The Acquisition of Definite the and Demonstrative that in Direct and Associative Anaphoric Contexts in L1-Korean L2-English Learners

Abstract

This study explored the choice of definite the and demonstrative that across direct and associative anaphoric contexts in fifty-six L1-Korean L2-English learners and twenty-eight native speakers of English (NSE) as a reference group. The L2-English participants were divided into two groups on the basis of their grammatical proficiency as measured by a cloze test. Additionally, L1-Korean and L2-English forced-choice elicitation tasks were conducted to examine how they choose L1 and L2 determiners across the distinctive anaphoric contexts. The results showed that the NSEs highly preferred the across all contexts. Meanwhile, in the direct anaphoric contexts, the L1-Korean L2-English learners exclusively preferred ku in their L1 and the in their L2 regardless of their L2 grammatical proficiency, properly mapping ku onto the. In the associative anaphoric contexts, they dominantly preferred the zero article in their L1, but the low-proficient L2 learners chose the much less often than the high-proficient ones, demonstrating their fluctuant choice between the and that. These results suggest that the low-proficient L2 learners undergo great difficulties in distinguishing the and that in contexts where implicit antecedents emerge, improperly mapping the zero article in their L1 onto either the or that in their L2. The possible linguistic reasons for their unstable choice and pedagogical implications were further discussed.