A Study Of English Article Acquisition By Chinese EFL Learners From The Perspectiveof Fluctuation Hypothesis

English article system only consists of three forms: definite article the, indefinite article a/an, and zero article ?. Within the theoretical framework of Minimalist Program(MP), articles are endowed with a new status in grammar-functional categories. And the fundamental differences between languages depend on functional categories and their features. Accordingly, in the framework of MP, whether functional categories and their feature values can be acquired or not is a criterion to determine whether UG is accessible.Ionin et al.(2004) claim that an Article Choice Parameter(ACP) determining the distribution of articles exists in L2 article acquisition. It has two parameter-settings: definiteness setting and specificity setting. And articles across-linguistically can encode either definiteness feature or specificity feature, but not both. However, according to Fluctuation Hypothesis(FH), EFL learners possibly pick the inappropriate value or fluctuate between the two settings of ACP until sufficient input leads them to set the appropriate value. As Chinese is an article-less language, it has been continually adopted to test the validity of FH. However, by far, no consensus has been reached on validating Ionin’s hypothesis. Thus the validity of FH needs to be test further.The present study adopted Oxford Quick Placement Test(OQPT) to divide 90 participants into elementary, intermediate and advanced groups(28 elementary learners, 29 intermediate learners, 31 advanced learners and 2 participants were excluded for their extremely low scores). In addition, a forced choice elicitation task was adopted to test Chinese EFL learners’ article acquisition. Meanwhile, SPSS 19.0 was employed to analyze the experimental data. The results indicate that:(1) As a whole, Chinese EFL learners have full access to the parameters of articles, thus UG full access theory is supported. Besides, the participants in the present study show fluctuation between the definiteness setting and specificity setting of ACP, thus validity of FH in English article acquisition is proved again.(2) In the present study, Chinese EFL learners present variability and diversity in the developmental process of English article acquisition. Chinese EFL learners use the target articles more accurately in indefinite contexts than in definite contexts. To be more specific, they acquire the indefinite article a better than the definite article the. Although Chinese has no article system, the numeral yi has the [-definite] and [singular] features, which are similar to English indefinite article a/an, Chinese EFL learners can transfer the features of numeral yi into English article acquisition, therefore, they perform more accurately in article use with indefinites than definites.(3) English proficiency levels have a significant role in Chinese EFL learners’ article acquisition. With the rise of the participants’ English proficiency, they have a better performance on English article acquisition. In [+definite, +specific] and [-definite,-specific] contexts, the accuracy of article use by the intermediate and advanced groups is significantly highly than that by the elementary group. While in [+definite,-specific] and [-definite, +specific] contexts, no significant differences exist among the three groups, indicating that even the advanced English learners still fluctuate between the definiteness setting and specificity setting of ACP. It proves the validity of Fluctuation Hypothesis further.The present study demonstrates that Chinese EFL learners have full access to the parameters of articles, thus UG full access theory is supported. Moreover, the participants in the study still show fluctuation between the definiteness setting and specificity setting of ACP, thus validity of FH in English article acquisition is proved again.