‘Number’ and Article Choice: The Case of Persian Learners of English

AbstractIn her theory of Feature Re-assembly, Lardiere (2007) claims that the problems learners face in acquiring a second language grammar are not due to their inability to learn new features. Rather, learners are unable (temporarily, at least) to disintegrate the features associated with a particular form in their first language and re-assemble them in a way that represents the second language characterization. ‘Number’ as a feature manipulates the English article system. Whereas the definite article can be used with both singular and plural nouns, the indefinite article is just used with singular nouns. The aim of this study, then, was to investigate the degree of difficulty Persian speakers have in using the articles for plural and singular nouns in light of the Feature Re-assembly Hypothesis. To this end, 50 EFL Learners at three levels of L2 knowledge and a native control group performed on a grammaticality judgment test. Results show that a across the three proficiency levels, the participants have the same degree of difficulty with article use for plural and singular nouns and none of the groups can conform to the native control group in performance. The analysis supports the assembly of features view rather than the absence of features view as indicated by the Representational Deficit Hypothesis proposed by Hawkins & Hattori (2006)