Abstract:
AbstractSince Heubner's (1985) pioneering study, there have been many studies on (mis) use/ non-use of articles by L2 learners from article-less and article languages The present study investigated how Persian L2 learners of English produce and interpret English definite descriptions and demonstrative descriptions It was assumed that definite and demonstrative descriptions share the same central semantics of 'uniqueness', although they differ in the domain relative to which uniqueness is computed. While the book denotes the unique book in the discourse, that book denotes the unique book in the immediately salient situation. Persian has demonstratives and is partially marked for specificity, while English encodes definiteness. Persian L2 learners, due to lack of an equivalent for English definite marker 'the' in their language, use demonstratives as one of the compensating mechanisms to encode definiteness in definite descriptive contexts. A forced-choice elicitation production task and a picture-based comprehension task were used to examine the L2 learners' ability to distinguish definite and demonstrative contexts. L2 learners were able to acquire both definite and demonstrative descriptions, but were more target-like regarding demonstratives than definite descriptions. The variability in choosing articles and demonstrative adjectives in one specific context (e.g. applying both the and that in contexts specific to the only or that only) shows that Persian EFL learners equate ān with both the and that. This, also indicates that L1 transfer determines the L2 learners' choices.
Machine summary:
Persian L2 learners, due to lack of an equivalent for English definite marker 'the' in their language, use demonstratives as one of the compensating mechanisms to encode definiteness in definite descriptive contexts.
A forced-choice elicitation production task and a picture-based comprehension task were used to examine Persian L2 learners' ability to distinguish definite and demonstrative contexts.
The acquisition of English articles by adult L2-learners has been extensively investigated (see, among many others, Goad &White, 2004; Huebner, 1983; Ionin, Ko, & Wexler, 2004; Ionin, Zubizarreta, & Maldonado, 2008; Leung, 2001; Murphy, 1997; Parish, 1987; Robertson, 2000; Trenkic, 2000, 2007, 2008; Young, 1996).
To test the perception as well as production of definite article in L2 English, Rezai and Jabbari provided 50 intermediate and advanced Persian learners with forced-choice elicitation and translation tasks.
The purpose of this study was to explore whether the shared semantic features of definite and demonstrative descriptions and also lack of a definite article in the Persian language render the comprehension and production of definite and demonstrative descriptions and also the identification of the specific contexts for each of these descriptions challenging for Persian L2-learners of English or not.
The study also aimed at checking if the proficiency level of the L2 learners plays any determining and predictive role in the acquisition of definite and demonstrative descriptions in English.
In the comprehension task, the learners at all proficiency levels consistently interpreted definite descriptions as referring to salient entities (just like demonstrative descriptions), while native speakers opted for the maximal discourse set in such contexts.