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Plural marking in the second language: Atomicity, definiteness, and transfer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2021

Sea Hee Choi Open the ORCID record for Sea Hee Choi [Opens in a new window]  and
Tania Ionin
Sea Hee Choi*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Tania Ionin
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
*
*Corresponding author. Sea Hee Choi, 707 S. Mathews Ave., M/C 168, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801. E-mail: schoi76@illinois.edu.
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Abstract

This paper examines whether second language (L2)-English learners whose native languages (L1; Korean and Mandarin) lack obligatory plural marking transfer the properties of plural marking from their L1s, and whether transfer is manifested both offline (in a grammaticality judgment task) and online (in a self-paced reading task). The online task tests the predictions of the morphological congruency hypothesis (Jiang 2007), according to which L2 learners have particular difficulty automatically activating the meaning of L2 morphemes that are incongruent with their L1. Experiment 1 tests L2 learners’ sensitivity to errors of –s oversuppliance with mass nouns, while Experiment 2 tests their sensitivity to errors of –s omission with count nouns. The findings show that (a) L2 learners detect errors with nonatomic mass nouns (sunlights) but not atomic ones (furnitures), both offline and online; and (b) L1-Korean L2-English learners are more successful than L1-Mandarin L2-English learners in detecting missing –s with definite plurals (these boat), while the two groups behave similarly with indefinite plurals (many boat). Given that definite plurals require plural marking in Korean but not in Mandarin, the second finding is consistent with L1-transfer. Overall, the findings show that learners are able to overcome morphological incongruency and acquire novel uses of L2 morphemes.

Keywords

atomicitycount/mass distinctiondefinitenessfirst language transfergeneralized classifier language
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , May 2021 , pp. 549 - 578
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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