Articles in English L1–Persian L2 interlanguage: Transferability or task variation?

Abstract

Aiming at describing variation in second-language acquisition and particularly, addressing the role of linguistic features and tasks, this paper describes the use of Persian articles in the interlanguage (IL) produced by two adult English L1 learners of Persian L2. Using a combination of contrastive analysis and error analysis, it takes the stand of idiosyncrasy in meaning, rather than form and the notion of specificity-based articles to identify and predict some possible instances of transfer across six elicitation tasks. It also intends to investigate whether any of the contextual features may variably influence the learners’ IL. Providing evidence for the role of transferability from the viewpoint of semantic concerns, results describe the existence of variation in relation to task, rather than just linguistic form in the subjects’ IL system.
 
 Keywords: Articles, English L1, L1 transferability, Persian L2, task-based variation.