Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1980

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Trammell, Robert L.

Abstract

Prepositional usage presents Greek students of English with one of their most serious learning problems. According to the theory of transfer in foreign-language learning, a likely source of the problem is linguistic interference caused by conflict either between the English and Greek prepositional systems or within the former system itself--interlingual and intralingual interference, respectively. A contrastive analysis of these two systems at the syntactic and semantic levels serves to pinpoint specific areas of such conflict. Transformational-generative grammar provides a framework for the syntactic analysis of the systems, but for their semantic analysis we use a variety of approaches. A brief examination of four types of prepositional errors made by Greek students of English, deletion, insertion, substitution, and dislocation, follm.;s the contrastive analysis. This examination shows a close correlation between the errors and the particular points of conflict revealed by the contrastive analysis. The correlation demonstrates that linguistic interference is a possible source of prepositional misuse by Greek students of English.

Extent

146 p.

Comments

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1980.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

Identifier

FADT14038

Format

pdf

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