Ionin, Ko and Wexler (2004a) have shown that L2 speakers of English whose L1’s lack articles (Russian and Korean) appear to fluctuate in their interpretation of the and a, allowing them to encode either definiteness or specificity. They argue that these are two options of an Article Choice Parameter offered by Universal Grammar, and that the Russian and Korean speakers fluctuate between them when they are acquiring English. In the present study it is shown that a similar pattern can be observed in L2 speakers of English whose L1 is Japanese (also a language that lacks articles) but not in speakers whose L1 is Greek, a language with articles that encode definiteness like English. It is also shown that while group results for the Japanese speakers suggest fluctuation, individual results do not. It is argued that an account can be given of both cases which does not require appeal either to an Article Choice Parameter or to the concept of ‘fluctuation’. The alternative proposal made here is consistent with Universal Grammar, and follows from an organisation of the grammar where phonological exponents are separated from the lexical items manipulated by syntactic computations, as in Distributed Morphology. It is suggested that a descriptively adequate account which avoids a construction-specific parameter like the Article Choice Parameter and departure from the normal assumptions of UG represented by fluctuation should be preferred.

This paper presents two experiments in the acquisition of the nominal domain in English by Japanese and Spanish second language (L2) learners. The first experiment tests the L2 learners' ability to distinguish between count and mass nouns using a grammaticality judgement task and the second experiment tests learners on different types of definite (based on J. Hawkins's 1978 taxonomy) in count and mass contexts by means of a forced-choice elicitation task. The claim by Chierchia (1998a, b) is that there is a Nominal Mapping Parameter and the three languages discussed in this paper each have a different parametric value. The aim of the paper is to test Japanese and Spanish L2 learners of English to see whether they can reset the parameter to the English setting.

This study examines second language (L2) acquisition of English generic noun phrases (NPs) by Spanish, Turkish and Japanese learners. The aim is to identify the role of the first language (L1) in the L2 acquisition of definite NP-level generics and indefinite sentence-level generics with singular, bare plural, and mass generic nouns. The four languages in this study differ in the way they express generic interpretations: English and Spanish have article systems, Turkish has an indefinite article, but no definite article, and Japanese lacks an article system. Advanced and upper intermediate L2 learners were tested via a forced choice elicitation task. The results reveal different patterns of article selection across the three groups of L2 learners, which correspond with L1 transfer effects. Our findings suggest that L2 article choice is largely determined by the way the L1 realizes generic reference.KEYWORDS: L1 transfer, L2 acquisition, NP-level generics, sentence-level generics, articles, English, Spanish, Turkish, Japanese RESUMEN Este trabajo investiga la adquisición de sintagmas nominales (SN) genéricos en inglés como segunda lengua (L2) por parte de aprendices españoles, turcos y japoneses. El objetivo del trabajo es identificar el papel que desempeña la primera lengua (L1) en la adquisición de genéricos definidos al nivel del SN y genéricos indefinidos al nivel de la oración con sustantivos genéricos en singular, plural desnudo y de materia. Las cuatro lenguas que se investigan en este estudio difieren en la forma en que expresan las interpretaciones genéricas: el inglés y el español tienen artículos, el turco tiene artículo indefinido pero no definido y el japonés no tiene artículos. Aprendices de inglés como L2 con nivel avanzado e intermedio-alto completaron una tarea de elección guiada. Los resultados indican que existen diferentes pautas en la selección de artículos en los tres grupos de aprendices, pautas que pueden atribuirse a los efectos de la influencia de la L1. Nuestros resultados sugieren que la elección de artículo en la L2 está muy influenciada por la forma en que la L1 expresa la referencia genérica.PALABRAS CLAVE: transferencia de la L1, adquisición de la L2, genéricos a nivel del SN, genéricos a nivel de la oración, artículos, inglés, español, turco, japonés.

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