Law and Humanities
Quarterly Reviews
ISSN 2827-9735
Published: 16 October 2024
L1 Saudi-Arabic Learners’ Use of Articles with Count and Mass Nouns in L2 English
Afnan Aboras
Al-Baha University
Download Full-Text Pdf
10.31014/aior.1996.03.04.130
Pages: 1-13
Keywords: Count, Mass Nouns, English, Saudi-Arabic Learners
Abstract
English and Arabic differ in the use of the article system about singular, plural and mass nouns. Count and mass nouns take different articles in English. Thus, it would be interesting to investigate the effect of count and mass nouns on first language (L1) Saudi-Arabic learners’ use of the article system in second language (L2) English. In English, according to Adger (2003), the use of articles is determined by the nouns due to the c-command relationship; that is, the determiner must agree with the noun with which it is linked. If the nouns are singular and indefinite, the indefinite article must be used; if the nouns are plural or mass with indefinite contexts, ‘some’ must be used. Regarding definite contexts, the definite article is used with singular, plural and mass nouns, which is like the Arabic language. In this study, I will also investigate generic sentences in which the indefinite article is used in singular contexts and the bare plural that is used in plural and mass contexts, which is also a difference between English and Arabic because Arabic only uses definite articles for generic reference. I will examine that through the Bottleneck Hypothesis by Slabakova (2008) and the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis by Lardiere (2009) to investigate the learners’ ability to acquire functional morphology, as well as the mapping process regarding the use of articles with count and mass nouns. The data were collected using a forced choice task involving 67 L1 Saudi-Arabic learners of English. The results revealed that the learners were accurate in their use of the definite article with count and mass nouns and in their use of indefinite articles with singular and plural nouns, but had trouble with generic sentences and indefinite articles in mass contexts. The outcomes support the BH and the FRH, which state that learners might encounter difficulties due to L1 transfer when they need to map and reassemble the functional morphology.
References
Adger, D. (2003). Core Syntax: A Minimalist Approach. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2005.0160
Alhaysony, M. (2012). An analysis of article errors among Saudi female EFL students: A case study. Asian Social Science, 8(12), 55–66. https://doi.org/10.5539/ass.v8n12p55
Al-Malki, E., Majid, N., & Omar, N. (2014). Generic reference in English, Arabic and Malay: A cross linguistic typology and comparison. English Language Teaching, 7(11), 15–27. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v7n11p15
Alsowiliem, A. (2014). The Acquisition of Definite and Indefinite Articles in
English by L1 Speakers of Saudi Arabic [Doctoral thesis]. University of Sheffield.
Azaz, M. (2019). L1 Transfer Effects in the Production of Generic Plurals in L2 Arabic. Modern Language Journal, 103(1), 275–290. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12542
Chierchia, G. (1994). Syntactic bootstrapping and the acquisition of noun meanings: The mass-count issue. In B. Lust, M. Suner, & J. Whitman (Eds). Syntactic Theory and First Language Acquisition: Cross-linguistic Perspectives. (Vol. 1: Heads, projections, and learnability). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Chierchia, G. (2010). Mass nouns, vagueness and semantic variation. Synthese, 174, 99-149.
Cho, J. (2017). The acquisition of different types of definite noun phrases in L2-English. International Journal of Bilingualism, 21(3), 367–382. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006916629577
Hermas, A. (2020a). Genericity in third language English: Acquisition pattern and transfer in ultimate attainment. International Journal of Bilingualism, 24(2), 266–288. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006919826865
Hermas, A. (2020b). Lexical semantics in advanced second language French: The acquisition of genericity. Lingua, 234, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2019.102761
Ionin, T., Ko, H., & Wexler, K. (2004). Article Semantics in L2 acquisition: The role of specificity. Language Acquisition, 12(1), 3–69. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327817la1201_2
Ionin, T., Montrul, S., & Crivos, M. (2013). A bidirectional study on the acquisition of plural noun phrase interpretation in English and Spanish. Applied Psycholinguistics, 34(3), 483-518.
Ionin, T., Montrul, S., Kim, J. H., & Philippov, V. (2011). Genericity distinctions and the interpretation of determiners in second language acquisition. Language acquisition, 18(4), 242–280. https://di.araj/10.1080/10489223.2011.610264
Jensen, I., Slabakova, R., Westergaard, M., & Lundquist, B. (2020). The Bottleneck Hypothesis in L2 acquisition: L1 Norwegian learners’ knowledge of syntax and morphology in L2 English. Second Language Research, 36(1), 3–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267658318825067
Köylü, Y. (2023). Acquisition of kind-reference by Arabic, Chinese, and Turkish L2 learners of English. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique, 68(3), 387-413.
Lardiere, D. (2009). Some thoughts on the contrastive analysis of features in second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 25(2), 173–227. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267658308100283
Lardiere, D. (2016). Missing the trees for the forest: Morphology in second language acquisition. Second Language: The Japan Second Language Association, 15, 5–28. https://doi.org/10.11431/secondlanguage.15.0_5
Lyons, C. (1999). Definiteness. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1090/surv/046/02
Momenzade, M., & Youhanaee, M. (2014). ‘Number’ and Article Choice: The Case of Persian Learners of English. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 98, 1186–1193. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.03.533
Muftah, M. (2023). Accuracy order of the acquisition of the English article system : evidence from the written and oral production of undergraduate Arab EFL learners. Presmie; Journal of English Education and Applied Linguistics, 12(2), 740–766. https://doi.org/10.24127/pj.v12i2.7502
Sabir, M. (2019). The L2 Acquisition of Mass Nouns by Arab Learners of English. Advances in Language and Literary Studies ISSN: 2203-4714, 5(10), 152-157.
Slabakova, R. (2008). Meaning in the Second Language. Walter de Gruyter.
Slabakova, R. (2019). The Bottleneck Hypothesis updated. In T. Ionin & M. Rispoli (Eds.), Three Streams of Generative Language Acquisition Research (pp. 319–345). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.63.16sla
Snape, N. (2008). Resetting the nominal mapping parameter in L2 English: Definite article use and the count-mass distinction. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11(1), 63–79. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728907003215