa lam yu-naD H D H if- uu ( tu - naD H D H ifl Gurfata - hum ( Gurfat a - haa ) ? ab adan,wa lam)ta-b9id-um (tu- bgid) ramaada nnaari muTlaqan, wa Thbax-au (Tabax-at) IHayawaanaati wa ?akaluu-haa (?akalat-haa) waTara - H uu ( TaraH - at ) 9 iD H aamahaa rt.i j aanib in w aaH id.

This finding is in accordance with Mills' (1985) observations on the overgen-etahzation of masculine pronouns with sex-marked references in English. In

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34

ffi

Grammatical agreement errors 7

French, Swain reported overgeneralizationof the masculine subject pronoun i/to be the major source of effor in gender assignment. InCzech, Henze1 (1975)found that children tend to overgener ahze masculine endings to nouns withambiguous endings. The same preference for masculine forms was observedin longitudinal studies of Hebrew (Levy 1983; Berman 1985).

The tendency to attribute the masculine gender to targets seems to supportGreenberg's theory on markedness (1966). According to this theory, the mas-culine is the unmarked and, thus, easier to acquire. Masculine is the dominantform when SA grammar is taught in the classroom. The root of Arabic verbsis the masculine singular. In the colloquial variety spoken in Saudi Arabia, themasculine is the dominant gender. Feminine targets to feminine dual and pluralcontrollers are absent.

5.2. Types and percentages of disagreeing targets

Table 1 shows that 44 Vo of the deviant targets were verbs, 31 Vo were pronounsand 25 Vo were adjectives. The higher percentage of disagreeing verbs may bedue to word order in SA. Verbs may precede or follow the subject. When theverb precedes the subject, the equivocal agreement rule applies, but when itfollows the subject, there is strict agreement in number and gender betweenthe verb and the subject except for non-human broken plurals.

An examination of the faulty verbs has revealed that students made moreerrors in stretches of discourse where one verb precedes the subject and severalconjoined verbs follow it. Here, two types of errors occurred: one with humancontrollers as in (2) and the other with non-human controllers as in (3) below.

(2) Children enter first grade at the age of six, complete seven or eight e1-

ementary school courses and then enter one of a variety of secondaryschoolcourses...ya-ltaHiqu l?aTfaalu bi SSaffi l?awwalfii sinni ssaadisa, wayu-kmil-u (yu-kmil-uu-na) sabgatan ?aw thamaaniyata Sufuufin ?ibtidaa?iyyathumma ya-ltaHiqu (ya-ltaHiq-uu-na) bi waaHidin min majmuugat-in min muqarraraati lmadaarisi ththaanawiyya.

t 3 ) Japanese troops landed on Luzon, the northern island. Thev quicklycaptured Manila, then pushed into Mindanao . ..

tr::fl ffi'"Tt#;*' *i ;i;:i:-r';! ;;,"r:r'. *'

In (2), the verb ya-ltaHiq-u (enter-M-S), precedes the controller ?aTfaal-u(thechildren-H-M-P). By applying the equivocal agreement rule, the verb agreeswith the controller. The conjoined targ ets yu-kmil-u (complete-M-S) and ya-ItaHiq-u (enter-M-S) that follow the controller disagree with it. According tothe strict agreement rule, both verbs should be masculine plural. The student

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Reima Al-Jarf

overgeneralized the singular form to verbs that follow the subject as the verbthat precedes it is singular. She probably assumed that the principle of parallelstructure applies to conjoined verbs within the same stretch of discourse. Onthe conttary, in (3) the target nazal-ati (landed-F-S) which precedes the con-troller lquwwaat-u (troops-NH-F-P) agree with it. The conjoined verb s Htall-uu (captured-M-P) and ndafag-uu (rushed-M-P) that follow the controller dis-agree with it. The student ignored the defleeted agreement rule that is appliedwith non-human plural controllers. In (2) all the conjoined verbs are singular,whereas in (3) they are all plural. All these verbs are unmarked in English sincethey are Past verbs. In (3) the presence of (they) suggested to the student usingplural verbs.

5.3. Error Source

Thble 1 shows that 62 Vo of the grammatical agreement errors were interlingualand 38 7o was intralingual. In a translation situation, students seem to trans-fer the grammatical agreement rules from English (L2) to Arabic (Ll). Thisfinding contradicts findings of studies on second language acquisition wherestudents transfer rules from Ll to L2. In a translation situation, students seemto translate imitatively not discriminately (Wilss 1983). Although rhe Englishand SA agreement systems contrast in many ways, advanced students do notseem to bring those differences together while translating.

One difference is that nouns that are both singular and plural in Englishlike (family) in (1) may not be so in Arabic. The Arabic equivalent 9aa?ilais always singular. Since (their) which refers to (family) in the source text isplural, the student translated (cleaned up their chamber) into plural imitativelywithout relating the Arabic verb and anaphoric pronoun to 9aa?ila which isfeminine singular. Students seem to act like a word processor (Elton, 1983),looking at a small segment of the source text and never thinking about thetatget text and associating the segment they are translating with the precedingsegments and sentences. The same happened in sentence (4) below. Studentsconsidered the two sentences in the source text as two unrelated entities. Theyseem to ignore the features of the controller in the target text.

A second difference is that an English numeral is followed by a plural noun.In SA the numeral 9agrati ?aalaaf is notionally plural but is followed by thesingular noun zuhriyya. Here again, the students imitated the source text andused a plural verb. In the source text, (they form) refers to the plural controller(vases). The Arabic equivalent to (they form) should be singular in agreementwith the singular controller zuhriyya.

(4) Over 10,1000 Greek vases have survived ... from the period between

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cedingudents. They

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etween:ord...in'a ...

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Grammatic al ag re ement e rro rs

mina lfatrati bayna lqarni l9aagiri wa lqarni rrabi9i qabla lmiilaad,wa yu-sakkil-uu-na (tu-gakkil-u) sijillan haam-an . . .

A third difference is the absence of the dual in English. When translatinga plural of two like (Hitler and Mussolini) in sentence (5) from English intoArabic, the equivalent should be a dual controller and all targets should be

dual ?asmay-aa-hu even if they are plural in English. Since (they called) is

plural, the student translated it imitatively without relating the target to the

dual controller in the Arabic translation.

Hitler 4qd Mussolini formed an alliance, that th€y called the Rome-

Berlin Axis.sakkala hitlar wa musuliinii Hilfan ? asm-au-hu ( ? asmay-aa-hu) mi-Hwar ...

A fourth difference is that English makes no distinction between human and

non-human plural controllers. In sentence (6) the targets (operate) and (their)agree in number with their controller (departments). By contrast, plural non-human nouns in SA take singular targets. This restriction was not observedin all the translations of sentence (6) below. The targets yu-;rif-uu-na and

?anDHimati-him rn (6a) and yu-[rtf-na rn (6b) are all plural like the Englishsource text.

(6) Other departments, including Justice, Agriculture and State, operate

Y.*'lr;Y:):,roorrrtu t?uxraa, wa minhaawizaaratu teadti wa zzi-raaga *o t*oortityyofa yu-[rif-uu-na (tu-qrif-u) galaa ?idaaratilmadaari s lxa S S a b it adriib i lkaw aadiri fii lmaj aalaati tti qaniyy a,

wa dhaalika wifqan li ? anDHimati-him ( ? anDHimati-haa).?amma lwizaaraatu l?uxraa, wa minnhaa wizaaratu l9adli wa

zziraa9a wa l-xaarijiyyafa yu-s-rif-na (tu-;rif-u) 9alaa ?idaaratilmadaris l?ahlrwa ...

A fifth difference is that countries are always feminine in English, and rela-

tive pronouns do not agree with their controllers. In Arabic countries may be

masculine or feminine. The strict, dual and deflected agreement rules apply torelative pronouns as well. Unlike English, Morocco is feminine in Arabic. Insentence (7), students transferred the feminine gender from English into Ara-bic, hence l-maGrib tnggered the feminine targets ?allatii and bi-haa.

(7) He tried to exert German influence in Morocco, which France claimed.Haawala lqaySar farDa nnufuudhi l?almaani fii lmaGrib?allatii (?alladhii) kaanatfaransaa qad Taalabat bi-haa (bi-hi).

b.

10 Reima Al-Jarf

As to intralingual agreement errors, students seem to be unable to make acombination of decisions at several levels while reformulating the target text.Making coffect gender and number choices requires feature-copying (Stein-berg and Caskey 1990). The student should first pay attention to the features ofthe controller, i.e., she should identify the gender and number of the controllerand see whether the controller has a human or a non-human referent. Oncethe features of the controller are identified, this information should be passedfrom the controller to the target. The position of the target verb and some ad-jectives in relation to the controller should be also considered. The target verbor adjective should then be inflected with the corresponding gender and num-ber markers in the light of the strict, dual, equivocal and deflected agreementrules. For target relative and anaphoric pronouns and demonstratives, the cor-rect masculine or feminine form, and singular, dual or plural form should beselected.

Although markers help determine the gender and number of the controller,the gender and number of a noun in Arabie cannot always be determined fromits form. Table 2 shows that 22 Vo of grammatical agreement erors were dueto students' difficulty in assigning the correct gender to conjoined controllerslike hitlar wa musuliini (Hitler and Mussolini); complex controllers such as

madaaris muqaaTa9at kulumbyaa (District of Columbia schools); when thecontroller is a relative pronoun like maa (what), ?allati (who-F); quantifierslike kull (each, every), ba9D (some); numerals like 9a;rat ?aalaaf zuhriyya(ten thousand vases); a collective noun like unaas (people); loan words tay-

fuun (typhoon); some animals as alba9uuD (mosquitoes); names of countriessuch as lmaGrib (Morocco); controllers whose gender can only be determinedfrom context ?adhdhukuur (males); controllers that are notionally plural butgrammatically singular such as aa?ila (family). In some cases, determiningthe correct number or gender of the controller requires feature-merging. Stu-dents were not able to determine the gender of conjoined controllers consistingof masculine and feminine nouns. Although ?arraSaaS (lead) is masculine and?alfiDDa (silver) is feminine, when combined, the dual is masculine.

In addition, Table 2 shows that 13 Vo of the errors were due to difflculty inassigning the correct grammatical number to quantifiers, numerals, conjoinedduals of foreign proper names, collective nouns, controllers that are notion-ally plural but grammatically singular, and indefinite controllers. Like gender,

determining the correct number of the controller requires feature-mergirg. Stu-dents were not able to determine the number of conjoined controllers when a

quantifier is added. faransaa wa biriThanya is dual, but adding kull (each of)to the dual will make it singular.

Another source of difficulty is that some singular noun with a non-humanreferent are feminine but their plural form is masculine such as baguuDalba9uuD (mosquito-F/mosquitoes-M). Other singular nouns are masculine but

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Grammatical agreement errors 11

their plural form is feminine such as jamallljimaal (camel-M/camels-F). Thestudents had difficulty with feminine and masculine forms, singular, dual andplural forms of some target adjectives such as ?al-mas?uuliyya l-?akbar (lead-ership-F-S strong-M-S), ?aljimaal dhawii' (camels-NH-F-P with-M-P), kilaalj a ziiratayn (both-M-D islands-F-D) .

A third areaof inadequae L1 competence is the incorrect application of rules.Landa (197 4) indicated that the incorrect application of rules stems from twobasic causes: failure to master the operational or transformational componentof a rule and failure to learn a rule's true domain of applicability. Students knowthe gender and number markers, yet they do not know when to use deflected,equivo cal, dual and strict agreement. Table I shows that effors in deflectedagreement constituted 487o, strict agreement 35Vo, dual agrement 107o and

equivocal agreement 7 7o.

Deflected agreement seems to be the most difficult, because the selection ofthe number and gender marker on the target depends on semantic and morpho-logical factors such as the 'humanness' and 'plurality' of controllers. Table 2shows that 41 7o of the total controllers were plural of a non-human referent(827o of the plural controllers). Students overgenerahzed the masculine andfeminine plural targets instead. In sentences (3) and (6) above, the target verbsHtall-at, ndafa9-at in (3) and yu-;rif-uu-na in (6a) are masculine; yu-;rif-uu-nain (6b) is feminine plural. Those verbs disagree with their non-human pluralcontrollers lquwwaat in (3) and ?ahlmadaaris in (6).

In the case of strict agreement, Table 2 shows that 39 Vo of the controllerswere singular. Instead of using targets that agree with their controller in numberand gender, students overgeneralizedthe feminine gender when the controllerswere singular. In sentence (8), the student used the singular feminine verbtaxtalif, although the controller madaa (amount) is masculine singular. Here,she ignored the equivocal agreement rule.

( 8) The amount of local autonomy over educational matters varies.wa ta-xtalif (ya-xtalif) madaa sayThrat lHukmi lmaHaUii dhdhaatii9 ala ggu ? uuni tta9liimiyy a.

A fourth area of inadequate Ll competence is failure to examine the syntac-tic context in which the controller and the target appear. lt was found that 58 7o

of the faulty targets and controllers were intraclausal. In 49 7o of the errors, thecontroller was part of a complex NP. ln 34 Vo, seyeral intervening phrases sepa-

rated the controller and the target. In 23 7o, there were two possible antecedents

to a particular target. Students associated22 Vo of the total targets with a wrongantecedent. In (9), the controller barnaamaj (program) is part of the com-plex NP niTaaqu barnaamaj lmadrasati lHukuumiyya (the scope of the publicschools' program) which contains another noun lmadrasati (school). Since the

12 Reima Al-Jarf

student is less familiar with (program) as a head noun and (school) has been thefocus (topic) of the paragraph, the target muqaddimatan xadamaati-ha (serv-irg) was associated with lmadrasati and not barnaamaj which is the actualantecedent. In (10), the disagreeing verb tumaarisaani was associated withfaransaa wa biriTaanya not with kull (each of), the actual controller, probablybecause the features of the dual are more salient than those of kull.

(9) The scope of the public schools' program has been extended from

'#" ;: ;'T:,:;I',,i2;:r,"#:tr;';tr ;;!:i: ?X ::"o, * ry y o minwaqtin li?aaxar . . . muqaddim-o,t-an (muqaddim-an) xadamaati-haa(xadamaati-hi) li l?aTfaali bayna sinni lxaamisa wa ththaamina9agra.

(10) Great Britain and France were putting pressure on the Czech Govern-ment to make concessions to Hitler . . .

kaanat kull min biriTizanva wa faransaa tumaaris-aa-ni (tumaarisu)DDaGTh 9alaa lHukuuma t;iikiyya li tuqaddima ttanaazulaat li hitlar.

Moreover, students tend to associate the target with the head noun that im-mediately precedes or follows it. In (6) above, the previous discourse containstwo possible antecedents (departments) and (personnel) to the target (their).Since the actual antecedent (departments) is too far from (their), the studentassociated the clitic pronoun -him rn sulTati-him with the immediate neigh-bour lmuwaDHDHafiin.In (14) the conjoined verbs ya-Silu and ta-dfa9u sharethe controller qaws which is masculine singular. Targets conjoined with 'and',oor', or 'then' should be parallel in number and gender. Applying the proximityprinciple, the student used a masculine marker because she associated ya-Siluwith its immediate masculine neighbour qaws, whereas tadfagu rs femininebecause it was associated with lkatif, its immediate feminine neighbour.

(11) Architects discovered that a fairly low buttress could be used to sup-port taller walls by means of a sloping arch, reaching up from thebuttress and pressing against the outside of the higher wall.wa ktagafa lmuhandisuun lmigmariyyuna ?anna lkattfa lmunxafiDaba9Da $ay?i yumkinu ?an yustaxdama li dagmi judraana ?aTwalbistixdaami qaws maa?ilya-Silu mina lkatif ?ilaa Taglaawa ta-dfa?u(ya-dfa?u) ljidaara l?9laa ...

The position of the target in relation to the controller seems to affect dis-agreement between the controller and target adjective. lt was found that 18 7o

of the faulty adjectives preceded the modified noun. In (15) the targets huwaraa?i9 (is-M-S, pleasant-M-S) that precede the controller musaahadar (watch-ing-F-S) do not agree with it in gender.

ntn'uta

ina

the

rv-ual'ith

blv

om

:rn-

isu)'lar.

im-fns:ir).lent,gh-

tare

[d',nitySilurine

;up-the

frDa

\vala?u

dis-87o

uwartch-

Grammatical agreement errors 13

,l2) Watching seals is such a pleasant sight.

fa kam huwa (hiya) raa?i9 (raa?i9a) musaahadat 9ujuuli lbaHr

Findings related to some syntactic context variables are supported by thestudies on anaphora conducted by Solan (1983). Solan found that the nodeto which the complement is attached, the position of the pronoun in the mainclauses and the type of complement in which the antecedent is embedded are

all factors that influence children's interpretation of pronouns. Children al-lowed less anaphora across a clause boundary. They allowed anaphora less

trequently ( 19 7o) for the pair with clausal complements than the pair with thenoun phrase complements (28 7o). They showed preference for anaphora whenthe antecedent and the pronoun are in the same clause.

6. Conclusion

Analysis of the error data shows that graduating seniors majoring in transla-tion exhibit some weakness in the area of number and gender agreement whentranslating English texts into SA. Their inadequate competence in SA is man-ifested in their inadequate strategies, inability to identify the features of theu-ontroller, inability to examine the syntactic context in which the controllerand the target occur, failure to learn the conditions under which strict, dual,equivocal and deflected agreement apply, and inability to reco gnrze the differ-ences between the agreement systems of English and SA.

Mastery of the agreement system in SA can be improved by improvingthe teaching-learning situation. This requires qualitative and quantitative ex-pansion and deepening of the students' transfer competence envisaged in the

course of the training program. Translation courses in general and Arabicgrammar courses in particular should be designed to meet students' needs.

The topics covered in grammar courses should focus on areas in which students

make mistakes when they translate. A constant attempt to contrast related areas

of English and SA should be made. Grammatical agreement should constitutea topic in its own right. Exercises should encourage the correct application,-rf grammatical agreement rules. Grammatical structures should be practiced

-rnd tested in everyday language contexts. Drills, exercises and tests shouldrequire students to recognize examples of a grammatical point in translationsiruations. Published translated material and samples of students translationsmay be used to help students identify instances of grammatical agreement,analyse gender and number determining forces, examine the indicators that al-low them to establish the grammatical gender and number of a controller priorto the selection of the gender and number markers on the target. In practicaltranslation courses, students should be trained to transfer the source text in thetorm of multiple stage translation. While reformulating the target text, theyshould pay attention to the syntactic shifts, and focus on the text as a whole,

14 Reima Al-Jarf

with each word, phrase and sentence seen as contributing to the whole out-put.

Notes

1. In the transcription of Arabic words, th = voiceless dento-alveolar fricative; dh =voiced dento-alveolar fricative; ! = voiceless palato-alveolar suical fricative; ) =voiced pharyngeal fricative; H - voiceless pharyngeal fricative; D = voiced dento-

alveolar emphatic plosive; T = voiceless dento-alveolar emphatic plosive; S = voice-less dento-alveolar sulcal emphatic fricative; DH = voiced dento-alveolar sulcal

emphatic fricative; q = voiceless uvular plosive, G - voiced uvular fricative. r =voiceless uvular fricative; ? = glottal stop.

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child

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ation

tions,

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