scholarly journals The Use of English Articles in Adjective-modified Contexts

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Abdulrahman Alzamil
Keyword(s):  
First Language ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Arabic Speakers ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Arabic And English ◽  
Saudi Arabic ◽  
English Articles

English articles are thought to be complex, ambiguous and not salient in spoken language, which is why second language (L2) learners of English exhibit usage variability. Much of the L2 acquisition literature seems to agree that L2 learners are affected, one way or another, by their first language (L1). However, the debatable and controversial issue is whether there are other factors that affect article use, independent of potential L1 effects. The present study examines whether the presence or absence of adjectives in noun phrases influences article choice among Saudi Arabic learners of English. Both Arabic and English have articles, but Arabic adjectives are different from English adjectives to the extent that they agree with nouns in definiteness, case and gender. The study was conducted with 24 L1 Saudi Arabic speakers and 6 native English speakers. A 42-item fill-in-the-blanks task was administered. The results showed that a) native speakers of English outperformed L2 Arabic speakers in all contexts except indefinite plural contexts not modified by adjectives; and b) L2 Arabic speakers were more accurate in indefinite contexts that were not modified by adjectives than those that were. These findings show that L1 Arabic speakers are sensitive to the presence or absence of adjectives in noun phrases.

Cross-linguistic differences in the immediate serial recall of consonants versus vowels

2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 605-621 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH M. KISSLING
Keyword(s):  
Serial Recall ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
First Language ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Immediate Serial Recall ◽  
Arabic Speakers ◽  
Native Arabic Speakers ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Arabic And English

ABSTRACTThe current study investigated native English and native Arabic speakers’ phonological short-term memory for sequences of consonants and vowels. Phonological short-term memory was assessed in immediate serial recall tasks conducted in Arabic and English for both groups. Participants (n= 39) heard series of six consonant–vowel syllables and wrote down what they recalled. Native speakers of English recalled the vowel series better than consonant series in English and in Arabic, which was not true of native Arabic speakers. An analysis of variance showed that there was an interaction between first language and phoneme type. The results are discussed in light of current research on consonant and vowel processing.

Plural-marking in L2 Korean: A feature-based approach

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sun Hee Hwang ◽  
Donna Lardiere
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Grammatical Function ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Feature Based ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Plural Marking

This study examined the second language (L2) acquisition of the Korean plural marker -tul by native speakers of English. Seventy-seven learners at four Korean proficiency levels along with 31 native Korean-speaking controls completed five tasks designed to probe for knowledge of particular features and restrictions associated with so-called intrinsic and extrinsic plural-marking in Korean. The results suggest that knowledge of both types of plural developed with increasing proficiency. However, the features associated with the intrinsic plural, which is more similar to the English plural in terms of grammatical function, were more easily acquired than those of the extrinsic (distributive) plural, which requires recruiting the features of a completely distinct morpholexical item from the first language (L1). We also found some developmental evidence for a feature hierarchy in quantified Korean noun phrases, in which the most deeply-embedded featural co-occurrence restriction on intrinsic plural-marking was the latest acquired.

scholarly journals An Experimental Investigation of Mass Noun Types and Article Usage

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 245
Author(s):  
Abdulrahman Alzamil
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Mass Noun ◽  
Mass Nouns ◽  
Arabic Speakers ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Article Usage ◽  
Saudi Arabic ◽  
English Articles

Speakers of languages with article systems have to make different article choices in the case of mass versus countable nouns. This study addressed article use with different types of mass nouns (liquid, solid and abstract). It investigated: a) whether first language (L1) Arabic speakers used English articles accurately with mass nouns; and b) whether they were sensitive to different types of mass noun. To address these issues, the study recruited twenty-seven English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Saudi-Arabic speaking participants and five native speakers of English, who formed a control group. Members of the experimental group were proficient to the elementary level, according to the Oxford Quick Placement Test. A written forced-choice elicitation task was administered to test their article use. The findings showed that: a) the Arabic speakers performed similarly to the native speakers of English in liquid contexts, but differently in solid and abstract contexts; b) the Arabic speakers did not perform similarly across all types of mass nouns, as they were sensitive towards mass noun types; c) their article use was more accurate in liquid contexts than in solid and abstract contexts; and d) they faced difficulties using articles with mass nouns that can be pluralised in Arabic. These findings indicate that the use of articles with mass nouns should be examined in the light of their subtypes, as well as whether second language (L2) learners’ L1 pluralise them or not.

‘I me Mine’ The Acquisition of Dutch Pronominal Possessives by L1 Children, L2 Children and L2 Adults

2008 ◽  
Vol 155 ◽  
pp. 23-52
Author(s):  
Elma Nap-Kolhoff ◽  
Peter Broeder
Keyword(s):  
Adult Learners ◽  
Young Children ◽  
First Language ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Possessive Constructions ◽  
Speech Data ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Dutch Language ◽  
L1 Acquisition

Abstract This study compares pronominal possessive constructions in Dutch first language (L1) acquisition, second language (L2) acquisition by young children, and untutored L2 acquisition by adults. The L2 learners all have Turkish as L1. In longitudinal spontaneous speech data for four L1 learners, seven child L2 learners, and two adult learners, remarkable differences and similarities between the three learner groups were found. In some respects, the child L2 learners develop in a way that is similar to child L1 learners, for instance in the kind of overgeneralisations that they make. However, the child L2 learners also behave like adult L2 learners; i.e., in the pace of the acquisition process, the frequency and persistence of non-target constructions, and the difficulty in acquiring reduced pronouns. The similarities between the child and adult L2 learners are remarkable, because the child L2 learners were only two years old when they started learning Dutch. L2 acquisition before the age of three is often considered to be similar to L1 acquisition. The findings might be attributable to the relatively small amount of Dutch language input the L2 children received.

The computation and suspension of presuppositions by L1-Mandarin Chinese L2-English speakers

2021 ◽  
pp. 026765832199387
Author(s):  
Shuo Feng
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
First Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Similar Response ◽  
Response Patterns ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Precise Understanding ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
External Interface ◽  
Discourse Interface

The Interface Hypothesis proposes that second language (L2) learners, even at highly proficient levels, often fail to integrate information at the external interfaces where grammar interacts with other cognitive systems. While much early L2 work has focused on the syntax–discourse interface or scalar implicatures at the semantics–pragmatics interface, the present article adds to this line of research by exploring another understudied phenomenon at the semantics–pragmatics interface, namely, presuppositions. Furthermore, this study explores both inference computation and suspension via a covered-box picture-selection task. Specifically, this study investigates the interpretation of a presupposition trigger stop and stop under negation. The results from 38 native English speakers and 41 first language (L1) Mandarin Chinese learners of English indicated similar response patterns between native and L2 groups in computing presuppositions but not in suspending presuppositions. That is, L2 learners were less likely to suspend presuppositions than native speakers. This study contributes to a more precise understanding of L2 acquisition at the external interface level, as well as computation and suspension of pragmatic inferences.

scholarly journals The processing of ambiguous sentences by first and second language learners of English

2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 453-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
CLAUDIA FELSER ◽  
LEAH ROBERTS ◽  
THEODORE MARINIS ◽  
REBECCA GROSS
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
First Language ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Lexical Semantic ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
On Line ◽  
Native Speakers Of English

This study investigates the way adult second language (L2) learners of English resolve relative clause attachment ambiguities in sentences such as The dean liked the secretary of the professor who was reading a letter. Two groups of advanced L2 learners of English with Greek or German as their first language participated in a set of off-line and on-line tasks. The results indicate that the L2 learners do not process ambiguous sentences of this type in the same way as adult native speakers of English do. Although the learners' disambiguation preferences were influenced by lexical–semantic properties of the preposition linking the two potential antecedent noun phrases (of vs. with), there was no evidence that they applied any phrase structure–based ambiguity resolution strategies of the kind that have been claimed to influence sentence processing in monolingual adults. The L2 learners' performance also differs markedly from the results obtained from 6- to 7-year-old monolingual English children in a parallel auditory study, in that the children's attachment preferences were not affected by the type of preposition at all. We argue that children, monolingual adults, and adult L2 learners differ in the extent to which they are guided by phrase structure and lexical–semantic information during sentence processing.

The acquisition of word order in Dutch and German as L1 and L2

1988 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Jordens
Keyword(s):  
Simple Model ◽  
Adult Learners ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
First Language ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
German Word ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
L1 And L2

In a recent paper, Clahsen and Muysken (1986) argue that children acquiring German as their first language have access to the 'move alpha' matrix when constructing a grammar for German. This should explain why children have SOV base order and the rule of verb-fronting from the very beginning. In this paper, it is argued that children's OV utterances cannot be related trans formationally to VO utterances. Initially, children acquire OV and VO with different sets of verbs.Clahsen and Muysken (1986) also claim that interlanguage rules of adult L2 learners are not definable in linguistic theory. Du Plessis et al. (1987) reply to this in arguing that the interlanguage rules of adults acquiring L2 German word order fall within the range of systems permitted by the Headedness parameter, the Proper Government parameter, and the Adjunction parameter. Therefore, these adult learners should have access to Universal Grammar (UG). It is argued here that it is not necessary to make this assumption. The L2-acquisition data can be easily accounted for within a simple model of L1-structural transfer.

scholarly journals The Effect of the Positive and the Negative Evidences in Learning English ‘to’ with Manner-of-Motion to Goal Constructions by L1 Saudi Arabic Speakers

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Hanan Mohammed Kabli
Keyword(s):  
First Language ◽  
Intermediate Stage ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Boundary Crossing ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Negative Evidence ◽  
Positive Evidence ◽  
Arabic Speakers ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
Saudi Arabic

The present study investigates the effect of the first language (L1) on learners by using the negative and the positive evidence in the classrooms while teaching English directional prepositions such as ‘to’ and ‘into’. It is assumed that Arabic has two versions of ‘to’. It has the directional interpretation without boundary-crossing which is equivalent to the English ‘to’; whereas, it also denotes a similar interpretation to English directional preposition ‘into’ which is unavailable in Arabic and involves boundary-crossing. The study considers two groups to examine the effect of the overlaps, who are at an intermediate stage of development; the experiment group (E.G.) and the control group (C.G.). The control group is the base to measure the effectiveness of the treatments on the experiment groups’ judgments. Hence, an Acceptability Judgment Task is devised to elicit participants’ judgments on the task items in the pretest and the posttest. Results show clear advantage of the negative evidence in the experiment group’s performance in the posttest in learning ‘to’ with and without boundary-crossing. There is a difference in the experiment group’s performance in the posttest in learning ‘into’ with the boundary-crossing event after receiving the positive evidence. Similarly, a difference was observed in the experiment group’s judgment with those of the control group in the comparison between ‘to’ and ‘into’ with the boundary-crossing event in the posttest.

scholarly journals “When being specific is not enough”: Discrepancies between L2 learners’ perception of definiteness and its linguistic definition

2021 ◽  
pp. 123-148
Author(s):  
Sugene Kim
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Second Language ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Semantic Context ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Korean College Students ◽  
English Articles

This paper explores the sources of difficulties that second language (L2) learners encounter when using English articles. Eighty-four Korean college students completed a forced-choice elicitation task before and after receiving instruction on article use and provided written accounts of article choices. The analysis of the task performance and written accounts indicated the participants’ noticeable tendency to prioritize specificity over definiteness, resulting in the overuse of the with specific indefinites. Not infrequently, the participants estimated a “nonspecificity hierarchy” for nonspecific definites, often leading to the infelicitous use of a(n). The overuse of the with modified noun phrases suggests that L2 learners attempt to construe semantic context (i.e., ±definite) on the basis of the syntactic structure. Furthermore, the participants’ correct use of a(n) for singular count indefinites sometimes stemmed from assuming the number of a target noun to be single rather than considering its multiple existence and, thus, its indefinite nature. These findings underline the necessity of teaching the specificity feature to indicate to learners that (1) English articles are prototypical realizations of encoding definiteness, which requires the mutual identifiability of a unique referent, and (2) specificity, which presupposes identifiability assumed by the writer/speaker alone, is not marked by articles in English.

Parsing the L2 input, an overview

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Real Time ◽  
First Language ◽  
Syntactic Analysis ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Syntactic Knowledge ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Syntactic Ambiguities ◽  
Syntactic Dependencies

The acquisition of second language (L2) syntax has been central to the study of L2 acquisition, but recently there has been an interest in how learners apply their L2 syntactic knowledge to the input in real-time comprehension. Investigating L2 learners’ moment-by-moment syntactic analysis during listening or reading of sentence as it unfolds — their parsing of the input — is important, because language learning involves both the acquisition of knowledge and the ability to use it in real time. Using methods employed in monolingual processing research, investigations often focus on the processing of temporary syntactic ambiguities and structural dependencies. Investigating ambiguities involves examining parsing decisions at points in a sentence where there is a syntactic choice and this can offer insights into the nature of the parsing mechanism, and in particular, its processing preferences. Studying the establishment of syntactic dependencies at the critical point in the input allows for an investigation of how and when different kinds of information (e.g., syntactic, semantic, pragmatic) are put to use in real-time interpretation. Within an L2 context, further questions are of interest and familiar from traditional L2 acquisition research. Specifically, how native-like are the parsing procedures that L2 learners apply when processing the L2 input? What is the role of the learner’s first language (L1)? And, what are the effects of individual factors such as age, proficiency/dominance and working memory on L2 parsing? In the current paper I will provide an overview of the findings of some experimental research designed to investigate these questions.

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