Trilingual Morphological Interactions: A Contrastive Analysis of Bound Morphemes in English, Portuguese, and Urdu
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1605.02Keywords:
contrastive analysis, language typology, trilingual analysis, multilingualism, migrationAbstract
This study examines the morphological patterns of three languages—English, Portuguese, and Urdu —used by Urdu-speaking migrants in Portugal. Focusing on bound morphemes, both derivational and inflectional, the research adopts a comparative-descriptive design to explore possible cross-linguistic influences and typological distinctions. Drawing on the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) as a historical framework, the study critically evaluates its applicability alongside contemporary perspectives in second language acquisition (SLA) and morphological pedagogy. Data were sourced from grammars, morphology texts, and existing literature to identify shared derivational cognates and divergent inflectional systems across the three languages. Findings reveal that while derivational morphemes often exhibit semantic and formal similarities facilitating transfer, inflectional morphemes reflect significant typological divergence, corresponding to the analytic (English), fusional (Portuguese), and agglutinative (Urdu) spectrum. These patterns provide a rich ground for testing that morphological awareness effects in vocabulary acquisition, yet inflectional differences are expected to pose specific learning challenges. The study underscores the theoretical significance of typology-informed contrastive analysis and highlights practical implications for pedagogy and translation. It concludes by recommending classroom-based testing of derived and inflected forms to optimize learning strategies for multilingual migrants.
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