Second Language Acquisition of Articles: Empirical findings and theoretical implications(49 Language Acquisition and Language Disorders)

The studies in this collection address a topic that has recently become the focus of considerable interest in second language acquisition (SLA) research: the acquisition of articles. Languages appear to vary in whether they have articles (English, German, Norwegian do, but Chinese, Japanese, Russian do not). Languages that have articles also appear to divide into those that realise definiteness (e.g. English) and those that realise specificity (e.g. Samoan). When speakers of one type of language learn an L2 of a different type, issues of central concern to SLA research arise: the nature of L1 influence, the time course of development, ultimate attainment, the relationship between performance and competence, and the role of Universal Grammar. These issues are considered in nine studies, written by researchers whose work is at the forefront of enquiry, that offer new data, new perspectives and new insights into the way L2 speakers acquire articles.

Table of Contents:
1. List of editors and contributors; 2. Acknowledgments; 3. Introduction: The interest of article acquisition for theories of SLA (by Garcia Mayo, Maria del Pilar); 4. Part I. Article choice, fluctuation and L1 transfer in the acquisition of articles by L2 speakers; 5. Article choice in L2 English by Spanish speakers: Evidence for full transfer (by Garcia Mayo, Maria del Pilar); 6. L2 English article production by Arabic and French speakers (by Sarko, Ghisseh); 7. 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 (by Tryzna, Marta); 8. The processing role of the Article Choice Parameter: Evidence from L2 learners of English. (by Kim, Lucy Kyoungsook); 9. Accounting for patterns of article omissions and substitutions in second language production (by Trenkic, Danijela); 10. Part II. Further issues in the representation and use of articles by L2 speakers; 11. Article use and generic reference: Parallels between L1- and L2-acquisition (by Ionin, Tania); 12. Variability in L2 acquisition of Norwegian DPs: An evaluation of some current SLA models (by Jin, Fufen); 13. Articles in Turkish/English interlanguage revisited: Implications of vowel harmony (by Goad, Heather); 14. Article choice and article omission in the L3 German of native speakers of Japanese with L2 English (by Jaensch, Carol); 15. Author index; 16. Language index; 17. Term index

Review :
An unmistakable strength of the volume is its careful and disciplined attention to theory. Contributing authors clearly state the theoretical motivation for their studies, and they do not fail to discuss what their findings imply for current theory. Readers will encounter new theoretical questions, innovative task designs for data collection, and insightful interpretations of empirical findings. The volume under review contains a very detailed and comprehensive collection of well-written and provocative studies that investigate article acquisition from various perspectives. Multiple languages are examined and discussed; semantic, prosodic and syntactic elements are considered; and a wide variety of test items and methods was employed. The wide scope of studies presented in this collection offers meaningful insight into the processes involved in the acquisition of articles, while at the same time becoming a catalyst for further study. Research into this very specific topic in language acquisition has far-reaching implications for second language acquisition research in general. This volume is an excellent example of how bringing together studies on a specific theme from leading researchers in a field can lead to a work greater than the sum of its parts. This enables the editors, María del Pilar García Mayo and Roger Hawkins, not only to present us with a state of the art picture of what is involved in the second language acquisition (SLA) of articles, but also to show very clearly how the acquisition of this area of grammar can provide a test case for current SLA theories. This book represents an invaluable contribution to current knowledge and understanding not only of this subfield, but of SLA theorising in general. The acquisition of nativelike morphosyntactic, semantic, and pragmatic knowledge of definite and indefinite articles in a second language is one of the thorniest and most persistent learning problems language learners face. This valuable collection offers findings from several new experimental studies of article acquisition, covering a range of methods and L1-L2 (and even L3) language combinations. The empirical results are brought to bear on important theoretical questions in SLA such as the role of transfer, the role of syntactic, semantic, and prosodic constraints of universal grammar, and the interaction between such constraints and other components of linguistic and extralinguistic knowledge. Readers will certainly come away with a deeper appreciation of what it takes to acquire (and to study) such knowledge.