Reference to kinds in L2 English

Authors

  • Yılmaz Köylü Indiana University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v4i1.4537

Keywords:

genericity, kind reference, second language acquisition, Turkish, Arabic, Chinese

Abstract

This study investigated the acquisition of kind referring noun phrase interpretation in L2 English by learners with Turkish, Arabic and Chinese L1 backgrounds. 37 advanced learners of English with Turkish (10), Arabic (10) and Chinese (10) L1 backgrounds, and 7 native English speakers were recruited. The tasks were a 48-item Fill in the gaps task and a 64-item Acceptability judgment task. The results indicated that: (a) native speakers, and L2 learners mostly produced bare plurals for count nouns and bare singulars for mass nouns for kind reference; (b) L2 learners of English transferred the morphosyntactic manifestation of kind reference from their L1s, substantiating the Full Transfer Full Access Hypothesis (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996); and (c) the similarity between the participants’ L1s and L2 did not always lead them to produce correct noun forms and articles for kind reference, neither did such a similarity consistently help the learners in their acceptability judgments for kind reference.

Author Biography

  • Yılmaz Köylü, Indiana University
    Yılmaz Köylü is a PhD candidate in the Department of Second Language Studies and Linguistics at Indiana University. His interests lie in the domains of first and second language acquisition, syntax, semantics, and Turkish linguistics. More specifically, he is interested in the syntax-semantics interface, NP syntax and semantics, genericity, and mass/count noun distinction across languages.

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Published

2019-03-15

How to Cite

Köylü, Yılmaz. 2019. “Reference to Kinds in L2 English”. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 4 (1): 46:1–14. https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v4i1.4537.