An investigation into the acquisition of English grammatical morphemes by young Sindhi high school ESL learners

Abstract The present study aims to explore the acquisition order of eight English grammatical inflectional morphemes, i.e., plural –s, possessive -s’, third person singular, present tense-s, past tense-ed, present participle-ing, past participle-en, comparative-er, and superlative-est by young Sindhi ESL (English as second language learners) learners at the high school. The study aimed to test the hypothesis that the high school English learners do not follow the universal order of grammatical morphemes and to investigate the effect of linguistic interference of L1 (Sindhi) in the acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes. The primary instrument used for data collection in this study was written essays. The time gap between first and second samplings was around three months. A mixed methods research design was utilized. The study used an exploratory-descriptive-qualitative methods coupled with a quantitative as per the objectives of the study corresponding to the research questions. A convenience sampling technique was employed to select participants from 10th Grade level. Specifically, the data was analyzed using the Dulay and Burt (1974) scoring method. The statistical tests were utilized to test the null hypothesis. The data confirmed that they indeed do not follow the universal order of grammatical morphemes. There exists the effect of linguistic inference of L1 in the acquisition order English grammatical morphemes. Finally, the finding is not in line with the sequence as determined by Dulay and Burt (1974), and Brown (1973).


Introduction
The primary objective of this study is to unequivocally determine the order in which grammatical morphemes are acquired by tenth-grade participants, who are young native Sindhi speakers.English, as a language, is extensively spoken globally, either as a first language (L1) or as a second language (L2).However, the L2 varieties of English often display unique linguistic features that result from the influence of the L1 of ESL/EFL (English as Foreign Language) learners.These L2 varieties differ from standard English in terms of phonology, morphology, and syntax.The study of morphemes involves a rigorous investigation of the order in which grammatical morphemes are acquired by L1 and the high school English learners.Grammatical morphemes are the fundamental building blocks of a language, and it is, therefore, imperative for L2 learners to acquire them to achieve fluency.The acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes is an important study for L2 researchers because it provides insights into the process of second language acquisition.The study of learner language is of particular interest to second language acquisition (SLA) research, as it explores the L2 productions of a language learner.Since Sindhi native the high school English learners are scattered across Sindh.The quality of English language teachers is without native like competency in terms of both spoken and written terms.Therefore, the study can help design the English language syllabus for 10th Grade participants to acquire English language faster and easier.
Additionally, the selection of eight morphemes was designed based on the teaching experience of the author.They have been teaching Sindhi native the high school English learners since last two decades.They believe that these are relatively problematic morphemes for Sindhi native speakers.Sindhi native the high school English learners do not follow their order in their English speech and ultimately their write-ups, therefore, they were highly motivated to investigate as to how these may be developed by 10th Grade participants.That is the reason, these eight morphemes were selected in order to find a way out for 10th Grade participants to learn English faster and follow correct grammatical morphemes.Specifically, the comparative and superlative morphemes were also included because of the similar tricky issue with young Sindhi native speakers.The high school English learners do not use them appropriately.It may be justified that there are free grammatical morphemes exist in Sindhi for comparative and superlative degrees.Whereas, English language possesses different bound and free morphemes, i.e., er, est, more, most, better and best, etc.It is important to explore the acquisition order of morphemes because it provides insight into how 10th Grade participants acquire English grammatical morphemes.According to a study by Brown (1973), children acquire grammatical morphemes in a specific order, which is independent of the language they are learning.The order of acquisition of morphemes is also influenced by the frequency of their use in language.The past participle is one such morpheme that has been studied less frequently than others.It is used in fewer words and is much less productive than other morphemes.Additionally, studying its acquisition order in relation to other morphemes can help us understand how children learn to use it in context and how it contributes to their overall understanding of grammar.
The study of acquiring grammatical morphemes has provided valuable insights and implications for language teaching.This is because grammatical morphemes are an essential aspect of language development, particularly in second language acquisition (SLA).The Marked-ness Differential Hypothesis (MDH) is a significant theoretical insight, which suggests that unmarked grammatical morphemes are easier to acquire than marked ones.This hypothesis has been supported by empirical studies and has significant implications for language teaching.Another important theoretical insight is the Process-ability Theory, which proposes that the acquisition of grammatical morphemes follows a developmental sequence based on their complexity.This theory has been instrumental in developing teaching methods and materials that promote second language acquisition effectively.Pedagogical implications of the study of grammatical morpheme acquisition include providing ample opportunities for the high school English learners to engage in input, output, and feedback, as well as using task-based language teaching (TBLT) to promote real language use in the classroom.TBLT has gained considerable support through empirical studies, which have demonstrated its effectiveness in promoting second language acquisition.However, this is not the exploration of the current study.
To the best of our knowledge, no research has yet been conducted on the acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes by 10th Grade young Sindhi high school ESL learners.This study will help teachers and curriculum designers create more useful lesson plans and curricula based on the high school English learners' acquisition order of morphemes, which will speed up their L2 (English) learning process.Additionally, by comparing the empirical results from this study with previous theories and studies, the researchers may improve and broaden their understanding of theoretical models of language learning.The study targeted past participle, superlative and comparative even though they have not been studied previously.Superlatives and comparatives are significant in English language in order to express degree of comparison therefore, the study aims to reveal how 10th Grade participants use these comparative degrees.Moreover, the study also investigated past participle -en despite its lower productivity as compared to other morphemes account of its significance in expressing the passive voice and perfect tenses in English.By examining the acquisition order of these morphemes, the study intends to add some additional aspects to the findings in order to determine how 10th Grade participants use them in English.
Additionally, for plural and past tense only -s and -ed forms were focused to make the data analysis more manageable.Moreover, to determine the acquisition order of grammatical morphemes of 10th Grade participants, the correct and incorrect use of morphemes were examined.

Objective of study
(i) To explore the effect of linguistic interference of L1 (Sindhi) in the acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes by the high school English learners.
(ii) To determine whether the acquisition order of grammatical morphemes of the current study differs from Dulay and Burt (1974) and Brown (1973).

Research queries
The present study aims to respond the following questions: (i) Does the L1 (Sindhi) interfere with the acquisition order of grammatical morphemes by 10th Grade participants?
(ii) Is the acquisition order of 10th Grade participants similar to the studies by Dulay and Burt (1974) and Brown (1973)?

Classical literature on the order of L2 acquisition
Language acquisition always remains a subject of interest for researchers whether it is L1 or L2 acquisition.To acquire or learn a language, one goes through several stages.Klima andBellugi (1996), andBrown (1973) determined that children follow a similar process in learning a language.They initiate learning by recognizing the sounds, which are then followed by the identification of the words and their meanings, and then comes the stage where they learn to make sentences from those words.Brown (1973) reveals that children go through several stages in acquiring grammatical morphemes.Morphemes are the smallest meaningful unit of a language, which play a grammatical role in the language (Cook, 2016).They are categorized as "free morphemes" and "bound morphemes."Free morphemes are further classified as lexical and functional morphemes and bound morphemes are classified as derivational and inflectional morphemes.The present study focuses only on eight English inflectional morphemes, i.e., plural-s, possessives third person singular present tense-s, past tense-ed, present participle-ing, past participle-en, superlative-est, and comparative-er.Several studies have proven that L1 effects on L2 morpheme acquisition as follows: According to a study published in the Studies in Second Language Acquisition journal, the authors found that there is an L1 influence on the acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes by the high school English learners.They investigated the L2 acquisition order of six English grammatical morphemes by learners from seven L1 groups across five proficiency levels.The study establishes clear L1 influence on the absolute accuracy of morphemes and their acquisition order, therefore challenging the widely held view that there is a universal order of acquisition of L2 morphemes (Murakami & Alexopoulou, 2016).Brown (1973) is the pioneer of the morpheme acquisition study.He considered three children speaking English as their mother tongue.Brown's (1973) findings revealed that the order of acquisition of 14 grammatical morphemes was similar among the three participants even though they belonged to different family backgrounds.Brown's (1973) research intrigued many other researchers to investigate the universality of the acquisition order and their findings also proved that the acquisition order of English as L1 by Brown (1973) is universal as de Villers and de Villers (1973) carried out a cross-sectional study and examined acquisition order of morphemes from the data collected from 21 children, aged 16-49 months, who were native speakers of English and compared his accuracy order with Brown's acquisition order.The result of de Villers and de Villers (1973) was like that of Brown's acquisition order.Table 1 illustrates the acquisition order of grammatical morphemes developed by Brown (1973) and de Villers and de Villers (1973).Dulay andBurt (1973, 1974) examined the acquisition order of grammatical morphemes among children speaking English as their second language.Their study revealed that ESL learners also follow a universal order for the acquisition of grammatical morphemes regardless of age, culture, first language (L1), or amount of exposure to L1.However, it differs from the universal acquisition order developed by Brown (1973) for L1 speakers of English because of the interference of L1's grammatical and linguistic structure.Following the study of Dulay andBurt (1973, 1974), other researchers also studied the universal acquisition order of grammatical morphemes (e.g., Bailey et al., 1974;Larsen-Freeman, 1976).Table 2 shows the acquisition order of grammatical morphemes by ESL learners formulated in Wagner (2005).
Despite the significance, the acquisition of morphemes seems to be difficult among L2 learners (Ellis, 2008;MacWhinney, 2008) and for this reason, several studies have been carried out on second language acquisition (SLA).Following Dulay and Burt (1974), many researchers also studied the acquisition order of grammatical morphemes by ESL learners, but they examined the order of acquisition in adults.Bailey et al. (1974) examined the oral samples of 73 adult ESL learners and revealed that adults exhibit a similar acquisition pattern as children.Larsen-Freeman (1976) also studied the acquisition order of grammatical morphemes by 24 adult ESL learners and his study found a similar acquisition pattern as Dulay and Burt's (1974) oral responses; however, he found that the pattern varied with written responses.Other researchers manifested that oral and written responses should not be examined similarly (Bachman & Palmer, 1996;Luoma, 2004;Weigle, 2002).Larsen-Freeman (1976) also found that age has very little effect on the order of acquisition.In this study, Larsen-Freeman has also addressed an issue regarding the term "acquisition order."Her study suggested "accuracy order" an accurate term to be used for morpheme studies.Furthermore, easy things are not necessarily learned first because acquisition order gets influenced by many factors for instance; distinct learning styles, contextual needs or exposure.So, acquisition order cannot be determined based on the order of difficulty (Cook, 2016).

L1 influence studies
A series of SLA research assumed that L1 does not influence the acquisition order of grammatical morphemes (e.g., Ellis, 1998;Mitchell & Myles, 2019).However, Cheng and Lee (2020) determined the acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes by L1 speakers of Chinese and Korean claim that the acquisition order of grammatical morphemes is highly influenced by L1.Additionally, Murakami and Alexopoulou (2016) also found that L1 influences the acquisition order either because of the absence of a morpheme or because of the acquisition of a new concept.However, Purnamaningwulan (2020) found that the acquisition order of grammatical morphemes of Indonesian ESL learners does not fully support the universal acquisition order but his study did not confirm the influence of L1 on acquisition order.Khan (2014) determined the acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes in EFL textbooks and by fifth-grade young learners.He also compared his study with Dulay and Burt (1974) and found no similarities between the order obtained from the EFL textbook and the previous study.However, he found similarities in acquisition order between young learners and Dulay and Burt's (1974) natural order and concluded that L2 learners follow a universal acquisition order.Sailo (2021) examined the acquisition order of five English grammatical morphemes (plural-s, irregular past, regular past, auxiliary -be and articles) of Mizo ESL learners.His study determined a slight difference in the acquisition order when it was compared with the universal order and he also found a possibility of L1 influence but recommended further research to generalize the findings.Table 3 shows the acquisition order determined by Khan (2014) and Sailo (2021).Cheng and Lee (2020) found that the amount of English instruction also affects acquisition order.For the current study of the acquisition, Sindhi-speaking ESL learners have been exposed more to their mother tongue as most of the teachers are Sindhi native speakers and they find the Sindhi language more convenient to interact with ESL learners because of this reason they receive less amount of English instruction, and this may affect their acquisition order of morphemes.Wagner (2005) noted two ways in which L1 affects the acquisition of L2, i.e., positive, and negative transfers.These two transfers are considered as "interference" in the acquisition of a language.The present study aims to determine the interlanguage interference among Sindhi 10th-grade pupils.Akbaş and Ölçü-Dinçer (2021) determined the acquisition order English grammatical morphemes of L1 speakers of Turkish and found that L1 does influence the acquisition order of L2 grammatical morphemes in a sense that when an L2 morpheme does not exist in learner's L1, they acquire it later.Some criticism of morpheme studies has been made as Hulstijn (2015) argues that the morpheme order studies have not been able to explain why L2 learners acquire morphemes in a particular order.The studies have found that L2 learners acquire certain morphemes before others, but they have not been able to explain why this is the case.This suggests that the order of acquisition may be due to a number of factors, such as the learner's L1, the type of input they receive, and their learning strategies.
The "interlanguage interference affects the acquisition order of the current, though there are no corresponding morphemes in the L1.To the best of our knowledge, no theoretical account makes explicit predictions regarding this question for the set of morphemes investigated here.We can, however, extract some predictions from existing proposals discussing related issues.Some SLA researchers hint the mapping of semantic/functional features to their morphological realization in the L2 as particularly challenging for learners (Ionin, 2017) with the article and aspectual distinctions among the hardest such mappings (DeKeyser, 2005).Abbasi (2010) conducted a study on 11 problem-posing English consonantal sounds and found that Sindhi ESL learners often face more difficulty with the following sounds: Three voiceless stops: /p/,/t/, and/k/, a voiceless and a voiced inter-dental fricative: /ө/and/ð/, a labiodental voiced fricative: /v/, a voiced palatal-alveolar fricative: /ʒ/, two palato-alveolar voiceless and voiced affricates: /tʃ/and/dʒ/, a glide: /w/labio-velar, a liquid consonant: /r/.Abbasi and Hussain (2012) argue the syllable structure of Sindhi is based on five syllable templates and different possible free or bound morphemes in Sindhi.Additionally, Abbasi and Hussain (2015) argue that Sindhi behaves like a stress accent language as per acoustic data analyzed in the States' Phonetic Laboratory of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.Hulstijn (2015) argues that the morpheme order studies have not been able to explain why L2 learners acquire morphemes in a particular order.The studies have found that L2 learners acquire certain morphemes before others, but they have not been able to explain why this is the case.This suggests that the order of acquisition may be due to a number of factors, such as the learner's L1, the type of input they receive, and their learning strategies.Moreover, Long and Sato (1986) argued that the findings of the morpheme studies were not generalizable.They argued that the studies were based on small samples of L2 learners, and that the findings may not apply to a wider population of L2 learners.They also argued that the studies were conducted in different settings, and that the findings may not be generalizable to other settings.Rahman (2009) discusses that Sindhi is an Indo-Aryan language that is enriched with derivational and inflectional morphology.Rahman (2009) study assisted the current study to determine Sindhi's inflectional morphemes, as discussed as follows: Plural i.e., in English, similarly Sindhi  has two numbers, i.e., singulars and plurals.In Sindhi, number inflection depends upon gender and the ending vowel of the noun (Rahman, 2009).Rahman (2009) has given different number inflection rules for feminine and masculine as shown in Table 4.

The grammatical morphemes in the Sindhi language
Possessive case and third person singular present tense exists in Sindhi.For possessive case, Sindhi has possessive markers, i.e., /dʒo/, /dʒa/, /dʒi/, /dʒe/, and /varo/.Table 5 shows genitive postposition in Sindhi.Furthermore, like English, Sindhi also has a functional morpheme used to represent third person in the singular present tense; however, in Sindhi, it depends on the gender of a noun.
Present participle in Sindhi also depends on the number, and gender of the noun.The morphemes/-rehyo/and/-rəhi/, followed by an ending vowel, are used in Sindhi to form present participle.Rahman (2017) discussed the present participle aspect in Sindhi using three root words, i.e., /marɪ/(beat), /de/(give), and /lɪk h ʊ/(write), two of them are shown in Table 6.
According to Rahman (2017), Sindhi root words ending with -ɪ and -ʊ add-jo suffix in their past participle form.Whereas, the past tense is formed with the past participle verb followed by the past tense auxiliary.Past tense also depends on number and gender.Table 7 shows past participle and past tense forms in Sindhi.Baig (2006) and Trumps (1872) determine the comparative and superlative degrees in Sindhi.The Sindhi as well as the cognate idioms, lost the power to form a comparative and superlative degree after the manner of the Sanskrit (and Persian) by means of adjective affixes and it is very remarkable, that the Semitic way of making up for the degrees of comparison has been adopted.To express the idea of the comparative, the object, or objects with which another is to be compared is put in the ablative, or which is the same, the postpositions khã, khõ, khũñ, mã, and mənʤ h ã are employed, the adjective itself remaining in the positive.In order to express the idea of the superlative, pronominal adjectives all is placed before the ablative.By the ablative the difference or distance which exists between the objects compared is pointed out.They further revealed that in Sindhi, for a comparative degree, free morpheme/vəd h ikə/,/təmamʊ/, and/ghəɳõ/ are used while for a superlative degree, /təmamʊ-ghərũ/ and /səbhəkhã/ and bound morpheme /i:n/ is used.Table 8 shows the comparative and superlative degrees in Sindhi along with examples.
Sindhi behaves as a stress accent language.It is an open-syllable because every word ends up on the vowel (Abbasi & Hussain, 2015).Sindhi is an Indo-Aryan language that has a complex system of inflectional and derivational morphology.It has a large number of inflectional forms and, like most languages, primary and secondary word types.Primary words are basic units and cannot be further divided, while secondary words are either compound or complex.Sindhi words can be constructed through inflection or derivation, which occurs through addition, subtraction, or replacement of suffixes.Similar to Urdu, addition can also include reduplication.Sindhi nouns can be inflected to show changes in number, gender, or case (Rahman, 2009).Sindhi is a first language of people residing in Sindh province, the rural area in particular.Due to the official nature of English in Pakistan, learners begin learning English from the very beginning of their schooling.Just like any other L2 learner of English, Sindhi ESL learner's L1 interferes with their L2 English, is one of the aspects affecting English grammatical morphemes being acquired in a diverse order.The acquisition of English morphemes is a crucial aspect of learning the language for non-native speakers.
According to Perkins and Larsen-Freeman (1975) aimed to determine if the sequence of grammatical morphemes reported by Dulay andBurt (1973, 1974), Bailey et al. (1974) for second language learners would be found to exist in tasks other than that requiring speech production.The study administered a battery of five tasks: reading, writing, listening, imitating, and speaking to 24 adult ESL learners from four native-language backgrounds (Arabic, Japanese, Persian, and Spanish).After scoring for morpheme suppliance in obligatory contexts and using the Group Score Method (Dulay & Burt, 1974) to order the morphemes, a high level of concordance was found across language groups with regard to morpheme ordering within a task.However, there was individual and language group variability apparent.When comparing morpheme sequencing across tasks for all subjects, there was not the same high degree of relationship.The acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes is of particular interest to second language acquisition (SLA) researchers.The interest in learner language stems from the assumption that the researcher may gain insights into the process of second language acquisition by exploring the L2 productions of a language learner.Ellis (1998) "If we have a better understanding of the second language acquisition process, we can apply the findings to a variety of practical aspects of language teaching: syllabus design, materials development, task design, language testing, and so on".Dulay and Burt (1973) were among the first to conduct an empirical study of the acquisition order of the grammatical features of English.They studied the order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes (such as -ing and thethat play a greater part in structure than content words such as dog), which was first investigated by Roger Brown in L1 acquisition (Brown, 1973).Ellis (1998) "Throughout their papers, Dulay and Burt claimed that L2 acquisition proceeds quite systematically and that the acquisition order is not rigidly invariant but is remarkably similar irrespective of the learners" L1 backgrounds, age and/or medium of production'.

Research methodology
A mixed methods research design was utilized.The study used an exploratory-descriptive-qualitative methods coupled with a quantitative as per the objectives of the study corresponding to the research questions.

Sampling
There were (n = 22) in the first sample and (n = 18) participants in the second sample selected via convenience sampling method.The total number of samples were (N = 40).The reason for the different number of participants in first and second sample is because during the second sampling, some of the participants were not present in the class.The participants were young native speakers of Sindhi.The age of the participants ranged between 14 and 15 years.All the participants were 10th Grade participants studying at the high school learning English as a second language and their L2 proficiency level is pre-intermediate.The testing was done twice, and both tests were in written form.The first test was conducted in October 2021 and the second test occurred after three months in January 2022.The testing was done during regular class hour.10th Grade participants were given 30 min to write an essay on the given topic of their interest.During the first sampling, the pupils were asked to write an essay without being told about using the eight inflectional morphemes.However, in the second sampling, the eight inflectional morphemes were shown to the pupils and were asked to use them in their essays.The data collected was analyzed through quantitative method.

Material
For data collection, written essays were chosen as the primary instrument to determine the acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes.Written essays provide an opportunity for participants to use language in a more natural and uncontrived manner.This can reveal the participants' spontaneous production of various grammatical morphemes in context, which may be less apparent in structured language assessments.Additionally, essays can include sentences with multiple grammatical morphemes used in various contexts.This can help researchers understand how participants apply morphemes based on syntactic and semantic cues.The pupils were asked to write an essay on "My Ideal Teacher" in the first test and on "My Favorite Personality" in the second test.The selection of the topics was done based on several considerations.Firstly, these topics are relatable and familiar to the 10th Grade participants.They are subjects that students likely encounter in their daily lives, making it easier for them to connect with and write about.Moreover, the participants were not given freedom to select topic of their choice as they were 10th Grade participants, therefore, using specific topics ensured that the writing tasks were developmentally appropriate and aligned with their language abilities.The data collected was analyzed through quantitative method.There was a total of 40 essays of approximately 10,000 words (250 words per essay).The testing was taken during the regular class hours of the pupils.The essay write-ups of the pupils were assessed to determine the acquisition order of English inflectional morphemes and to investigate the interference of L1.

Procedure of scoring
The collected samples were manually checked out to score the targeted morphemes.Dulay and Burt (1974) study scored 1 point for a correct morpheme, 0.5 points for incorrect morphemes, and 0 points were scored for not supplying the morpheme where needed.The current study scored the morphemes according to Dulay and Burt (1974) scoring system.The present study assigned 1 point for the correct usage of a morpheme, 0.5 points for the incorrect usage of a morpheme because the incorrect usage or malformation both indicate that pupils are aware of the morphemes but lacked the correct usage and 0 points were assigned for missing morpheme in the required context.For scoring, Suppliance in Obligatory Context (SOC) formula was used which was first used by (Brown, 1973) and then Dulay and Burt (1974) and the majority of the other researchers also used the SOC formula for the determination of acquisition order of grammatical morphemes.Therefore, the current study used the SOC formula and then multiplied the obtained answers by 100 to obtain acquisition percentages.Figure 1 illustrates (Brown, 1973) SOC formula.
Figure 1 depicts the SOC formula, introduced by Brown (1973) to determine morpheme acquisition order.The formula involves multiplying incorrect context count by 0.5 and adding it to the correct suppliances count.The result is then divided by obligatory context count, and the final value is multiplied by 100 for the acquisition percentage.Eight inflectional morphemes were examined from the writing samples of 10th Grade participants, i.e., plural-s, possessive-s', third person singular present tense-s, past tense-ed, present participle-ing, past participle-en, superlative-est, and comparative-er.For plural, only short-s was included and long-es and -ies forms were excluded.For the third person singular present tense, only -s forms were included and -es forms were excluded.For past tense, only -ed forms were included and -ied forms were excluded.After all the calculations were completed, the obtained acquisition percentage of morphemes were ordered.Firstly, the acquisition order of both samples was analyzed separately and then the acquisition orders of both samples were compared.After that, the percentages of both samples were averaged for comparison with Dulay and Burt (1974) to figure out if the universal order for ESL pupils is accurate for the current study.The study also compared results with Khan (2014) who also found acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes by Pakistani ESL young learners, speaking different mother tongue than the present study.

Discussion and analysis
This section has been divided into four parts.The first section discusses the results of the first sampling while the second section discusses the results of the second sampling.The third section compares the acquisition order of both samplings.The fourth section elaborates the comparison of the current study's acquisition order with the previous studies, i.e., Dulay and Burt (1974) and Brown (1973).

Statistical analysis
Ho=Null hypothesis: The young Sindhi ESL learners do not follow the universal order of grammatical morphemes.H1=Alternate hypothesis: The young Sindhi ESL learners follow the universal order of grammatical morphemes.

Chi-square test
We conducted a chi-square test of independence to investigate the relationship between young Sindhi ESL learners and their ability to follow the universal order of grammatical morphemes.The results showed that there was a significant relationship between these two categorical variables, with a chi-square value of 1.323 and p-value less than 4.32 (N = 40).These findings supported our null hypothesis that young Sindhi ESL learners do not follow the universal order of grammatical morphemes, including plural-s, present participle-ing, third person-s, possessive -'s, past tense -ed, past participle-en, superlative-est, and comparative-er.

Paired samples t-test
The results of a paired t-test revealed that there was no statistically significant difference between the two groups, Sample-1 (M = 71.5,Sd = 36.2) and Sample-2 (M = 74.3,Sd = 26.8),with a t-value of 0.4 and a degree of freedom of 7. The p-value was less than 0.05, indicating that the difference observed was not statistically significant.

First sampling
After the samples of first testing were manually examined, the morphemes were tallied and labelled as obligatory context/occurrence, correct suppliance, and incorrect/malformed suppliance, and missing suppliance where obligatory occurrence shows the frequency in which the use of morpheme was obligatory, correct suppliance shows the frequency in which morpheme was correctly used in the context, incorrect/malformed suppliance shows the frequency in which the morpheme was incorrectly used or was malformed, and missing suppliance shows the frequency in which the morpheme was required but was not used.As discussed before, when the morpheme was correctly supplied, 1 point was assigned, when it was incorrect/malformed then 0.5 points were given and when no morpheme was used in the context where it was required then 0 points were assigned.Table 9 shows the calculated scores of the first testing for all the targeted morphemes.
Plurals-The present study considered only a short form of plural, i.e., -s and excluded the long form -es or -ies.Some pupils used plural -s with irregular plural nouns, e.g., "childs" and "peoples." The above Table 9 illustrates that plural -s was the most frequently used morpheme.Present participle-ing-occurred in 21 contexts in essays.There was no context in which pupils missed its suppliance.In one context, the pupil supplied the -ing form with a stative verb, i.e., "understand".Third person singular present tense-s, the study included only simple -s forms of third person singular present tense and excluded the -es forms.This table above reveals that most of the pupils have awareness regarding third person singular-s's correct use.The possessive-'s had seven obligatory occurrences in the essays.Since possessive -'s was very few times used in the first sampling therefore we cannot generalize this result.Past tense-ed, the study considered only short forms of past tense -ed and excluded the long forms -ied.Past participle-en, the study considered only -en forms of the past participle.There was only one obligatory occurrence of past participle -en and was used correctly.Superlative-est, the superlative -est morpheme had only two obligatory occurrences and in both occurrences, it was correctly used.Figure 8 shows percentages of the use of past participle -en.Comparative-er, the comparative -er was not used by any participant in their essays.
The values shown in Table 10 were used to determine the acquisition percentages of all the targeted morphemes by using the SOC formula as used by Dulay and Burt (1974).The acquisition order of Sindhi-speaking ESL learners determined from the first sampling is shown in Table 10. Figure 2 illustrates acquisition percentages of targeted morphemes in the first sample.
Figure 2 shows the acquisition percentage of targeted morphemes in sample 1.It reveals that participants used present participle -ing, plural -s, past tense -ed, and third-person present tense singular -s.Present participle -ing ranked first, while third-person present tense singular -s was the last acquired morpheme.Plural -s and past tense -ed ranked second and third, respectively.Table 10 illustrates the acquisition percentages of inflectional morphemes of Sindhi ESL learners as calculated from their writing samples.Table 10 shows that the highest acquisition percentage is 97.6% whereas the lowest is 66.03%.The present participle -ing is the first acquired morpheme with an acquisition percentage of 97.6%.The second highest acquired morpheme is plural-s with 88.2% correctness.While, third person singular is last acquired morpheme with an acquisition percentage of 66.03%.The possessive -'s, past participle -en, superlative -est and comparative -er are not included in the acquisition order because their number of obligatory context is very small, i.e., <10.

Second sampling
The second sampling was done after 10th Grade participants' winter break during their regular class hours.The second testing was like the first one; the only difference was that pupils were given a brief explanation of the eight inflectional morphemes and were asked to use them in their write-ups because in the first sampling they did not use some of morphemes at all (i.e., comparative -er and superlative -est).After the samples were collected, they were manually checked for examination of the targeted morphemes.Then, the morphemes were labeled and tallied as obligatory occurrence, correct usage, and incorrect or SOC = 1.Brown's (1973) SOC formula to determine acquisition order of morphemes.malformed suppliance.The obligatory context also included a category in which no morpheme was used in the context where it was required.When the morpheme was correctly supplied it was assigned with 1 point when it was used incorrectly or was malformed then it was assigned with 0.5 points, and when the morpheme was missing in the obligatory context then 0 point was given.Table 11 shows the calculated scores of all the targeted morphemes in the second sampling.
Plural-s, for plural, only short -s forms were included and long -es or -ies forms were excluded.It is most used morpheme by the participants.Present participle-ing, there were 40 obligatory occurrences of present participle -ing in the second sampling.It was only once incorrectly supplied in the context where third person singular present tense -s was required, i.e., "He always supporting me" instead of "He always supports me."Third person singular present tense-s, the third person singular present tense -s had 25 obligatory occurrences.Possessive -'s, the possessive-'s had 19 obligatory occurrences where it was 11 times in the context.The missing suppliance reveals that participants lacked knowledge regarding the use of possessive cases.Past tense-ed, for past tense, only -ed forms were included.There was a total of 63 obligatory occurrences of past tense -ed.Past participle-en, for past participle, only -en forms were included.It has three obligatory occurrences where it was three times correctly used.There was no context in which it was incorrectly used or was missing.Superlative-est, the superlative -est had four obligatory occurrences in the second sampling, which is more than the previous sampling because the participants were instructed to use the targeted morphemes.Comparative-er, the comparative -er had three occurrences in the obligatory context and in all three contexts, it was incorrectly supplied.As compared to the previous sampling, the pupils used this morpheme in the second sampling, but they lacked its proper usage.The values mentioned in Table .16 were used to calculate the acquisition percentage of each morpheme by using the SOC formula to determine the acquisition order  Comparative -er 0 0 0 0 of morphemes from the second sampling as shown in Table 12. Figure 3 illustrates acquisition percentages of targeted morphemes in the second sampling.
Figure 3 displays the acquisition percentage of targeted morphemes in sample 2. It demonstrates that participants used present participle -ing, plural -s, past tense -ed, possessive-'s, and third-person present tense singular -s.Present participle -ing ranked first, while possessive-'s was the last acquired morpheme.Past tense -ed, plural -s, and third-person present tense singular -s ranked second, third, and fourth, respectively.Table 12 shows that the highest acquisition percentage is 98% while the lowest acquisition percentage is 31.5% reveals that present participle -ing is the first acquired morphemes with a 98% acquisition percentage.The second acquired morpheme is a past tense -ed with a 93% acquisition percentage.Then, plural -s is with an 82.3% acquisition percentage.Then, third person singular present tense -s with a 50% acquisition percentage.Lastly, possessive -'s is acquired with a 31.5% acquisition percentage.In second sample, past participleen, superlative -est and comparative -er had less than 10 obligatory contexts, therefore, they are discarded from the acquisition order.

Comparison of the first and second samplings
After determining the acquisition orders of targeted grammatical morphemes from the first and second sampling, their results were compared as shown in Table 13.
The comparison between the samples revealed some similarities and differences as well.Both samples' results show that present participle -ing is the first acquired morpheme in both samples.The third person singular present tenses -s ranked 4th in both the samples.However, the plural -s Figure 4 compares two samples, showing similarities and differences.Both samples have present participle -ing as the first acquired morpheme and third person singular present tense -s as the fourth.However, the first sample has plural -s as the second and past tense -ed as the third, while the second sample has past tense -ed as the second and plural -s as the third.Possessive -"s is only acquired in the second sample, ranking fifth.Both samples" results are credible due to their similarity.

Acquisition order of Sindhi ESL learners
In order to get a final acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes acquired by Sindhi ESL learners, the study averaged the results of two samples because there was no significant difference between the two samples.Table 14 and Figure 4 shows the acquisition order of Sindhi ESL learner as averaged from both samples.
Figure 5 depicts the acquisition order of morphemes among Sindhi ESL learners.The results represent the average of the findings from sample 1 and sample 2. These findings reveal that Sindhi ESL learners tend to acquire the present participle "−ing" morpheme first, while they acquire the possessive "-s" morpheme last.The order of acquisition for the past tense "−ed" morpheme, plural "−s" morpheme, and third person present tense singular "−s" morpheme is second, third, and fourth, respectively.

Comparison with previous studies
After averaging the acquisition order of both the samplings, the order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes of the current study was compared with the previous studies, i.e., Dulay and Burt (1974), etc.We compared the results with the Khan (2014) because he also determined the acquisition order of grammatical morphemes of Pakistani ESL learners, speaking Urdu as their first language.It is interesting to compare the two studies to examine the generalizability of the acquisition patterns and to determine if similar acquisition orders are observed across different L1 ESL learner populations, residing in the same country.The present study has compared only those morphemes which are in the current study and has excluded the other morphemes.Table 15 shows the comparison of acquisition orders with Dulay and Burt (1974) and Khan (2014).
Table 15 shows that the acquisition order of Sindhi-speaking ESL learners is different from the previous studies.The comparison reveals that there is no similarity between the present study's acquisition order and Dulay and Burt (1974) and Khan (2014).This may be because the present study only focused eight inflectional morphemes while Dulay and Burt (1974) and Khan (2014) determined acquisition order of 28 and 11 morphemes, respectively.Additionally, different L1s is also one of the reasons of different acquisition order of morphemes as noted by Luk and Shirai (2009).
One way teachers can apply these findings to their classrooms is by designing their syllabus and materials based on the acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes.For instance, teachers can use the findings to determine which morphemes to teach first and which ones to teach later.This can help students acquire English more efficiently and effectively.Another way teachers can apply these findings is by designing tasks that focus on specific morphemes.For example, teachers can design tasks that require students to use a particular morpheme in a sentence or a paragraph.This can help students practice using the morpheme in context and reinforce their understanding of it.Finally, teachers can use these findings to design language tests that assess students' knowledge of English grammatical morphemes.By doing so, teachers can evaluate students' progress in acquiring English and adjust their teaching accordingly.According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), the order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes is not associated with the instructions provided by instructors.However, it is influenced by various factors such as the child's age, language exposure, and cognitive development (Murakami & Alexopoulou, 2016).The present study notes that the amount of instructions pupils receive in English affects their acquisition order because the pupils are not completely exposed to the English language not only that, but their instructors are also not fluent in English and therefore, they fail to instruct pupils according to the standard English rules and mostly they prefer to interact with pupils in their mother-tongue which may also affect their acquisition process.According to Widiatmoko (2008), when a 90% acquisition percentage is achieved by a learner for a morpheme then the learner is perfect in the acquisition of that morpheme.According to this notion, the participants master the acquisition of present participle -ing morpheme.

Implications of the study
The study found that interlanguage interference has a positive effect on the acquisition order of targeted morphemes.This suggests that learners' first language (L1) influences their acquisition of a second language (L2) and supports the idea of transfer from L1 to L2.Further research can explore the extent and specific mechanisms of this transfer.The study also found that the amount of English instruction affects the acquisition order.This highlights the importance of providing adequate and effective language instruction to ESL learners.Language instruction that focuses on targeted morphemes and their appropriate usage could potentially facilitate a more natural and efficient acquisition process.Educators and language instructors should be aware of potential interlanguage interference in L2 learning.Understanding learners' L1 and its impact on L2 acquisition can help instructors tailor their teaching approaches to address specific linguistic challenges.Additionally, if English instruction is not provided adequately, learners are more likely to make errors, which is in line with the findings of Cheng and Lee (2020).

Limitations of the study
The study is limited to focus only on -s and -ed form of plural and past tense, respectively, to make the data analysis manageable.The study's acknowledgment of the limited number of participants highlights the importance of conducting more extensive and diverse studies to generalize the findings to a broader  population.The samples were collected from female participants based on availability of the subjects.Future research should consider larger participant samples from both gender group male and female to enhance the robustness of the results.

Conclusion
The study concluded that the acquisition order determined, does not fully support the universal acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes of native speakers by Dulay and Burt (1974).
The study also compared the results with Brown (1973) and Khan (2014) and found that the order of acquisition of the current study is different.The findings further revealed that interlanguage interference was also found in morpheme acquisition order in terms of nature of linguistic features of both languages L1 and L2.This finding is in line with Wagner (2005).However, the study does not claim that interlanguage interference plays a crucial role in the acquisition order due to limited number of participants and therefore further studies are required in this field to deeply explore the factors involved in the acquisition order of grammatical morphemes of the high school English learners.
Figure 3. Acquisition percentages of targeted morphemes in second sampling.
Figure 5. Acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes across the high school English learners.

Table 2 .
Acquisition order of grammatical morphemes for learners of English by Dulay

Table 5 .
Possessive markers & third person singular present tense in Sindhi as mentioned by Rahman