A Study On Chinese Students’ Acquisition Of English Articles And Interlanguage Syntactic Impairment

The Universal Grammar refers to the initial state of human language faculty whichconsists of principles and parameters: the syntactic principles of language are completelyfixed crosslinguistically and the parameters are actually to be reset. Parameters are aspects ofthe functional items in the lexicon and the variations of parameters are represented by thefeatures of functional categories. The fundamental differences between languages lie infunctional categories and their features, so investigating the state of functional categories ininterlanguage grammar becomes a hotspot for UG-based SLA research. Meanwhile, withinthe theoretical framework of Minimalist Program, articles are exponents of functionalcategories, what is more, substitutes and omissions are often found in the process of L2learners’ English article acquisition. Therefore investigating the resetting process of thearticle’s parameters in interlanguage grammars is helpful to probe into whether UG isaccessible to SLA and whether interlanguage grammars are impaired.The present research employed Oxford Quick Placement Test (2002) to divide90participants into intermediate and advanced groups (45students in each group respectively).In addition, another17native speakers were recruited as control group for this study.Meanwhile, the forced choice elicitation task, which is designed by SLA research group fromUniversity of Essex and delivered by Dr. Neal Snape, was adopted to investigate Chinesestudents’ acquisition of English articles and interlanguage syntactic impairment. Then SPSS13.0was used to analyze the experimental data: first of all, descriptive statistics, one-wayANOVA, independent-samples T test and paired-samples T test were performed to investigatethe overall Chinese English learners’ acquisition of syntactic features of articles. Then on thebasis of the Article Choice Parameter and Fluctuation Hypothesis proposed by Ionin et al.(2004), descriptive statistics, independent-samples T test and repeated measures ANOVA wereperformed to study the resetting process of articles parameters and further investigate whetherUG is accessible to SLA and whether interlanguage grammars are impaired. The followingare the major findings:Firstly, as for the overall acquisition of syntactic features of articles, Chinese Englishlearners demonstrated an incremental tendency in the acquisition of the syntactic features of English articles. They can finally distinguish the two features: definiteness and specificity.The sequence of Chinese English learners’ accurate performances of the three English articlesis in the following pattern: the﹥a﹥. It also revealed that the sequence of Chinese Englishlearners’ accurate performances in different contexts is that: the accurate article use insingular contexts firstly, then in plural contexts and in mass contexts finally.Secondly, Chinese English learners’ performances were different in various pragmaticcontexts. For the acquisition of definite article, Chinese English learners performed better inanaphoric use and in encyclopedic use than in large situation use and the greatest difficultylied in large situation use. For the acquisition of indefinite articles, Chinese English learnersperformed better in nonspecific contexts than specific and the great difficulty lied in indefinitespecific contexts. Even the advanced group participants could not master English articles’pragmatic features. The difficulty of articles use lied in syntax-pragmatic interface instead ofthe interlanguage syntax which is not impaired and UG is accessible to Chinese Englishlearners.Finally, in choosing English articles, both intermediate and advanced groups fluctuatebetween definiteness and specificity, the two parameter-settings of articles and the FluctuationHypothesis is supported，which can fully explain Chinese English learners’ substitute errors inarticle use. However, the omission errors can be accounted for under the theoreticalframework of Distributed Morphology. The difficulty in article acquisition lied in the fact thatChinese English learners can not easily identify the correct features in the specification ofsyntactic terminal nodes as well as the vocabulary items, but interlanguage syntax is notimpaired and UG access is supported.In addition, some theoretical and practical implications, limitations as well as suggestionsfor future study were discussed in conclusions.