Hermas A 2023 Definiteness restrictions in L2 French and L3 English (original) (raw)
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The Acquisition of English and Arabic Existential Constructions
2010
This study is an investigation of the acquisition of existential constructions (ECs) in English and in Spoken Arabic. It is the first of its kind in that it examines the acquisition of the pieces and the features that form ECs; namely, existential there, the copula, definiteness, and agreement for English and existential fii, definiteness, word order, and negation for Spoken Arabic. The children learning English and Arabic had difficulties producing adult-like ECs. However, the difficulties that the children learning Arabic had with ECs are different from the difficulties that the children learning English had with English ECs. An analysis the files of Eve (Brown, 1973), Nina (Suppes, 1973) and Peter (Bloom 1970), taken from the CHILDES database (MacWhinney & Snow, 1985) showed that English existentials are not acquired at the same time as deictic constructions (DCs); existential contexts appear later than deictic ones and are much less productive. The children had difficulties acquiring be in both constructions. The data shows that acquisition of be in existential constructions follows a different pattern of development than deictic be and auxiliary-be. Although the rate of provision and omission of be in both ECs and DCs is about the same, the use of be in existentials is not as frequent as be in deictic or as in auxiliary-be constructions. The earliest token of an English EC
Existential quantifiers in second language acquisition
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 2013
Lardiere’s (2005, 2008, 2009) Feature Reassembly Hypothesis proposes that L2 acquisition involves reconfiguring the sets of lexical features that occur in the native language into feature bundles appropriate to the L2. This paper applies the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis to findings from recent research into the L2 acquisition of existential quantifiers. It firstly provides a feature-based, crosslinguistic account of polarity item any in English, and its equivalents — wh-existentials — in Chinese, Korean and Japanese. We then test predictions built on the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis, about how learners map target existential quantifiers in the L2 input onto feature sets from their L1, and how they then reassemble these feature sets to better match the target. The findings, which are largely compatible with the predictions, show that research that focuses on the specific processes of first mapping and then feature reassembly promises to lead to a more explanatory account of develop...
Existential quantifiers in second language acquisition: a feature reassembly account
2013
for their questions and comments, which helped to shape the paper. We also thank George Tsoulas for his extensive discussion, and Roumyana Slabakova for her insightful comments and her encouragement. We are grateful to the editors and reviewers for their detailed, helpful comments.) Feature Reassembly Hypothesis proposes that L2 acquisition involves reconfiguring the sets of lexical features that occur in the native language into feature bundles appropriate to the L2. This paper applies the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis to findings from recent research into the L2 acquisition of existential quantifiers. It firstly provides a feature-based, crosslinguistic account of polarity item any in English, and its equivalents—wh-existentials—in Chinese, Korean and Japanese. We then test predictions built on the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis, about how learners map target existential quantifiers in the L2 input onto feature sets from their L1, and how they then reassemble these feature sets to better match the target. The findings, which are largely compatible with the predictions, show that research that focuses on the specific processes of first mapping and then feature reassembly promises to lead to a more explanatory account of development in L2 acquisition.
2011
It has long been noted that second language learners and speakers (henceforth, L2ers) have problems in acquiring article systems, particularly in the case of L2ers whose mother tongues (L1s) lack articles (e.g., Huebner, 1985; Robertson, 2000; Thomas, 1989; see also papers in Garcia-Mayo & Hawkins, 2009). A variety of production errors have been reported. These include omission of articles in contexts in which they are required (see (1a)), as well as inappropriate patterns of suppliance, such as substitution of definites for indefinites (see (1b)) or vice versa, and oversuppliance in contexts where no article would be required, for example with indefinite mass nouns, abstract nouns or plurals (see (1c)).
The acquisition of different types of definite noun phrases in L2-English
International Journal of Bilingualism, 2017
Aims and research questions: This study aims to investigate second language (L2) learnability in article acquisition from a feature-based contrastive approach by examining L1-Korean speakers' comprehension of different types of definites in L2-English: anaphoric and non-anaphoric definites. English does not morphologically distinguish different kinds of definites but some languages do (e.g., Fering) (Schwarz, 2013). Korean, an article-less language, differentiates between the two types of definites by marking only one type (i.e., anaphoric) with the demonstrative ku 'that' (Chang, 2009). That is, the English definite article 'the' encodes [+definite, ±anaphoric] and the Korean demonstrative 'ku' encodes [+definite, +anaphoric]. Within the feature reassembly model (Lardiere, 2009), this difference in feature combinations between Korean and English is expected to influence L1-Korean learners' interpretation of English articles. Methodology: An acceptability judgment task was used to assess L1-Korean L2-English learners (22 intermediate and 15 advanced) and 26 English native-speaker controls' comprehension of different types of definites. Data: The intermediate group rated definites significantly higher than indefinites in anaphoric definite contexts but not in non-anaphoric definite contexts, indicating L1 influence. The advanced group rated definites higher than indefinites in non-bridging anaphoric contexts but not in bridging (anaphoric and non-anaphoric) contexts. This suggests that they have reassembled the features associated with the definite article but have difficulty in accommodating unmentioned propositions for bridging definites. Conclusion: These findings suggest that presupposition accommodation for bridging definites may be another hurdle in article acquisition beyond feature reassembly. Originality/Significance: By focusing on the acquisition of the semantics of definites, exclusively, this study provides new data and information which enable us to come to a more precise and fine-grained understanding of learnability in article acquisition. Thus, the results of the study bring out new and insightful conceptual issues that open up new directions for future research on the acquisition of definiteness.
Definiteness Effect (DE) in English as a Second Language
Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2013
The definiteness restriction or definiteness effect (DE) is one of the cross-linguistic variations, influencing the syntactic distribution of definites and indefinites. Generally speaking, sensitivity to definite determiner phrases (DPs) where definites are favored over indefinites is called definiteness effect and such an effect has been observed in a number of constructions (Abbott, 2006b).This study tries to take a look at the major lines of research with respect to the notion of definiteness and its effect (DE) in different languages as well as L2 studies which have focused on DE in second language acquisition. The paper raises a number of questions the investigation of which might shed some further light on the nature of L2 implicit knowledge and/or L2 linguistic processing.
Beyond Philology An International Journal of Linguistics, Literary Studies and English Language Teaching
This article describes and compares the way in which definiteness is expressed in Romance (Catalan and Spanish) and some Slavic and Afro-Asian languages. We present some difficulties concerning definite nominal expressions that speakers of Ukrainian, Egyptian Arabic and Amazigh as L1 face when learning Catalan or Spanish as a second language and we show that the acquisition of definite determiners is, in general, problematic regardless of the typological nature of the L1. We also indicate that these difficulties can be related to the emergence of different determiner layers in the higher functional field in the nominal domain during the acquisition process.
From Interlanguage grammar to target grammar in L2 processing of definiteness as uniqueness
Second Language Research, 2021
This study investigated the processing of English articles by second language (L2) speakers whose first language (L1) is Korean. Previous studies in L2 English article use had some issues unresolved such as using offline tasks, conflating definiteness with real-world knowledge, and operationalizing definiteness and relevant constructs in ways that participants can be primed or get metalinguistic cues. To revisit such issues, the construct ‘definiteness’ was operationalized as unique identifiability, a self-paced reading task was used to collect data, and regression models were employed to analyse logarithm residuals of raw reading time data, which can detect subtle differences that are otherwise buried. The results show that L1 speakers show sensitivity to the use of definite and indefinite articles in response to given contexts and that both advanced and intermediate L2 speakers first resort to their non-target-like Interlanguage grammar, but the advanced group later revises their initial interpretation and eventually shows the effect of target grammar. The L2 behavior is discussed in terms of its theoretical implications.