Production of english verbs ending in -ed by speakers from different L1 backgrounds

Abstract

Production of verbs ending in -ed is among the most frequent challenges for learners of English. Literature shows that learners tend to use vowel epenthesis or -ed omission to produce these verbs. The present study investigated the production of English verbs ending in -ed by two speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, two of Spanish, two of German and two of English. Each participant individually audio-recorded 96 sentences with one verb in each of them, including 72 verbs ending in -ed and 24 irregular verbs, distractors in this study. The eight participants produced a total of 576 verbs with 25.52% of nontarget productions, suggesting that these results were affected by participants’ proficiency, which seemed to be higher than the proficiency of participants from previous studies on verbs ending in -ed. Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish L1 speakers tended to use vowel epenthesis and -ed omission in verb production whereas German L1 speakers tended to use -ed omission, producing less marked syllable structures that are similar to their L1s’, following the tendency found in previous studies. Verb production was also influenced by change in the context preceding the -ed due to misreading, L1 and verb orthography. Production of verbs by English L1 speakers showed the -ed omission, which was possibly caused by blending and linking of similar sounds during the reading.