International Teacher Education Conference 2014 1

International Teacher Education Conference 2014
their production or comprehension. In this study we will mostly deal with the notion of output which was
introduced by Swain (1985) as “comprehensible” or “pushed” output in which learners are pushed in their
production as a necessary part of learning process.
On definiteness/indefiniteness
Linguistic category such as definiteness/indefiniteness is often seen as a linguistic universal ( Chomsky,
2000, Silić, 2000), i.e. universal feature in learners’ linguistic knowledge as absolute universal that exists in
every human language. What is different is the way how this category is expressed in certain languages, either
by linguistic patterns such as articles, or some other elements such as determiners. The lack of articles in
learners’ L1 presupposed constrains and difficulties on article choice in L2 acquisition. Since Croatian lacks an
article system it is unlikely that L1 transfer affects the acquisition of the English articles by Croatian learners. It
provides to examine the role of UG approach (Chomsky,2000) in the acquisition of this category as well as the
role of Fluctuation Hypothesis (Ionin,2008) in the acquisition of the English articles.
In Standard English grammars (Eastwood, 2005) articles are found with other determiners as closed system
which express definiteness/indefiniteness, where definite article indicates that the referent is already shared
between the speaker and hearer (Robertson, 2000) or they share knowledge of the same. When the situation of
this is visible, demonstrative pronouns can be used instead of definite article and is explained by Hawkins’
location theory (1978). Definite article sometimes expresses uniqueness (Hawkins, Heim, 1991) of a referent
where demonstrative pronouns can’t be used instead of article. The indefinite article a marks or signals that new
information is introduced in a discourse set as first mentioned. Sometimes indefinite pronouns (any, some) can
be used in such situations or even number one instead indefinite article. This often happens when learners’ L1
lacks article system (for example in the present study). If there is no shared knowledge (Yule, 1998) between the
speaker and hearer, or shared previous discourse set (Hawkins, 1978), definite article is used. Thus, article
choices depend on the notion of definiteness that Ionin (2004) describes as a discourse-related semantic feature
related to the knowledge state of the speaker and hearer while the notion of specificity refers to the knowledge
known only to the speaker (writer). For example: I want to talk to the owner of this store, whoever that is; I want
to talk to the owner of this store, she is my neighbour. The second example implies that information is known
and important only to the speaker. Definiteness and specificity are the notions important for the Article Choice
Parameter (Ionin, 2004, 2007) by which the author explains the variability in L2 learners’ production of articles
that leads to the Fluctuation Hypothesis. Under this hypothesis L2 learners are predicted to fluctuate between the
two settings of the Article Choice Parameter until the input leads them to the right option.
Previous research of articles in L2 acquisition
The research results made by Ionin et al. (2006) showed that fluctuation overrides language transfer with the
article-less L1 learners (Russian), while transfer overrides fluctuation with article L1 learners (Spanish) where
they transferred article semantics from their L1 to their l2. In our study we assume that fluctuation will override
transfer since Croatian lacks article system. Zergollern-Miletić (2008) conducted a study on native speakers of
Croatian/advanced L2 speakers of English with the purpose of examining their perception of
definiteness/indefiniteness in English and Croatian. The research results showed wrong use of articles with
abstract nouns and omission of articles when noun is defined by an adjective as well as article substitution
(definite for indefinite and vice versa). The author concluded that learners have to develop awareness of the
existence of definiteness/indefiniteness in their first language, despite the lack of articles. In Trenkić (2002) L2
learners (Serbian) were found to supply the definite article in place of the indefinite article more often with
concrete noun phrase referring to concepts with a relatively constant form (e.g. a letter), than with abstract noun
phrases referring to concepts which can take many different forms (e.g. a disaster). Trenkić ( 2007, 2009)
questions the notion of definiteness and asks why the majority of the world’s languages can do without formal
marking of this concept through articles. The author concerns this term as identification of the referent in a
discourse. A discourse referent is definite if the speaker intends to refer to it, and expects the referent to be
uniquely identifiable to the hearer (e.g. Pass me the black mug please).When the existence and uniqueness are
not met, the referent is indefinite (e.g. Pass me a white mug please). In Ionin, Ko&Wexler’s (2004) study L2
learners inappropriately used the definite article in indefinite contexts like a girl from my class where the
referent is identified by the speaker, than when the speaker denies knowledge of the referent. Ogawa (2008)
conducted a study on article-less L1 learners (Japanese) with the idea that the difficulty of article acquisition lies
in nominal countability as well as in definiteness and specificity ( Hawkins,2001). It was discovered that
advanced EFL learners had difficulty in recognizing nominal countability. What was unsolved in this study the
122