The Acquisition of Pronouns and Articles by Japanese EFL learners : Influence of Context

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In our study of article acquisition, the Japanese EFL learners could choose an article correctly in both definite and non-definite contexts. However, in a context with an explicitly denied knowledge, they made errors(overproduction of definite articles). This error was also observed in the L2 grammar of Russian EFL learners. This cross-linguistic evidence indicates that there is a case where the ACP access is limited. Moreover, in our study of pronoun acquisition, when the Japanese EFL and Spanish JFL learners interpreted null elements in subject and object positions, the former allowed sloppy reading more than the latter did. From this result, it was found that the syntactic status of null elements differs in the two languages ; argument ellipsis in Japanese, null pronoun in Spanish. The current study suggests it is important that the acquisition of articles and null elements are examined in discourse, not within a sentence. Furthermore, our study could explore a mechanism of L2 acquisition from the views of SLA and linguistic theories.