An Empirical Study: Investigating L2 Overuse Of The For First-Mention Nouns

This thesis focuses on the phenomenon of L2 learners' overuse of the definite article with first-mention nouns in the specific context. A new perspective to view learners' errors is proposed in this paper, that is, a perspective to view learners' choice of the definite article from a speaker's point of view, which is different from the hearer's point of view underlying previous studies. An empirical study is conducted to investigate this phenomenon. The empirical study postulates that:(1). On the part of L2 learners, there is a higher degree of acceptability of the in the [+SR,-HK] context, when the first-mention referent is followed by further description, than in the [+SR,-HK] context, when the first-mention referent is not further discussed. (2). L2 learners may overuse the definite article with first-mention nouns for the sake of special communicative purposes, such as expressing an emphatic emotion, or introducing a topic for further discussion. (3). L2 learners of a higher language proficiency have a better command of the use of the definite article. The results of the study confirmed the three postulations. The findings of the study show that there can be a reasonable though not fully justified motivation behind learners' choice of the definite article. Sometimes there is not a clear-cut line for the choice of articles, and speakers' communicative purposes can play an important role in article choice. The speaker can use the definite article to induce the hearer to construct a referent in a way intended by him, rather than passively weighing the hearer's knowledge of the referent and choosing an article that reflects the status of the hearer's knowledge. But one should beware of overusing the definite article in this way, as efficient communication requires that the speaker show proper consideration for the hearer.