Abstract
A plethora of second-language (L2) acquisition studies have tested the acquisition of English determiners in relation to simple noun phrases (NPs) of the generic versus non-generic type (e.g., Ionin., et al., 2008; Momenzadea & Youhanaeeb, 2014) rather than complex NPs, such as the ‘of-phrase’ construction, as in ‘the concept of love’. This study, therefore, contributes to our knowledge by addressing how first-language (L1) transfer from Jordanian-Arabic or Cypriot-Greek to English may influence the use of the definite and zero articles in relation to the configuration of the ‘of-phrase’ construction. This construction is comprised of two nominals (Ns): N1: definite noun+of+N2: bare noun. However, the definiteness feature in the equivalent L1 constructions is realised via an Arabic syntactic construct phrase and a Greek spreading feature. The statistical analyses of the data collected by a questionnaire and a forced-choice elicitation task indicated misuse of the before both Ns by the L2 groups at lower proficiency levels of English and provided evidence of L1 negative transfer, which resulted from the syntax-semantics mismatch between the participants’ L1s and L2. The results supported the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2008, 2009). With the increase in the quality and quantity of input in the form of daily exposure to English, the L2 groups figured out how to restructure their L1 features to match the configuration of the L2 regarding their use of the. The age of the Jordanian participants and exposure to English at university/school/work of both groups influenced the use of zero and the; respectively.
Highlights
Some of the second-language (L2) hypotheses with respect to the different positions on Universal Grammar (UG) shed light on the nature of the initial state and whether the source of that initial state is transfer or UG
The current study aims to investigate the acquisition of the English definite article by native speakers of Jordanian-Arabic (JA) and Cypriot-Greek (CG) in order to test the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (FRH) (Lardiere, 2008, 2009), and to find out whether their performance was influenced by English proficiency levels, age and length of time learning English
Answering the first research question, the results suggest that the variation in the acquisition of the by the L2 groups was linked to the featural specifications of the linear genitive construction in each language
Summary
Some of the second-language (L2) hypotheses with respect to the different positions on Universal Grammar (UG) shed light on the nature of the initial state and whether the source of that initial state is transfer or UG. The Partial Access to UG position was assumed by Hawkins et al (2006), who proposed that if learners’ L1 is an article language, they are expected to have full access to the interpretable semantic features of definiteness and specificity made available by UG. If, their L1 is an article-less language, L2 learners will find it difficult to acquire these features. The semantic relations between N1 and N2 are of many types, such as those in (2)
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