Questioning the validity of the Article Choice Parameter and the Fluctuation Hypothesis: Evidence from L2 English article use by L1 Polish and L1 Mandarin Chinese speakers

Tryzna, Marta Maria

doi:10.1075/lald.49.07try

Cited by 28 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Ionin et al's proposal has since then led to two papers independently investigating the nature of specificity marking in Samoan in more detail. Fuli (2007) and Tryzna (2009) have both shown convincingly that Samoan marks the specificity distinction with indefinites but not with definites, contrary to what the Mosel and Hovdhaugen (1992) data, cited by Ionin et al (2004), had suggested. This is illustrated in (8) and (9), from Fuli (2007).…”

Section: New Cross-linguistic Evidencementioning

confidence: 87%

Acquisition of article semantics by child and adult L2-English learners*

2009

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper examines article use in the L2-English of adult and child speakers of Russian, an article-less language. In earlier work on articles in adult L2-English, Ionin, Ko and Wexler (2004) proposed that speakers of article-less L1s fluctuate between dividing English articles on the basis of definiteness vs. specificity, as a result of direct access to semantic universals. The present paper examines whether similar fluctuation is present for child L2-English learners. Results of an elicitation study with L1-Russian child and adult learners of English show that both groups of learners exhibit sensitivity to definiteness as well as specificity. At the same time, it is found that the behavior of child L2-learners is more consistent with natural language data than that of adult L2-learners. It is proposed that both children and adults have domain-specific knowledge of semantic universals, but that adults, unlike children, also use explicit strategies. This proposal is considered in light of the literature on explicit vs. implicit knowledge.

show abstract

Section: New Cross-linguistic Evidencementioning

confidence: 87%

Acquisition of article semantics by child and adult L2-English learners*

2009

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Finally, the sheer number of studies that document article and plural difficulties of L2 populations that do not have these categories in their L1s speaks for itself, both for articles (see Leung, , Robertson, , Trenkic, , and Tryzna, , for L1 Chinese; Žegarac, , for Croatian; Young, , for Czech; Butler, , Hakuta, , and Kuribara, , for Japanese; Ionin, Ko, & Wexler, , for Korean and Russian; Avery & Radišić, , and Trenkic, , , , for Serbian) and for plurals (see Bialystok & Miller, , Bliss, , Jia, , Jiang, , Johnson & Newport, , Lardiere, , and Young, , for L1 Chinese; Austin, , and Yeni‐Komshian, Robbins, & Flege, , for L1 Korean; Mellow & Cumming, , for L1 Japanese; Charters, Dao, & Jansen, , and Dao, , for L1 Vietnamese). In comparison, few studies focused on English articles and plurals in production of L2 populations that have corresponding systems in their L1s—and when they did, far fewer problems were identified (e.g., García Mayo, ).…”

Section: The Problem: Articles and Pluralsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structural Competition in Second Language Production: Towards a Constraint‐Satisfaction Model

2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Second language (L2) learners often show inconsistent production of some aspects of L2 grammar. One view, primarily based on data from L2 article production, suggests that grammatical patterns licensed by learners' native language (L1) and those licensed by their L2 compete for selection, leading to variability in the production of L2 functional morphology. In this study, we show that the idea of structural competition has broader applicability, in correctly predicting certain asymmetries in the production of both the definite article the and plural marking -s by Thai learners of English. At the same time, we recognize that learners' growing sensitivity to structural regularities in the L2 might be an additional contributing factor, and therefore make a novel proposal for how the L1-L2 structural competition model and the sensitivity-to-L2-structural regularities account could be integrated and their respective contributions studied under the constraint-satisfaction model of language processing. We argue that this approach is particularly suited to studying bilingual processing as it provides a natural framework for explaining how highly disparate factors, including partially activated options from both languages, interact during processing.

show abstract

“…The articles with the relevant feature combination are underlined. Tryzna (2009) revealed that the specificity distinction is made with indefinites only: le is used in definites and specific indefinites, and se is used in non-specific indefinites only. These new data led Ionin, Zubizarreta & Philippov (2009) to revise the original account: article misuse in L2 English by speakers of an L1 without articles is now predicted to arise in the [−d, +s] context only.…”

Section: Universal Grammar the Article-choice Parameter Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Schönenberger

2014

Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

Questioning the validity of the Article Choice Parameter and the Fluctuation Hypothesis: Evidence from L2 English article use by L1 Polish and L1 Mandarin Chinese speakers

Cited by 28 publications

References 0 publications

Acquisition of article semantics by child and adult L2-English learners*

Acquisition of article semantics by child and adult L2-English learners*

Structural Competition in Second Language Production: Towards a Constraint‐Satisfaction Model

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

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About