In this study, we examined whether Turkish-speaking child L2 learners of English omitted or substituted indefinite articles in a production task that comprised a referential specific and a non-referential predicational semantic context. We also examined the source of children’s errors using a self-paced listening task where children heard grammatical and ungrammatical sentences with indefinite articles present or omitted. L2 children’s performance was compared with that of an age-matched English-speaking L1 group and a younger L1 group. Results showed that all groups distinguished between the two semantic contexts in both tasks. Although children primarily omitted articles, in the on-line processing task, all groups detected the ungrammaticality related to article omission. We interpret these results within the Missing Surface Inflection and Feature Reassembly hypotheses.
Avrutin, S. & Coopmans, P.2000. Children who build bridges. In BUCLD 24:Proceedings of the Boston University Conference on Language Development 24, S.C., Howell, S.A. Fish & T. Keith-Lucas (eds), 90–102. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.
Bishop, D.V.M.2003. Test for Reception of Grammar, version 2 (TROG-2). London: The Psychological Corporation.
Brown, R.1973. A First Language: The Early Stages. London: Penguin Books.
Carlson, G.N.1977. Reference to Kinds in English. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Chondrogianni, V. & Marinis, T.2012. Production and processing asymmetries in the acquisition of tense morphology by sequential bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 12: 1–19.
Chondrogianni, V. & Marinis, T.2015. Production of definite and indefinite articles in typically developing English-speaking children and children with SLI. Lingua 155: 9–28.
Chondrogianni, V., Marinis, T., Edwards, S. & Blom, E.2015. Production and on-line comprehension of definite articles and clitic pronouns in Greek-speaking typically developing L2 children and monolingual children with SLI. Applied Psycholinguistics 36: 1155–1191.
Chondrogianni, V., Vasić, N., Marinis, T. & Blom, E.2015. Production and on-line comprehension of definiteness in English and Dutch by monolingual and sequential bilingual children. Second Language Research 31: 309–341.
De Cat, C.2011. Information tracking and encoding in early L1: Linguistic competence vs. cognitive limitations. Journal of Child Language 38: 828–860.
de Villiers, J. & de Villiers, P.1973. A cross sectional study of the acquisition of grammatical morphemes in child speech. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 2: 267–278.
de Villiers, J., Schafer, R.Pearson, B. Z. & Seymour, H. N.2000. Control of article use in SAE- & AAE-speaking children. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Speech, Language, and Hearing Association, Washington DC.
Dunn, L.M., Dunn, L.M., Whetton, C. & Burley, J.1997. The British Picture Vocabulary Scale, 2nd edn. Windsor: NFER-Nelson.
Emslie, H.C. & Stevenson, R.J.1981. Pre-school children’s use of the articles in definite and indefinite referring expressions. Journal of Child Language 8: 313–328.
Enç, M.1991. The semantics of specificity. Linguistic Inquiry 22: 1–25.
Erguvanlı, E.1984. The Function of Word Order in Turkish Grammar. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.
Fodor, J.D. & Sag, I.A.1982. Referential and quantificational indefinites. Linguistics and Philosophy 5: 355–398.
Goad, H. & White, L.2004. Ultimate attainment of L2 inflection: Effects of L1 prosodic structure. In EUROSLA Yearbook 4, S. Foster-Cohen, M. Sharwood Smith, A. Sorace & M. Ota (eds), 119–145. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Goad, H. & White, L.2006. Ultimate attainment in interlanguage grammars: A prosodic approach. Second Language Research 22: 243–268.
Göksel, A. & Kerslake, C.2005. Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar. London: Routledge.
Guasti M.T., Gavarrò, A.J., Lange, C. & Caprin, C.2008. Article omission across child language. Language Acquisition 15: 89–119.
Hawkins, J.A.1991. On (in)definite articles: Implicatures and (un)grammaticality prediction. Journal of Linguistics 27: 405–442.
Haznedar, B. & Schwartz, B.D.1997. Are there optional infinitives in child L2 acquisition? In BUCLD 21: Proceedings of the 21st Boston University Conference on Language Development, E. Hughes, M. Hughes & A. Greenhill (eds), 257–268. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.
Heim, I.1982. The Semantics of Indefinite and Definite Noun Phrases. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Ionin, T., Ko, H. & Wexler, K.2004. Article semantics in L2 acquisition. The role of specificity. Language Acquisition 12: 3–69.
Ionin, T., Zubizaretta, M. & Philippov, V.2009. Acquisition of article semantics by child and adult L2-English learners. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 12: 337–361.
Kelepir, M.2001. Topics in Turkish Syntax. Clausal Structure and Scope. PhD dissertation, MIT.
Kornfilt, J.1997. Turkish. London: Routledge.
Kornfilt, J.2009. DOM and two types of DSM in Turkish. In Differential Object Marking, H. de Hoop & P. de Swart (eds), 79–112. Dordrecht: Springer.
Lardiere, D.2009. Some thoughts on the contrastive analysis of features in second language acquisition. Second Language Research 25: 173–227.
Maratsos, M.1976. The Use of Definite and Indefinite Reference in Young Children. Cambridge: CUP.
Medical Research Council psycholinguistic database1997. Oxford: Medical Research Council.
Nilsson, B.1985. Case Marking Semantics in Turkish. PhD dissertation, University of Stockholm.
Schaeffer, J. & Matthewson, L.2005. Grammar and pragmatics in the acquisition of article systems. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 23: 53–101.
Schafer, R. & de Villiers, J.2000. Imagining articles: What a and the can tell us about the emergence of the DP. In BUCLD 24: Proceedings of the 24 Boston University Conference on Language Development, S.C. Howell, S.H. Fish & T. Keith-Lucas (eds), 609–620. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.
Schwartz, B.D. & Sprouse, R.1996. L2 cognitive states and the full transfer/full access model. Second Language Research 12: 40–72.
van Hout, A., Harrigan, K. & de Villiers, J.2010. Asymmetries in the acquisition of definite and indefinite NPs. Lingua 20: 1973–1990.
White, L.2003. Fossilization in steady state L2 grammars: Persistent problems with inflectional morphology. Bilingualism: Language & Cognition 6: 129–141.
Zdorenko, T. & Paradis, J.2008. The acquisition of articles in child second language English: Fluctuation, transfer or both?Second Language Research 24: 227–250.
Zdorenko, T. & Paradis, J.2011. Articles in child L2 English: When L1 and L2 acquisition meet at the interface. First Language 21: 1–25.
Cited by (4)
Cited by four other publications
Saban-Dülger, Nur Seda & Esra Özcebe
2024. Language Assessment in Bilingual Turkish-Speaking Preschoolers With Developmental Language Disorders: A Tutorial. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups 9:3 ► pp. 655 ff.
PONTIKAS, George, Ian CUNNINGS & Theodoros MARINIS
2023. Online processing of which-questions in bilingual children: Evidence from eye-tracking. Journal of Child Language 50:5 ► pp. 1082 ff.
Pontikas, George, Ian Cunnings & Theodoros Marinis
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.