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- Title
Acquisition of L2 English Article Semantic by L1 Tamil Speakers in Malaysia.
- Authors
Jacob, Premala; Tan, Helen
- Abstract
Ionin (2003) proposes the Article Choice Parameter, a semantic parameter which establishes that articles across languages encode two values which are definiteness or specificity. The English articles are based on definiteness but the Tamil language lacks articles. This study examined the pattern of article choice among adult L1 Tamil speakers in Malaysia, to test Ionin's (2003) Fluctuation Hypothesis based on the Article Choice Parameter. The Fluctuation Hypothesis reveals that L2 English learners from article-less L1s upon encountering a language that has an article system access both the definiteness and specificity parameter provided by Universal Grammar (UG) and exhibit fluctuation between the two settings. As a result, they perform accurately in the [+definite, +specific] and [-definites, -specific] when both the settings are the same and overuse the with [-definites, +specific] and overuse a with [+ definite, -specific] when both the settings are in conflict. The results of this study revealed that the L1 Tamil speakers had UG access to both the definiteness and specificity settings, as their pattern of English article choice demonstrated fluctuation between the two settings. Article omission error among these learners indicated limited negative-L1 transfer also existed in the article acquisition process.
- Subjects
LANGUAGE acquisition; SECOND language acquisition; ARTICLE (Grammar); FUNCTION words (Grammar); TAMIL language; TAMIL (Indic people)
- Publication
Language in India, 2018, Vol 18, Issue 6, p142
- ISSN
1930-2940
- Publication type
Article