LINGUIST List 21.4413 Thu Nov 04 2010 Diss: Lang Acq: Sarko: 'The Acquisition of the English Article ...' Editor for this issue: Mfon Udoinyang <mfonlinguistlist.org> To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.cfm. Directory         1.     Ghisseh Sarko , The Acquisition of the English Article System by L1 Syrian Arab and French Learners of English Message 1: The Acquisition of the English Article System by L1 Syrian Arab and French Learners of English Date: 03-Nov-2010 From: Ghisseh Sarko <ghissehsarkogooglemail.com> Subject: The Acquisition of the English Article System by L1 Syrian Arab and French Learners of English E-mail this message to a friend Institution: University of Essex Program: MPhil/PhD in Linguistics Dissertation Status: Completed Degree Date: 2009 Author: Ghisseh Sarko Dissertation Title: The Acquisition of the English Article System by L1 Syrian Arab and French Learners of English Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition Subject Language(s): Arabic, Mesopotamian Spoken (acm) English (eng) French (fra) Dissertation Director(s): Roger Hawkins Dissertation Abstract: It is widely reported that second language (L2) speakers of English diverge from native speakers in their use of articles (the, a, Ø) in two ways: they omit articles where they are required, and they assign interpretations to articles that are not those assigned by native speakers. Many of these studies have focused on speakers whose L1s lack articles (Korean, Russian, Japanese, Turkish). Within the framework of the Full Transfer/Full Access Hypothesis about L2 acquisition, a number of proposals for explaining this divergence have emerged: articles are omitted because learners have difficulty mapping abstract syntactic representations into phonological forms (the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis); learners assign non-target interpretations to articles because they are fluctuating between the definite and specific values of an article choice parameter (the Fluctuation Hypothesis), or they have difficulty with 'feature assembly' in the L2 (Hawkins et al., 2006; Lardiere, 2005). The predictions for speakers of L1s that have articles that encode definiteness appear to be that these speakers will show much less divergence when they acquire English, although there is currently little evidence relating to such speakers. In this thesis, existing hypotheses about divergence in the use of English articles by nonnative speakers are tested in the context of L1 speakers of Syrian Arabic and French. Syrian Arabic differs from English in having no phonologically overt exponent of indefiniteness; French differs from English in requiring phonologically overt exponents of definiteness/indefiniteness in all contexts. Evidence was collected from participants (including a control group of native speakers) through a forced-choice elicitation task, an oral story re-call task and a written production task. Results suggest that both Syrian Arabic and French speakers use English articles differently from speakers of L1s that lack articles, and differently from each other. Neither group shows evidence of fluctuating between definite and specific interpretations of articles (unlike speakers of article-less L1s), but the Syrian Arabic speakers in particular appear to have divergent knowledge of article distribution by comparison with the French speakers. It is argued that these findings are consistent with Full Transfer of the properties of the L1 initially, followed by restructuring towards target use of English articles, consistent with Full Access to Universal Grammar. Persistent non-target-like use of articles appears to be a problem of 'feature reassembly'. Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 04-Nov-2010       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.