چکیده:
Articles in general and definite articles in particular can create problems even long after all other aspects of English have been mastered. The present article investigated the learnability problems related to the acquisition of count-mass distinction of English nominals by Persian L2 learners. The theoretical underpinning of the study is the interpretability hypothesis (Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou, 2007) arguing that the features which are semantically interpretable can be acquired. To this end, 50 learners constituted the participants of the study and completed a forced- choice elicitation task requiring the use of articles. The results of the study substantiated the interpretability hypothesis. Nonetheless, the advanced L2ers showed a conservative behavior in the mass context. They significantly opted for a/an in wide scope indefinite non-referential de/re context. The findings reveal that article suppliance creates more learnability problems in the plural and indefinite mass contexts compared to the count singular ones.
خلاصه ماشینی:
The present article investigated the learnability problems related to the acquisition of count-mass distinction of English nominals by Persian L2 learners.
The findings reveal that article suppliance creates more learnability problems in the plural and indefinite mass contexts compared to the count singular ones.
(iii) Mixed languages where count plural and mass NPs are argumental and do not need to be licensed by a D, while count singular nouns require licensing (English): (6) a *(A/the) boy bought *(a/the) book b Boys worked with clay during the art lesson Persian can be considered as the third category as the definite NPs are argumental whereas the singular indefinite nouns require licensing.
Unlike Lazard (1992) who describes Persian as a language lacking count-mass distinction, Ghomeshi (2003) argues in favor of such a dichotomy although it is not manifested for bare singular nouns in direct object positions.
Choice of the in [+definite, +specific] Count Singular, Plural and Mass (رجوع شود به تصویر صفحه) The results of the repeated measure ANOVA showed that there was a significant difference between the contexts [Wilks’ Lambda= .
Definite Encyclopaedic Count Singular, Plural and Mass Contexts (رجوع شود به تصویر صفحه) The analysis of the results showed that there was a statistically significant difference across the contexts [Wilks’ Lambda=.
In Table 9, the results of the participants’ performance in indefinite, non-specific (- scope) for singular, plural and mass contexts are presented where the target article should be a/an, Ø and Ø, respectively.