Article use in L2 English by L1 Russian and L1 German speakers

Abstract

Article misuse and omission are common errors in article use in L2 English. A particularly influential theory concerned with article misuse is that of Ionin (2003aIonin ( , 2003b, whose basic assumption is that, in L2 acquisition, adult learners still have access to Universal Grammar. Central to her theory is the concept of the Article-Choice Parameter, which is set to either definiteness or specificity in article-based languages. According to Ionin's Fluctuation Hypothesis, speakers of a language without articles fluctuate between the two settings of this parameter and produce systematic errors in article choice. Speakers of an L1 with articles have been shown to transfer the parameter value from their L1 to L2 English. This paper tests the predictions made by Ionin's account, based on data from an empirical study with a group of German speakers and two groups of Russian speakers. One of the Russian groups had studied English for a longer period of time, and at university level, and also had knowledge of another L2 with articles besides English. The results from this study do not provide clear support for Ionin's account. The German group rarely misused articles, as predicted, but only one of the Russian groups showed fluctuation. The Russian group with fewer years of English study and generally no knowledge of another L2 with articles showed variable patterns of article misuse and also often omitted articles. An explanation of why the two Russian groups differed is proposed.

The acquisition of English articles among L1 Dagbani L2 English learners

“…Our finding is consistent with what Schönenberger (2014:103) found in her study of German and Russian L2 English learners, where one group of Russian learners produce non-consistent patterns of article misuse in contexts where accurate article use is predicted. Moreover, the general article use patterns in both definite and indefinite contexts were influenced by definiteness and not specificity, given that there was a main effect of definiteness, but not specificity in the L2 speakers’ article choice (see section 5.1), suggesting that article use was based on definiteness.…”

Lexical and Syntactic Congruency in L2 Predictive Gender Processing

“…In addition, Russian learners of German need to acquire articles and configure the feature assembly of uninterpretable features including gender, so that gender agreement between articles and nouns can be computed. Many production studies testify to the frequent omission of articles by adult Russian learners of English (e.g., Schönenberger, 2014) or the nontarget use of articles according to the features realized on them, for example definiteness and specificity (e.g., Ionin, Ko, & Wexler, 2004). The present study finds that these problems spill over into comprehension and gender marking in that articles are used less reliably for predictive gender agreement at intermediate proficiency levels.…”

An Investigation of L2 English Article Substitutions by L1 Chinese Learners

“…Results from the force-choice elicitation task and the written production task in the study showed that the advanced learners performed better than the intermediate learners in terms of article choices, and that both the L1 Korean learners and the L1 Russian learners tended to use the in the [+specific] contexts and use a in the [specific] contexts. Another study by Schönenberger (2014) revealed that, compared with German speakers, whose L1 has articles, the Russian group made many more errors in using English articles. German speakers rarely misused English articles.…”

“…Some studies also included participants from different L1 backgrounds, e.g. Ionin et al (2004), Schönenberger (2014), andPongpairoj (2020). The participants in the study conducted by Ionin et al (2004) consisted of adult speakers from two articleless languages: Russian and Korean.…”