A Study On Markedness And Language Transfer In The Acquisition Of The English Article System

The present dissertation studies the acquisition of English articles from theperspective of Markedness Theory and language transfer. In spite of high frequency,the English article system remains a marked feature and difficult item for secondlanguage learners2especially for Chinese learners. Articles mainly exist inIndo-European and Semitic languages, whereas Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetanlanguage family in which there is no article system. Overseas studies on the articlesystem mainly focus on the classification of article system, semantic referentiality, theacquisition order and the significance of the article system. Studies on the Englisharticle system in China are mostly descriptive and exploratory, with particular interestin the semantic functions, pedagogical implications, and the acquisition order ofEnglish articles, which mainly fall into the descriptive and exploratory-based study.This dissertation investigates the article acquisition process within theframework of Markedness Theory and language transfer. It centers on the semanticfeatures of definiteness and specificity of noun phrases (NPs) and typologicaldifferences in the degree of markedness to investigate when and how languagetransfer takes place to affect the acquisition of articles. The study will help us to gainan insight into how language learners can acquire the English article system moresystematically and successfully.The study takes43overseas undergraduates from University of CentralLanchashire (Uclan) in UK as the subjects of the study, with an attempt to investigatethe differences among the language learners with different native languages. It willfurther explore the underlying factors that contribute to the differences and find therole that language transfer and markedness may play in the process of articleacquisition. The study employs a mixed quantitative and qualitative method. Twoexperiments, a multiple-choice task and a blank-filling task, as well as an interview constitute the main body of the dissertation.In this dissertation, articles are classified into four categories based onBickerton’s (1981) Semantic Wheel Model as well as Huebner’s (1983,1985)Semantic Wheel for NPs reference. The four types of articles include referentialdefinites; generics, referential indefinites, and nonreferentials. The one-way analysisof variance (ANOVA) is made in experiment1to analyze the differences among thelanguage learners with different native languages and in different semantic types ofarticles.A comprehensive qualitative and quantitative analysis of other determiners isinvolved in Experiment2. The participants were required to finish a blank-filling taskby filling in the necessary determiners, including articles. This experiment is designedto explore whether there exist differences in the usage between articles and othertypes of determiners, and whether there are instances of overuse or underuse ofarticles. Frequency of articles used correctly is also counted.A series of interviews followed the two experiments. In order to find support forthe quantitative research and to shed light on the subjects’ metalinguistic knowledgewith regard to the use of articles, semi-structured interviews were conducted in theinterview to investigate the reasons underlying the learners’ choice of articles.The present study has yielded the following main findings:1. The unmarked items in language learners’ native languages will be transferredin the process of article acquisition. This finding answers the question when thelanguage transfer will happen. It has been confirmed by the experimental results inExperiment1. Experiment1finds significant differences between Spanish and FrenchL2learners, whose native language has an article system, and Chinese L2learners,whose native language has no article system. It proves that the accuracy of Spanishand French L2learners whose native languages have article system ([+ART] group) ishigher than Chinese L2learners whose native language has no article system (the[-ART] group). The high error rate of the in the semantic type of genericsdemonstrates that when the target language is different from and is more marked thanthe native language, it will be difficult for the language learners to acquire. It confirms the first prediction of Markedness Differential Hypothesis (MDH) proposed byEckman (1977).2. Different degrees of markedness between the target language and the nativelanguage will affect the difficulty of acquiring the English article system. This findinganswers the question how the language transfer happens in the process of articleacquisition. The high error rate of the indefinite article an indicates that the standardof distinguishing a and an is based on whether the following word begins with avowel, but the measure of distinguishing different choice of indefinite articles inFrench and Spanish depends on gender. It implies the difficulty to compare themarkedness, which means more difficulty to acquire an for French and Spanish L2learners. Therefore, the relative degree of difficulty is closely related to thecorresponding degree of markedness, which is consistent with the second predictionof Eckman’s MDH.3. The psychological process of language transfer from the perspective ofmarkedness is selective and systematic in article acquisition. By further categorizingthe learners’ response to the interviews, the findings of the interviews prove that thelearners have intuitive perceptions of their native language, and that accounts for thetransfer of some native language features to the second language. The intuitiveperception of the learners can also be proved by overuse of the definite article amongFrench and Spanish learners in the context of generics and the high accuracy ofindefinite article in the context of nonreferentials among Chinese learners.These findings have some theoretical and pedagogical implications.Theoretically, it offers a new approach to studying the process of acquisition of theEnglish article system, namely, from the perspective of language transfer andmarkedness. Pedagogically, the instruction of the article system can follow the naturalorder of article acquisition and the degree of markedness through cross-linguisticcomparison. In a word, the systematic acquisition of the English article system isfound to be influenced by language transfer and markedness lying in the semanticfunctions of noun phrases. With the knowledge of markedness and language transfer,teachers will be able to predict more successfully the difficulties learners are likely to encounter while acquiring articles.