چکیده:
There has been considerable debate over what the sources of morphological variation in second languageacquisition are. From among various hypotheses put forth on the topic, the feature reassembly hypothesis (Lardiere, 2005) assumes that it is the reconfiguration of features in the L2 which causes variation between the performance of natives and non-natives. Acknowledged as one of the most difficult elements of English grammar to be acquired by learners, the article system was the focus of the present study which aimed at attending to the acquisition of that system by Persian learners. This descriptive piece of research focused on how the article system functions in English and Persian, the similarities found across the two languages and the possible sources of difficulty for Persian learners in using English articles as related to their L1 . The participants included Persian learners at three levels of grammatical knowledge. A group of English native speakers also took part in the study. A grammaticality judgment test and a translation test were conducted to collect data. Comparisons were made among the four groups, using ANOVAs. Based on the results, it is argued that the observed pattern of article use among Persian speaking learners can be best accounted for by the feature reassembly hypothesis.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Comparisons were made among the four groups, using ANOVAs. Based on the results, it is argued that the observed pattern of article use among Persian speaking learners can be best accounted for by the feature reassembly hypothesis.
There are other cases which involve different combinations of features across two languages and the learning of such grammatical points will depend on successful reassembly on the part of learners (see for example Renaud, 2009; Yuan & Zhao, 2009).
The discrepancy in feature combination may explain Persian speakers’ reported failure to achieve native-like fluency in the use of English articles (Afzali, 2008; Rahmani, 2010; Momenzade & Youhanaee, 2013).
Most studies that have investigated learning of the articles by Persian learners have approached the problem from a pedagogical perspective and so, do not contribute to this research (for instance, Afzali, 2008; Dabaghi & Tavakoli, Again, it seems that differences between the two languages are not due to absence of some features but to how those features are realized on lexical morphemes cross-linguistically.
The focus of the present study Previous studies on Persian L2 learners of English have documented the article system as a major barrier to native-like proficiency even at the advanced level (Mobini, 2006; Momenzade & Youhanaee, 2013) and have sought to alleviate the problem by providing pedagogical suggestions (Dabaghi & Tavakoli, 2009; Pashazade & Marefat, 2010).
Table 5 Participant Specifications Are Persian EFL learners eventually able to reassemble definiteness, specificity, genericity, number, and countability on Groups Number Age range OPT score Elementary 18 19-27 18-29 English articles?
Results The first research question asked if the Persian learners could eventually reassemble definiteness, specificity, genericity, number, and countability on English articles.