Why Morphosyntax Matters to Second Language Teaching and Learning

Two different languages may make use of the same grammatical categories, such as number or tense, but one language may make distinctions within that category that the other does not, or express those distinctions with more complex coding than the other. It is even possible that a grammatical category expressed in one language is entirely absent from the other. Second language learning thus requires a comparative approach. The learner must understand the rules and structures in both L1 and L2 order to identify how the languages differ from each other. This requires a “metalanguage” for thinking and speaking about language structure. An understanding of basic morphosyntactic concepts provides just such a metalanguage. Using comparative case studies with data from English, Spanish, German, and Norwegian, this chapter demonstrates the usefulness for second language learning of morphosyntactic concepts such as tense, modality, aspect, finite, infinitive, participle, imperfective, past prospective, gerund, nominalization, definite, indefinite, reflexive, modifier, argument, constituent, complement, dependent clause, relative clause, conjunction, and subordinator.