Dr. Qasim Hammadi Dawood Al-Ibadi & Amal Salman mashree Al- Rufaye,
University of Wasit, Iraq
Causative verbs are used to indicate that one person causes a second person to do something for the first person. The causative verbs are: have, get, make (Croft, W. 2003:34). The present study aims at presenting the syntactic and semantic characteristics of causative verbs and investigating empirically the extent to which Iraqi EFL university learners’ master these characteristics. Also, it aims at investigating the extent to which they can recognize and use causative verbs correctly; and their ability to differentiate the causative verbs from another types of verbs. A test has been conducted to a sample of 100 Iraqi EFL university learners at their third and fourth year in the Departments of English at the Colleges of Education, Universities of Wasit during the academic year 2016-2017. The test has been exposed to jury members to measure its face validity. Statistical means has been applied to the results of the test to investigate the perception and use of the college students in causative verbs. They have yielded certain conclusions that Iraqi EFL university learners at the third and fourth year face difficulties in perceiving and using the causative verbs. The rate of their correct responses in the whole test, (1291, 28.205%), is lower than their incorrect ones (3709, 71.795%). At the production level, the subjects’ incorrect responses (2434, 79.84%) reveal that they are unable to use causative verbs correctly whether syntactically or semantically. The difference in the rate of the incorrect responses of the perception (1275, 63.75%) and the use levels show that the learners of the third - fourth year face more difficulty at the use level than that at the perception one.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The Second International Conference on Current Issues of Languages, Dialects and Linguistics (WWW.LLLD.IR), 1-2 February 2018, Iran-Ahwaz.