English-majors’ Zero And Indefinite Articles Use Before Different Types Of Abstract Nouns

This thesis investigates Chinese English majors ’ zero and indefinite articles use before five different categories of abstract nouns. The categories, which are based on boundedness and countability, are bounded independent nouns, unbounded independent nouns, state nouns, continuous action nouns and non-continuous action nouns. This thesis will explore the following two research questions:1) Will English majors’ zero and indefinite articles use differ across the five types of abstract nouns which are divided based on boundedness?2) Will their English proficiency levels affect their accurate use of zero and indefinite articles?A total of 50 subjects as sophomores are chosen from the English Department of a key university. They are divided into three groups depending on their English test score of College Entrance Examination, 17 advanced, 17 upper-intermediate, and 16 lower-intermediate learners. A forced choice elicitation task is used to elicit participants’ article use before 50 target items. On the basis of the data and analysis, I reach the following conclusions:1) The learners’ accurate use of zero and indefinite articles vary regarding the types of abstract nouns. The accuracy rate is the highest for the bounded independent and lowest for the unbounded independent nouns. In addition, accuracy rates for state nouns, continuous action nouns and noncontinuous action nouns are also relatively high.2) The accuracy in using zero and indefinite articles improves as learners’ English proficiency increases. Advanced learners show higher accuracy than the intermediate ones.Providing empirical evidence of article acquisition for both language scholars and teachers, the above findings reveal a clear picture of Chinese English majors’ zero and indefinite articles use before different types of abstract nouns. Based on the findings, some implications for article teaching and research are provided. For one thing, successive and systematic instructions about the countability of abstract nouns are needed. Instructors should take care not to give students the impression that all abstract nouns are uncountable nouns. For another thing, when designing research instruments to test learners’ use of articles, researchers should not consider all abstract nouns to be a uniform category, but rather consider the range of boundedness and countability that abstract nouns encompass.