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Resetting the Nominal Mapping Parameter in L2 English: Definite article use and the count–mass distinction*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2008

NEAL SNAPE
NEAL SNAPE*
Affiliation:
University of Calgary/Hokkaido University
*
Address for correspondence: Research Faculty of Media and Communication, Kita 17, Nishi 8, Kita-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan060-0817ne-snape@imc.hokudai.ac.jp
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Abstract

This paper presents two experiments in the acquisition of the nominal domain in English by Japanese and Spanish second language (L2) learners. The first experiment tests the L2 learners' ability to distinguish between count and mass nouns using a grammaticality judgement task and the second experiment tests learners on different types of definite (based on J. Hawkins's 1978 taxonomy) in count and mass contexts by means of a forced-choice elicitation task. The claim by Chierchia (1998a, b) is that there is a Nominal Mapping Parameter and the three languages discussed in this paper each have a different parametric value. The aim of the paper is to test Japanese and Spanish L2 learners of English to see whether they can reset the parameter to the English setting.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 63 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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Footnotes

*

The research reported in this article formed part of the author's Ph.D dissertation completed at the Department of Language & Linguistics, University of Essex, UK, which was supported by a three year ESRC scholarship. Earlier versions of this research were presented at J-SLA 2005, GALA 2005 and GASLA 2006. The author wishes to thank Roger Hawkins for his supervision as well as Y-k. Ingrid Leung, Tania Kupisch and three anonymous reviewers. All errors and misinterpretations are solely due to the author.

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