THE LEARNING OF THE COPULA BY IRAQI ARABIC AND KURDISH SPEAKERS OF EFL

The copula is a special word that combines the subject of a sentence and its description. Copulas are often irregular in many languages. The English word be is a copula. It is the verb whose inflection is most irregular in English. It combines the subject and its description in sentences such as ‘The sky is blue’. However, the word is in ‘The book is on the table’ is not only a copula but also an existential verb similar to the verb exist. The English copula is used in the environments such as: 1-1 The man is a doctor.(+ Nom)1-2 The pupil is clever.(+Adj)1-3 The cat is under the table.(+PP) This study aims mainly through investigating the learning of the English copula by native speakers of Kurdish, a copular language, and by native speakers of Arabic, a non-copular language, to establish whether the reduction of the copula is truly an interference phenomenon or not. The study also aims at establishing a hierarchy of learning, if any, and finding out whether the same is true for both groups of learners.