The Textual Viewpoint And Acquisition Of Definite Article

Based on the former researches concerning the errors of definite article the of second language learners , as well as a primary survey of the error patterns of definite article the in the writing practices of English major students of Yanbian University, this thesis proposes that the errors in choosing definite article the are widely in existence in the writings of the second language learners who have learned English for some years and in some degree acquired the grammatical rules of definite article. This pervasive phenomenon demonstrates the possible problems in students' acquisition definite article the.In this thesis, various typical errors of definite article the appearing in students' writing practices are analyzed in details with the theory of viewpoints and definite article the within the theoretical framework of Epstein (1995) in its revised version. Through analyzing a number of writing samples, the thesis has come to a tentative conclusion that the error of English definite article the in students' writing may be connected to the vague and confused textual viewpoints, and the failure of constructing, connecting and shifting of cognitive mental spaces. A student writer with a vague idea about the participants of the discourses will hardly establish a hearer' s or a speaker' s viewpoint in either reality or created world, and will be impossible to set up the hearer' s and speaker' s mental spaces accordingly.According to the theories on the relationship of viewpoint, cognitive mental space and definite article the , and the analysis of the errors of definite article in students' writing practice, it is stated that the entity of the referred noun acquires its definiteness through the links between the mental spaces constructed, connected or shifted, in the hearer' s and the speaker' s viewpoints and spacer. Only if the link of...