The Definiteness Effect In The L2English Of Chinese Learners

This study is designed to investigate the Definiteness Effect in the L2English of Chineselearners, with emphasis on the logical problem and the role of UG in L2acquisition. FullTransfer/Full Access Hypothesis, Representational Deficit Hypothesis, Feature Re-assemblyHypothesis and Interface Hypothesis are tested based on production data as well ascomprehension data.Experiment I is based on spoken and written data from SWECCL2.0corpus. Results showthat weak expressions predominate over strong expressions in existential sentences. ExperimentII is based on an online contextualized acceptability judgment task taken from White et al.(2009) and Belikova et al.(2010).50Chinese postgraduates, divided into two proficiencygroups by Quick Placement Test, served as subjects. Group results show that subjectsdistinguish between grammatical and ungrammatical existential sentences, both in positive andnegative forms. Individual results show that Chinese learners are good at accepting grammaticalexistential sentences, but are not good at rejecting ungrammatical existential sentences.The results support Full Transfer/Full Access Hypothesis, Feature Re-assemblyHypothesis and Interface Hypothesis, but do not support Representational Deficit Hypothesis.Chinese learners have full access to UG in L2acquisition of the DE, L1Chinese constitutes theinitial state of L2English, but IL representation is not well developed due to insufficient L2input. There does not seem to be representational deficits in definiteness, feature re-assemblyplays an important role in L2acquisition of [±definite] feature. Grammar-external interfacesare more problematic than grammar-internal interfaces in the acquisition of DE by Chineselearners.