Second Language Acquisition of Articles

Empirical findings and theoretical implications

Editors

María del Pilar García Mayo | University of the Basque Country

Roger Hawkins | University of Essex

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027253101 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027289117 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00

The studies in this collection address a topic that has recently become the focus of considerable interest in second language acquisition (SLA) research: the acquisition of articles. Languages appear to vary in whether they have articles (English, German, Norwegian do, but Chinese, Japanese, Russian do not). Languages that have articles also appear to divide into those that realise definiteness (e.g. English) and those that realise specificity (e.g. Samoan). When speakers of one type of language learn an L2 of a different type, issues of central concern to SLA research arise: the nature of L1 influence, the time course of development, ultimate attainment, the relationship between performance and competence, and the role of Universal Grammar. These issues are considered in nine studies, written by researchers whose work is at the forefront of enquiry, that offer new data, new perspectives and new insights into the way L2 speakers acquire articles.

[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, 49] 2009. ix, 272 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.49

Table of Contents

List of editors and contributors | pp. vii–viii

Acknowledgments | p. ix

Introduction: The interest of article acquisition for theories of SLA

María del Pilar García Mayo and Roger Hawkins | pp. 1–10

Part I. Article choice, fluctuation and L1 transfer in the acquisition of articles by L2 speakers

Article choice in L2 English by Spanish speakers: Evidence for full transfer

María del Pilar García Mayo | pp. 13–35

L2 English article production by Arabic and French speakers

Ghisseh Sarko | pp. 37–66

Questioning the validity of the Article Choice Parameter and the Fluctuation Hypothesis: Evidence from L2 English article use by L1 Polish and L1 Mandarin Chinese speakers

Marta Tryzna | pp. 67–86

The processing role of the Article Choice Parameter: Evidence from L2 learners of English.

Lucy Kyoungsook Kim and Usha Lakshmanan | pp. 87–113

Accounting for patterns of article omissions and substitutions in second language production

Danijela Trenkic | pp. 115–143

Part II. Further issues in the representation and use of articles by L2 speakers

Article use and generic reference: Parallels between L1- and L2-acquisition

Tania Ionin and Silvina Montrul | pp. 147–173

Variability in L2 acquisition of Norwegian DPs: An evaluation of some current SLA models

Fufen Jin, Tor A. Åfarli and Wim A. van Dommelen | pp. 175–199

Articles in Turkish/English interlanguage revisited: Implications of vowel harmony

Heather Goad and Lydia White | pp. 201–232

Article choice and article omission in the L3 German of native speakers of Japanese with L2 English

Carol Jaensch | pp. 233–263

Author index | pp. 265–267

Language index | p. 269

Term index | pp. 271–272

“An unmistakable strength of the volume is its careful and disciplined attention to theory. Contributing authors clearly state the theoretical motivation for their studies, and they do not fail to discuss what their findings imply for current theory. Readers will encounter new theoretical questions, innovative task designs for data collection, and insightful interpretations of empirical findings.”

Benjamin White, Marshall University, in Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 33(3): 479-480

“The volume under review contains a very detailed and comprehensive collection of well-written and provocative studies that investigate article acquisition from various perspectives. Multiple languages are examined and discussed; semantic, prosodic and syntactic elements are considered; and a wide variety of test items and methods was employed. The wide scope of studies presented in this collection offers meaningful insight into the processes involved in the acquisition of articles, while at the same time becoming a catalyst for further study. Research into this very specific topic in language acquisition has far-reaching implications for second language acquisition research in general.”

Donielle Sharma, Heartland Community College, Normal IL, on Linguist List 21.2574, 2010

“This volume is an excellent example of how bringing together studies on a specific theme from leading researchers in a field can lead to a work greater than the sum of its parts. This enables the editors, María del Pilar García Mayo and Roger Hawkins, not only to present us with a state of the art picture of what is involved in the second language acquisition (SLA) of articles, but also to show very clearly how the acquisition of this area of grammar can provide a test case for current SLA theories. This book represents an invaluable contribution to current knowledge and understanding not only of this subfield, but of SLA theorising in general.”

Florence Myles, University of Newcastle

“The acquisition of nativelike morphosyntactic, semantic, and pragmatic knowledge of definite and indefinite articles in a second language is one of the thorniest and most persistent learning problems language learners face. This valuable collection offers findings from several new experimental studies of article acquisition, covering a range of methods and L1-L2 (and even L3) language combinations. The empirical results are brought to bear on important theoretical questions in SLA such as the role of transfer, the role of syntactic, semantic, and prosodic constraints of universal grammar, and the interaction between such constraints and other components of linguistic and extralinguistic knowledge. Readers will certainly come away with a deeper appreciation of what it takes to acquire (and to study) such knowledge.”

Donna Lardiere, Georgetown University

Cited by (28)

Cited by 28 other publications

Order by:

Sabir, Mona & Alaa Melebari

2023. I Want to Marry *the Merchant Banker: An Exploratory Self-Paced Reading Experiment on Arab Learners’ Processing of English Articles . PSYCHOLINGUISTICS 33:1

Ionin, Tania, Sea Hee Choi & Qiufen Liu

2022. What transfers (or doesn’t) in the second language acquisition of English articles by learners from article-less native languages?. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 12:2 ► pp. 133 ff.

Korfhagen, David, Rajiv Rao & Sandro Sessarego

2021. Chapter 7. Declarative intonation in four Afro-Hispanic varieties. In Aspects of Latin American Spanish Dialectology [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 32], ► pp. 155 ff.

Aalberse, Suzanne, Sible Andringa, Martina Faber & Phine Lippe

2020. Definiteness in Wenzhounese Chinese in the Netherlands and in China. In Lost in Transmission [Studies in Bilingualism, 59], ► pp. 16 ff.

Hermas, Abdelkader

2020. Genericity in third language English: Acquisition pattern and transfer in ultimate attainment. International Journal of Bilingualism 24:2 ► pp. 266 ff.

Ionin, Tania & María Belén Díez-Bedmar

2020. Article Use in Russian and Spanish Learner Writing at CEFR B1 and B2 Levels: Effects of Proficiency, Native Language, and Specificity. In Learner Corpus Research Meets Second Language Acquisition, ► pp. 10 ff.

Zhao, Helen

2020. The Emergence of Second Language Categorisation of the English Article Construction. Languages 5:4 ► pp. 54 ff.

AZAZ, MAHMOUD

2019. L1 Transfer Effects in the Production of Generic Plurals in L2 Arabic. The Modern Language Journal 103:1 ► pp. 275 ff.

Emilsen, Linda Evenstad

2019. Chapter 8. Acquisition of nominal morphology in Norwegian L2. In Teachability and Learnability across Languages [Processability Approaches to Language Acquisition Research & Teaching, 6], ► pp. 163 ff.

Lozano, Cristóbal & Ana Díaz-Negrillo

2019. Using learner corpus methods in L2 acquisition research. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics 32:1 ► pp. 82 ff.

Sessarego, Sandro

2019. Language Contact and the Making of an Afro-Hispanic Vernacular,

Sessarego, Sandro

2020. Chapter 2. Chocó Spanish. In Hispanic Contact Linguistics [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 22], ► pp. 44 ff.

Rao, Rajiv & Sandro Sessarego

2018. The intonation of Chota Valley Spanish: Contact-induced phenomena at the discourse-phonology interface. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 11:1 ► pp. 163 ff.

Sabir, Mona

2018. Specificity and article use. Instructed Second Language Acquisition 2:2 ► pp. 137 ff.

Aalberse, Suzanne, Yiwen Zou & S.J. Andringa

2017. Extended use of demonstrative pronouns in two generations of Mandarin Chinese speakers in the Netherlands. In Cross-linguistic Influence in Bilingualism [Studies in Bilingualism, 52], ► pp. 25 ff.

Kupisch, Tanja, Alyona Belikova, Öner Özçelik, Ilse Stangen & Lydia White

2017. Restrictions on definiteness in the grammars of German-Turkish heritage speakers. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 7:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

Campillos Llanos, Leonardo

2016. PoS-tagging a Spanish oral learner corpus. In Spanish Learner Corpus Research [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 78], ► pp. 89 ff.

Haznedar, Belma & F. Nihan Ketrez

2016. Introduction. In The Acquisition of Turkish in Childhood [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 20], ► pp. 1 ff.

Díez-Bedmar, María Belén

2015. Article use and criterial features in Spanish EFL writing. In Learner Corpora in Language Testing and Assessment [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 70], ► pp. 163 ff.

Ortega, Lourdes

2014. Chapter 8. Trying out theories on interlanguage: Description and explanation over 40 years of L2 negation research. In Interlanguage [Language Learning & Language Teaching, 39], ► pp. 173 ff.

TRENKIC, DANIJELA, JELENA MIRKOVIC & GERRY T. M. ALTMANN

2014. Real-time grammar processing by native and non-native speakers: Constructions unique to the second language. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 17:2 ► pp. 237 ff.

TRENKIC, DANIJELA & NATTAMA PONGPAIROJ

2013. Referent salience affects second language article use. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 16:1 ► pp. 152 ff.

Ionin, Tania, Soondo Baek, Eunah Kim, Heejeong Ko & Kenneth Wexler

2012. That’s not so different from the: Definite and demonstrative descriptions in second language acquisition. Second Language Research 28:1 ► pp. 69 ff.

ISHINO, NAO

2012. SYNTACTIC FEATURE TRANSFER AND REFLEXIVE BINDING IN INTERLANGUAGE. ENGLISH LINGUISTICS 29:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

White, Lydia, Alyona Belikova, Paul Hagstrom, Tanja Kupisch & Öner Özçelik

2012. Restrictions on definiteness in second language acquisition. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 2:1 ► pp. 54 ff.

Ionin, Tania, Silvina Montrul, Ji-Hye Kim & Vadim Philippov

2011. Genericity Distinctions and the Interpretation of Determiners in Second Language Acquisition. Language Acquisition 18:4 ► pp. 242 ff.

Vandepitte, Sonia

2002. Causality. In Handbook of Pragmatics, ► pp. 1 ff.

[no author supplied]

2015. Afro-Peruvian Spanish [Creole Language Library, 51],

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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