How definite are we about articles in English? A study of L2 learners’ English article interlanguage during a University

Literature Review

This research builds on previous research from a diverse range of fields and approaches, as discussed below.

1. 
   Background
   

Although most Indo-European languages have some form of article system, their ancestors (such as Latin and Sanskrit) did not. According to some sources (Bybee, 1998) the definite article originates from the Old English demonstrative that (Old English did not have an article system) while the indefinite article a/an came from the numeral one. According to the OED, like most parts of English, the definite article’s use has been in a constant state of flux
– in the 17^th century all dates were preceded by the (e.g. the 1685). Mandarin Chinese does not have a comparable article system, even if it does have other markers of definiteness.

2. 
   Pedagogic grammar approaches to prescribing article use.
   

Many commentators have noted an overemphasis in EFL materials given to the anaphoric referential function of the definite article (Berry, 1991, Whitman, 1974, Yoo, 2009), in which the first mention of nouns occurs with the indefinite article and the second mention requires the definite article. As Whitman (1974) pointed out, this juxtaposition of a/an and the falsely implies that article choice is a simple dichotomy, when in reality the choice of no determiner or quantifier or alternative determiners and quantifiers is a far more complex issue. However, more advanced grammars such as Quirk and Crystal’s (1985) A
comprehensive grammar of the English language provide a more comprehensive guide to article use.

1. 
   Quirk and Crystal’s (1985) description of the definite article for specific reference
   

Quirk and Crystal (1985) identified eight functions of the as a marker of specific reference: the immediate situation (the roses are beautiful), unique reference (the sun/the moon), anaphoric reference (second mention), cataphoric reference (post-modified noun phrases and of phrases), sporadic reference (my sister goes to the theatre every month), logical use with adjectives (the same, the only, superlatives), and reference to body parts (the mind). Six of these functions, forgetting sporadic reference and body parts, seem most important for academic writing. Of these six written functions of the definite article, it is cataphoric reference which evidence suggests learners will most need in academic English since, according to Biber (1999), 40% of definite articles used in academic writing have this function.

2. 
   Generic use of articles
   

Another function of the English article system is to indicate the more general nature of the noun as a class, and this generic function is often equally served by plurals, a/an or the, as an example from Langendoen (1970, as cited in Master, 1987) below shows:

1. 
   An elephant never forgets
   
2. 
   The elephant never forgets
   
3. 
   Elephants never forget
   

Master (ibid.) studied a corpus of the journal ‘Scientific American’ and reported that the Ø article was the most frequent generic article form (54%), followed by generic the (38%) and finally the generic a/an article (8%).

3. 
   Article use governed by convention
   

Reflecting what Sinclair (1991) framed as the ‘idiom principle’ – that much of our language is framed not by ‘open choice’ but my the norms of convention, it should be remembered that article use often appears totally arbitrary to learners. On the one hand, many discourse markers in academic English (e.g. the first point, on the other hand) could be argued to fit into what Quirk and Crystal (1985) called ‘logical uses’ of definite article. However, it might be more difficult to explain the vast majority of discourse idioms (e.g. on the whole, on the rise, in the main). In their study in the ‘natural order’ of article acquisition (excluding generic uses), Liu and Gleason (2002) found that learners had the most problems inserting the obligatory use of the in texts where the definite article had been omitted in contexts of conventional, or what they termed as the ‘cultural’ use of the definite article.
For example, confusion is often caused by Proper nouns, which normally take ‘null’ article (e.g. Africa, Mont Blanc, Peugeot, Tower Bridge) but sometimes take the (e.g. the UK, the Alps, the Seine, the Tower of London), particularly for other [+Art] learners because these conventions are so different - the French would say ‘la France’ and ‘le Royaume Uni’, adding a definite article regardless of whether a country is singular, plural, and group of islands or a Kingdom. In some of the literature, the ‘null’ article refers to the zero article
found with singular nouns/proper but, in this paper, the Ø symbol is used to describe all free morphemes whether they occur with common or proper nouns.

3. 
   Alternative linguistic frameworks to describe article use
   

The most successful attempts to form linguistic frameworks which combine both grammatical and pragmatic article use build on Bickerton’s semantic space framework (1981). As shown in figure 1, this much used framework classifies noun phrases in terms of the discourse features of the noun contexts, namely whether the thing is construed by the user as a specific referent [± SR] and whether or not the thing is known [± HK] to the hearer. This framework has the advantage of explaining both generic and non-referential uses of articles in addition to definite and indefinite use. The main limitation as a pedagogical tool is that there is little form/meaning relationship, with the only predictive class being the 2^nd [+SR, +HK] definite article, where only the is possible. For this reason alone, many commentators argue against using such a complex model (Berry, 1991) while others argue that it is completely inappropriate for lower level/intermediate level learner (Master 1990). A second limitation is that the original framework developed by Bickerton and later applied to a language acquisition study by Heubner (1983) is that it ignores uses of the article governed by conventional use.

Figure 1: Bickerton’s semantic use of article framework

4. 
   Further research into Mandarin L1 learners using the Bickerton Semantic wheel
   

Bickerton’s model has been applied to subsequent research of both a corpus-based and qualitative nature.

1. 
   Corpus-based research
   

Diez-Bedmar and Papp (2008) used the Bickerton/Heubner framework for their corpus-based learner corpus study in which they compared Chinese, Spanish and English L1 speakers’ use of the article system in English. Their Chinese learners, with 8 years of English study, had the most problems with definite article accuracy (32.6% non-target like use), followed by a 26.8% non-target like accuracy with indefinite a/an and 24% non-target like use of Ø articles. The ‘Target-Like Use’ measure, in which correct use is expressed as a ratio to both use and overuse, was first developed by Pica (1984: as cited in Diez-Bedmar and Papp, 2008).

2. 
   Research into learner development
   

There is some evidence that accuracy of article use develops alongside general English proficiency (Master, 1995). However, this development is likely to be non-linear , as shown by Heubner’s (1983) research which further developed Bickerton’s framework and applied it to the case of a single [-Art] learner who displayed first the underuse of the definite article but then ‘flooded’ their language with its overuse at later stages before normalisation.


Finally, a few researchers have looked into the types of definite articles that more persistently cause English learners problems, even at advanced stages. According to Liu and Gleason (2002), problems with idiomatic use of the article – or what they called ‘cultural’ and ‘conventional’ uses –were more likely to persist for advanced learners than referential uses, as shown in figure (2).


Figure 2: Comparison of means of missed the by category (Liu and Gleason, 2002: 13)

5. 
   The effect of teaching the English article system
   

The emphasis given to the anaphoric use of the definite article is probably due to the perceived simplicity of teaching it to learners as a standalone use of the article system and the SLA evidence often presented to highlight the advantage of focussing grammar teaching on one defined area at a time. For example, research has shown (Bitchener and Knoch, 2009) that lower level learners make progress in their use of the definite article for anaphoric reference with focussed oral and written corrective feedback on this error. However, while their research shows that corrective feedback worked during the study, it may have had additional less desirable effects and may not have been sustained, whatever the ethical considerations of such laboratory style tests. In Berry’s opinion such an overemphasis on
anaphoric reference leads to a misconception by learners. Indeed, many noun phrase referents will be mentioned the first time with a definite article/zero article (not a/an) and many referents mentioned first time with an indefinite can also be mentioned a second time with an indefinite.
As Berry states, teachers’ efforts to simplify the article system for learners, however well meaning, can be problematic: