This study investigates how Korean (L1) learners whose L1 lacks an article system acquire definite article in English. To this end, the current study starts from the claim of Ko et al. (2009) and Chung (2012) that Korean learners start solely from UG ...
This study investigates how Korean (L1) learners whose L1 lacks an article system acquire definite article in English. To this end, the current study starts from the claim of Ko et al. (2009) and Chung (2012) that Korean learners start solely from UG to acquire English articles, particularly definite article the because Korean has no article system. In other words, Korean has no articles, and in turn Koreans have no L1 article knowledge to transfer to acquire English articles. Hence they have to rely on UG, but not L1, to acquire articles in English. In contrast, Lee (2012) takes a different stance: demonstrative ku in Korean is a source of L1 transfer which influences Korean learners’ acquisition of definite article in English. However his study has yet to be extended to specify what feature of the demonstrative ku engages in the acquisition of definite article the. One finding of Ko et al. (2009) worth mentioning is that Korean (L1) learners tend to overuse definite article the by using it even in situations which are characterized as [-definite, /specific]. Ko et al. (2009) and series of their following studies have not addressed why Korean learners are likely to favorably choose some situations of [/specific] for the use of definite article the. Similarly Chung (2012) s that his Korean subjects kept trying to use definite article the in situations of [/specific] over the age of 19. This finding can be interpreted as follows: the feature of [/specific] comes from L1 (Korean) since its engagement in the article acquisition continues over learners’ adulthood. |
