Restrictions on definiteness in second language acquisition

Abstract

In this paper we investigate whether learners of L2 English show knowledge of the Definiteness Effect (Milsark, 1977), which restricts definite expressions from appearing in the existential there-insertion construction. There are crosslinguistic differences in how restrictions on definiteness play out. In English, definite expressions may not occur in either affirmative or negative existentials (e.g. There is a/*the mouse in my soup; There isn't a/*the mouse in my soup). In Turkish and Russian, affirmative existentials observe a restriction similar to English, whereas negative existentials do not. We report on a series of experiments conducted with learners of English whose L1s are Turkish and Russian, of intermediate and advanced proficiency. Native speakers also took the test in English, Turkish and Russian. The task involved acceptability judgments. Subjects were presented with short contexts, each followed by a sentence to be judged as natural/unnatural. Test items included affirmative and negative existentials, as well as items testing apparent exceptions to definiteness restrictions. Results show that both intermediate and advanced L2ers respond like English native speakers, crucially rejecting definites in negative existentials. A comparison with the groups taking the test in Russian and Turkish confirms that judgments in the L2 are quite different from the L1, suggesting that transfer cannot provide the explanation for learner success.

Second language acquisition at the interfaces

“…On the other hand, White and colleagues (Belikova et al, in press;White, 2008a;White et al, 2009) have shown that L2ers with Mandarin, Russian or Turkish as L1s successfully map the feature [AE definite] onto English articles and other determiners, such as demonstratives, possessives, and numerals. There is a well-known restriction on definiteness (known as the Definiteness Effect) in the existential there-insertion construction (Milsark, 1977), where indefinite DPs are permitted (see (10a, c, e)), while definite expressions are excluded (as in (10b, d, f)).…”

Restrictions on definiteness in the grammars of German-Turkish heritage speakers

“…Extending these findings beyond production, White et al (2012) report on a series of experiments investigating knowledge of the Definiteness Effect, conducted with adult learners of English whose L1s are Turkish and Russian. e task was a contextualized acceptability judgment task, testing affirmative and negative existentials.…”

Locatives and existentials in L2 Spanish: The acquisition of the semantic contrasts amongser, estarandhaber

“…Research on the acquisition of semantic aspects that are also present in the existential constructions has been mainly focused on the definiteness feature on determiners, particularly in articles (Ionin, 2006; Ionin et al, 2004; Lardiere, 2004; White, 2003, 2008), but less investigated in existential constructions, with the recent exception of White (2008) and White et al (2009, 2012). The definiteness effect (DE), a key element in the formation of existential constructions, constrains the type of DPs that can appear in these constructions.…”

“…This study will show that despite the semantic complexity of the phenomenon in Spanish, it does not constitute a great challenge already in intermediate speakers, unlike what happens with other ser / estar contrasts. This suggests on the one hand that not all phenomena placed at the same interface are equally (un)problematic (White et al, 2009), but also that the Interface Hypothesis could be a useful working hypothesis beyond ultimate attainment and might also predict certain linguistic behaviors in other acquisition contexts such as in developing grammars.…”