Sarko (2009)

Sarko (2009) conducted a study among L1 Syrian Arabic and L1 French learners of English. She focused on testing the FH and the MSIH for the representation of English articles in IL grammars. The scholar clearly distinguished between Arabic, French and English in terms of how they realise definiteness. Whereas English denotes definiteness by the in all NP types (count, mass, singular and plural) and indefiniteness by a and ø, Arabic has a definite article al which occurs in all NP types, just like the but the language denotes indefiniteness by means of bare NPs in spoken form (see also, Thyab (2016)). As for French, it does not allow bare NPs and requires an overt article in all contexts – le (masculine), la (feminine) or les (plural) for definite NPs, un (masculine) or une (feminine) for indefinite NPs, and des for NPs which would be bare in English. Moreover, besides functioning as (in)definiteness markers, singular articles mark number and gender in French. Indefinite plural and mass nouns also require an overt determiner, realised as de (singular) and des (plural) in cases where NPs would be bare in English.

Besides focusing on the FH and MSIH, Sarko (2009) also drew on the Full Transfer/Full Access (FT/FA) hypothesis (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1994, 1996). This hypothesis holds that while L2 learners transfer the abstract features and functional categories of their L1 at the beginning of L2 acquisition (“full transfer”), they have full access to even those properties of UG which are absent in their L1 grammar (“full access”) (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1994, 1996). Assuming the FT/FA, Sarko (2009) predicted that native speakers of French learning English would not fluctuate between definiteness and specificity for English because both languages have overt definite and indefinite articles. However, because French does not allow bare nouns, Sarko (2009) predicted that these learners would overuse articles in English.

It was also hypothesised that, if the MSIH is correct, there would be evidence from oral production that learners omit articles. However, such article omission would be found to a

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much lesser extent in the case of the FCET results, since in this task there is no “communication pressure” affecting speakers’ ability to access morphological exponents, and thus there is more time to access their explicit knowledge (Sarko, 2009:49).

The study involved 84 participants: 57 L1 Syrian Arabic-speaking learners of English and 18 L1 French-speaking learners of English. There were also nine English native speaker controls. All three groups were university students. Using the OQPT (2001), the scholar divided the participants into two groups: the intermediate group and the advanced group.

The data for the study were collected using two types of instruments: a written FCET and an oral story recall task. The FCET resembled that of Ionin et al. (2004). The test had 88 short dialogues; only 68 tokens in the test were relevant for the study. The test observed contrasts between count singular, plural and mass NPs.

In the story recall task, the participants had to listen to five short stories. Each story was presented to the participants aurally using a computer. They listened twice to each story. In addition, they were supplied with key items as written prompts to use when telling the stories. The prompts were nouns and were given in the order in which they appeared in the story. The learners were asked to recall as much content as they could.

The FCET’s results indicated that the Syrian Arabic and French speakers performed very well in definite singular contexts as shown in Table 3.9.

Table 3.9: Choice of articles in [+def, ±spec] count singular contexts [+def, +spec] [+def, -spec]

the a/an ø the a/an ø

SA Intermed. 272/288 12/288 4/288 266/288 18/288 4/288 (n = 36) (94%) (4%) (2%) (92%) (6%) (2%) Fre Intermed. 75/80 5/80 0/80 78/80 2/80 0/80 (n = 10) (94%) (6%) (0%) (98%) (2%) (0%) SA Adv. 166/168 2/168 0/168 166/168 2/168 0/168 (n = 21) (99%) (1%) (0%) (99%) (1%) (0%) Fre Adv. 63/64 1/64 0/64 63/64 1/64 0/64 (n = 7) (98%) (2%) (0%) (98%) (2%) (0%) NS controls 67/72 5/72 0/72 72/72 0/72 0/72 (n = 9) (93%) (7%) (0%) (100%) (0%) (0%) (Sarko, 2009:53)

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No significant differences were found between the experimental (Syrian Arabic and French) groups and the native speaker control group in count singular contexts in the use of the definite article. However, in count plural contexts, there was a significant difference between both intermediate groups and the native controls on the use of the. Moreover, there were significant differences between the Syrian Arabic learners and the control group, between the Syrian Arabic and the French learners, and between the French learners and the control group. The comparison between the advanced group and the native controls shows no significant difference in the use of the. The results of all L2 groups for the definite article concurred with the Full Transfer hypothesis. Since both L1s had definite articles, the participants transferred their L1s’ structures to their English IL grammars. As for the indefinite specific contexts, the results showed significant differences between the Syrian Arabic group and the French group, but there was no significant difference between the French group and the control group. This finding concurs with FT because the Syrian Arabic group transferred the bare form of NPs for indefiniteness while the French group transferred their overt realisation of indefiniteness from L1 French.

With regard to the story-retelling task, both groups produced the in definite contexts in a target-like manner. Sarko (2009) attributed their accuracy to L1 transfer because their L1s grammaticalise definiteness.

Table 3.10: Choice of articles in [–definite, ±specific] count singular contexts [–def, –spec] [–def, +spec]

the a/an ø the a/an ø

SA Intermed. 3/288 282/288 3/288 44/144 98/144 2/144 (n = 36) (1%) (98%) (1%) (31%) (68%) (1%) Fre Intermed. 2/80 79/80 0/80 2/40 38/40 0/40 (n = 10) (3%) (97%) (0%) (5%) (95%) (0%) SA Adv. 2/168 166/168 0/168 19/84 65/84 0/84 (n = 21) (1%) (99%) (0%) (23%) (77%) (0%) Fre Adv. 0/64 64/64 0/64 1/32 31/32 0/32 (n = 8) (0%) (100%) (0%) (3%) (97%) (0%) NS controls 0/72 72/72 0/72 0/36 36/36 0/36 (n = 9) (0%) (100%) (0%) (0%) (100%) (0%) (Sarko, 2009:55)

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In indefinite contexts, plural and mass nouns were all non-specific. Count singular NPs, however, were either specific or non-specific. All learners used a/an accurately in indefinite non-specific contexts. However, for indefinite specific contexts, the Syrian Arabic learners demonstrated non-target-like performance, while the L1 French speakers demonstrated target-like performance. This finding underscores the MSIH in that the learners did not omit articles in the FCET but omitted them in the story recall task. Such omission could have been caused by communicative pressure. It was noted that, generally, the participants’ choice of English articles was not determined by specificity because there was limited evidence of fluctuation among the intermediate L1 Syrian Arabic learners of English.