Acquisition Of English Articles By Chinese College Students: Analysis Based On Semantic Features And Noun Types

This thesis investigates Chinese learners’ use of English articles in different NPcontexts and noun types. My study is based on Ionin (2004)’s Article Choice Parameterand Fluctuation Hypothesis, which claim that learners whose languages lack an articlesystem fluctuate between two semantic parameters in the process of English articleacquisition. Besides these two semantic universals, nominal countability plays a role inarticle choices, especially in the indefinite contexts. Previous researches take littleconsideration of this respect, only including article choices in the singular conditions.In addition, the research of English article acquisition under the framework ofFluctuation Hypothesis is very few at home. This study is an attempt to explore therole of definiteness, specificity, nominal countability in article choices by Chineselearners with different proficiency levels, thus to examine Fluctuation Hypothesis andthe effect of L1on English article acquisition. The following three questions will beaddressed.1) Do Chinese learners of English distinguish the English definite article the andthe indefinite article a(an) or zero article on the basis of definiteness? If not, do theyfluctuate between the two settings of the ACP?2) Are they sensitive to a count/mass distinction in the choices of indefinitearticles? How does nominal countability affect the acquisition of English articles?3) What are the developmental features of the learners in acquiring Englisharticles? Does the proficiency level affect the accurate use of English articles?There are a total of60subjects in my study,52Chinese learners of English and8native speakers. Learners are divided into three groups by the Oxford Quick PlacementTest,16upper-intermediate,19upper-intermediate and17advanced learners. A forcedchoice elicitation task is used (adopted from Snape (2006)) to elicit the learners’intuitions about article choices. The results are demonstrated as follows:1) The learners’ accurate use of articles varies regarding the types of NP contextsin the task, they overuse a(an) or zero article in the [+definite,-specific] and the in the[-definite,+specific] contexts. Fluctuation between the and a(an) or zero article isfound.2) The learners are found to fluctuate between the and zero article before massnouns in the definite contexts because of the interference of their native language. Andin the indefinite contexts, the learners sometimes use the or a(an) before mass nouns because they have trouble in correctly recognizing nominal countability.3) The intermediate learners show more fluctuation in the use of a(an) or zeroarticle in the [+definite,-specific] and the in the [-definite,+specific] contexts. Theytend to omit articles in the definite contexts. The accurate use of articles improves aslearners’ English proficiency increases. The advanced learners show higher accuracythan the intermediate ones.Therefore, the results of the study lend support to Ionin’s (2003) FluctuationHypothesis. The learners show fluctuation between definiteness and specificity in theprocess of article acquisition. Moreover, the learners’ difficulty in judging nominalcountability for mass nouns may distract their judgment of NP contexts. Thus, we canconclude that countability precedes definiteness in learners’ choice of English articles.