Abstract
The current paper is an argumentative outlook of Huebner’s Semantic Wheel. The researcher wanted to investigate the difficulties in the use of English articles by the Yemeni EFL learners. Huebner’s Semantic Wheel was used to identify the most frequently substituted NPs. However, some shortcomings in the applicability of such model in some cases were found. The curiosity of discovering the reasons behind the inapplicability of Huebner’s model to some noun phrases led to some notable conclusions; which are put, here, for discussion.
Highlights
Articles are function words that carry many indications about the identity of the NPs they modify
Though English articles are pedagogically introduced at early stages of English language courses, it has been noticed that EFL learners still find it difficult to accurately master their uses at late stages
The discussion of the fulfillment of this claim will be handled from three different perspectives: grammaticality, discourse, and the consideration of the learner’s first language article system
Summary
Articles are function words that carry many indications about the identity of the NPs they modify (i.e. specificity, definitiveness and the count status and number). The identifications between definiteness and specificity are based mainly on discourse analysis or upon the speaker/writer’s intention. Ionin, Ko and Wexler (2004) suggest that the features of definiteness/indefiniteness [±definite] are built upon both the speaker/writer and the hearer/reader’s knowledge, whereas the features of specificity/nonspecificity [±specific] are built upon the speaker/writer’s knowledge only. Specificity means that if the speaker is referring to a noun that both speaker and hearer know, the noun is modified by the definite article (the), e.g. Everybody admired the watch you gifted me. L1 article users have various ways of encoding specificity, noun countability and presumed hearer’s knowledge within their L1 article system
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