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EFL grammars say and what corpus findings show
Journal of English for Academic Purposes 8 (2009) 267e278 www.elsevier.com/locate/jeap
The English definite article: What ESL/EFL grammars say and what corpus findings show Isaiah WonHo Yoo* Department of English, Sogang University, C.P.O. Box 1142, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Abstract To ascertain whether what ESL/EFL grammars say is informed by what scholars discuss in the literature and supported by what corpus findings actually show, this paper first presents a brief overview of the literature on the English definite article and then compares popular ESL/EFL grammars’ coverage of the and corpus findings on definite article usage. The main findings of the study can be summarized as follows. First, although most ESL/EFL grammars provide examples of all the uses of the discussed in the literature, they are usually provided under such a general explanation that learners must figure out for themselves the differences of each use. Second, the distinction made in the literature between the and the ‘‘most definite’’ null article has not been embraced by ESL/EFL materials writers, and it is doubtful that it will ever be, considering that this distinction seems to have few obvious pedagogical applications. Finally, the finding that most ESL/EFL grammars discuss in detail the anaphoric use of the, while overlooking situational and cataphoric uses, should be cause for alarm in light of the corpus findings that anaphoric use is not as common as situational or cataphoric use in conversation, newspaper language, or academic prose. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: the definite article; the null article; ESL/EFL grammars; corpus linguistics
1. Introduction There is no arguing that learning English as a second or foreign language is an arduous task for most adult learners, irrespective of their language background or intelligence. What is at issue is whether or not attaining native-like proficiency is possible for them, and in this regard, the definite article poses the most formidable challenge not only to those whose mother tongue does not have articles but also to those whose native language does have articles (e.g. Chesterman, 1991; Garcı´a Mayo, 2008; Ionin, Ko, & Wexler, 2004; Ionin, Zubizarreta, & Bautista Maldonado, 2008; Klages-Kubitzki, 1995; Robertson, 2000). Klages-Kubitzki (1995), for instance, has found that German university lecturers in English departments, not to mention students, still make a number of mistakes with definite article usage in their written English, 49.39% of all their mistakes being the incorrect addition of the, e.g. In his novel Caleb Williams, Godwin fights against the unjust society (p. 85). Why is it then that the definite article causes seemingly insurmountable difficulty for adult ESL/EFL learners? Of the many possible sources of difficulty, one contributing factor might be that fluency was once overemphasized at the * Tel.: þ82 2 705 8340; fax: þ82 2 715 0705. E-mail address: [email protected] 1475-1585/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2009.07.004
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expense of accuracy in such popular methods and approaches as the Natural Approach, the Whole Language, and the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) (Celce-Murcia, 2001), a fact which naturally resulted in downplaying the importance of teaching accurate article usage (e.g. Dulay, Burt, & Krashen, 1982; Lightbown & Spada, 2006). After all, article misuse does not hinder spoken communication in most situations. With the recognition of the need to strike a balance between fluency and accuracy, however, came the recent development of focus-on-form instruction (Long, 1991, 1996) within the CLTapproach (see Fotos, 2001), which in turn led to the growing recognition of the importance of incorporating grammar lessons in such CLT methods as Task-Based Instruction (e.g. Beglar & Hunt, 2002; Ellis, 2003; Littlewood, 2004; Wesche & Skehan, 2002; Willis & Willis, 2001). Of all the areas of grammar, perhaps no other area has been more elusive of exact formulation than the definite article: scholars do not agree on what constitutes definiteness, and teachers do not agree on what should be taught, if the definite article is to be taught at all. Moreover, with the recent development of corpus linguistics, our intuitions on how language works have often been proven wrong (Biber & Reppen, 2002), calling into question whether what we teach in the classroom reflects what people actually do in the real world. By comparing the literature on the English definite article, popular ESL/EFL grammars’ coverage of the, and corpus findings on definite article usage, this study tries to shed light on whether what ESL/EFL grammars say is informed by what scholars discuss in the literature and is supported by what corpus findings actually show. 2. The definite article and the ‘‘most definite’’ article 2.1. The definite article the The use of the can be categorized into three groups: referential, nonreferential, and generic. Most of the monographs on the English article system, as well as ESL/EFL grammars, however, have dealt only with the referential and generic uses. The referential use of the can be further broken down into the following six categories: anaphoric, associative, situational, and cataphoric uses (Chesterman, 1991; Hawkins, 1978; Lyons, 1999), along with sporadic and unique references (Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartvik, 1985). Examples of each of these six referential uses, as well as those of the generic and non-referential uses, are as follows:1 Referential Uses (a) Anaphoric use (i.e. second mention) An elegant, dark-haired woman, a well-dressed man with dark glasses, and two children entered the compartment. I immediately recognized the woman. The children also looked vaguely familiar. Bill swore. The oath embarrassed his mother. (b) Associative use I had to get a taxi from the station. On the way the driver told me there was a bus strike. They’ve just got in from New York. The plane was five hours late. (c) Situational use Pass me the bucket, please. I hear the prime minister behaved outrageously again today. (d) Cataphoric use (i.e. postmodification) I remember the beginning of the war very well. The fact that you’ve known them for years is no excuse. (e) Unique reference When is the first flight to Chicago tomorrow? Ada and I have the same hobby. We must catch the next bus.
1 The examples of anaphoric, associative, situational, and cataphoric uses are from Hawkins (1978), Chesterman (1991), and Lyons (1999); the examples of unique reference and sporadic reference are from Quirk et al. (1985). The examples of generic and non-referential uses are from Chesterman (1991).
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(f) Sporadic reference2 My sister enjoys the theatre. What’s on the radio this evening? Mary took the bus to London. Generic Use The horse is a useful animal. Non-referential Use He’s always playing the fool. 2.2. The ‘‘most definite’’ null article Many scholars have argued for the existence of two separate forms of zero in English: the zero article, or Ø1, precedes mass nouns and plural count nouns, whereas the null article, or Ø2, precedes singular proper nouns and some singular count nouns. Yoo (2008, p. 41) illustrates this contrast in the following examples: (1)
a. Athena loves Ø1 milk and Ø1 cookies. b. Ø2 Matthew was Ø2 best man at my wedding.
Regarding the degree of definiteness,3 Chesterman (1991) asserts that the null article is even more definite than the: nouns with null are ‘‘conceptually closer and therefore also conceptually clearer to the speaker’’ than those with the (p. 84). Making a similar claim is Christophersen (1939), who argues that there is a rivalry between the and no surface article with the names of cultural features such as parks, museums, theaters, and schools. He notes that long-established, thus more familiar, fixtures such as churches, castles, courts, bridges, forests, parks, islands, and bays, but not features of recent date, such as libraries or museums, are used with no surface article, i.e. the null article. In the early days of railways, he explains, the was used with the name of stations, but as such names have become familiar, the is no longer used.4 3. Methodology To ascertain what ESL/EFL grammars say about the definite article, the decision was made to survey popular ESL/ EFL grammar series with separate volumes for different levels because many institutions and language programs adopt grammar series, rather than grammars without specified levels, as the textbooks for their different levels of grammar classes. By surveying grammars more likely to be used as textbooks, we may also be able to get a glimpse at what students learn in the classroom. In addition, care was taken to ensure that at least one grammar series was reviewed from the following four major publishers: Cambridge University Press, Heinle & Heinle, Longman, and Oxford University Press. Because exact figures showing the popularity of all the ESL/EFL grammar series were not available, selecting the books to be reviewed mostly depended on the information I gathered from the representatives of each of the four publishers at the annual convention of the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) held in Seattle, Washington, in 2007. Although most writing and integrated-skills books also contain some discussion of grammar points, they have been excluded from the survey because very few of them directly address definite article usage. Also excluded from the survey are grammar references for teachers, such as The Grammar Book (Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1999), 2
Sporadic reference is so named because ‘‘reference is made to an institution which may be observed recurrently at various places and times’’ (Quirk et al., 1985, p. 269). 3 Most of the scholars who dealt with the English definite article have preoccupied themselves with the task of defining the theoretical notion ‘‘definiteness.’’ The discussion of what constitutes definiteness, however, is out of the scope of the present study as this paper is mostly concerned with how definite article usage is presented in ESL/EFL grammars. 4 Hewson (1972) also notes that although not usually used with proper nouns, the is used with those naming a foreign, thus unfamiliar, building, e.g. the Mariinsky Palace, because they need the clarifying power of the definite article, as with those naming a river, whose boundaries are also vague.
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and ESL/EFL references that are devoted to the article system, such as Articles (Berry, 1993) and The Article Book: Practice toward Mastering a, an, and the (Cole, 2000). The corpus findings used in this study, on the other hand, were taken from the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999), which contains the results of corpus-based analyses of data retrieved from over 40 million words of text. This ground-breaking grammar ‘‘describes the actual use of grammatical features’’ in four major registersdi.e. conversation, fiction, newspaper language, and academic prosedand in two supplementary registersdi.e. non-conversational speech and general prose (non-fiction) (Biber et al., 1999, p. 4). For definite article usage, however, Biber et al. present only the results of corpus analyses of data from the four major registers. 4. What ESL/EFL grammars say In the six ESL/EFL grammar series that I have surveyed (each series counted as one grammar), there seem to be seven situations in which a noun is considered definite:5 (1) second mention, (2) shared knowledge, (3) situational use, (4) postmodification, (5) unique items, (6) unique adjectives, and (7) superlatives and other ranking adjectives. As can be seen in Table 1 below, these seven categories of definite article usage more or less match the referential uses of the in the literature as (5) unique items, e.g. the sun, (6) unique adjectives, e.g. the same class, and (7) superlatives and other ranking adjectives, e.g. the last chapter, can all be subsumed under (e) unique reference. (b) Associative use, on the other hand, can be subsumed under (2) shared knowledge because all instances of associative use require shared knowledge between speaker and hearer. For example, in the following utterance, successful communication depends on the shared knowledge between speaker and hearer that a computer comes with a device called ‘‘mouse’’ and that there is only one mouse connected to one computer: (3) I bought a computer last month, and the mouse is already broken. However, some uses of the can only be explained by shared knowledge and not by associative use. In utterances like When’s the meeting?, the use of the derives not from associating the meeting to an object or a context already mentioned in a preceding sentence but from the knowledge shared by both speaker and hearer. Unlike associative use, situational use does not require shared knowledge. Consider the following example from Grammar Sense 3 (Bland, 2004, p. 265): (4) OK. Could you please pass the rice? Requests such as (4) can be commonly heard at the dinner table, and one might argue that speaker and hearer have the shared knowledge that there is rice on the table. However, even if the hearer did not have that knowledge, he would look for rice upon hearing the request,6 assuming that the request is truthful and relevant (Grice, 1975), i.e. there must be some rice on the table and ‘‘the rice’’ in the speaker’s request refers to that rice. In other words, successful communication does not depend on shared knowledge between speaker and hearer as it does in associative use: If the hearer did not know that a computer comes with a mouse, upon hearing the utterance in (3), he would respond by saying, ‘‘What? What mouse?’’ Table 2 below shows whether or not each of the seven categories of definite article usage found in ESL/EFL grammars, as well as sporadic reference and generic the, is covered in a given series. Unlike the other seven referential uses of the, the term sporadic reference is never used in any of the 21 books surveyed, and only one of them provides an adequate account of this particular use (Frodesen & Eyring, 2007): Before locations associated with certain typical or habitual activities. The listener/reader may have no idea of the exact location to which the speaker/writer is referring, e.g. Have you been to the beach this summer? She needs to pick up a few things at the store (p. 88). 5 The six ESL/EFL grammar series surveyed in this study use various combinations of these seven terms to explain definite article usage. For a succinct general overview of definite article usage using these terms, please refer to Master (1996, pp. 220e223). 6 As does Lyons (1999, xvii), I follow the convention that the speaker is female and the hearer male.
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Table 1 Comparison of Definite Article Usage in the Literature and ESL/EFL Grammars In the Literature (a) Anaphoric Use (b) Associative Use (c) Situational Use (d) Cataphoric Use (e) Unique Reference
In ESL/EFL Grammars (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (7)
[ < [ [ [
Second Mention Shared Knowledge Situational Use Postmodification Unique Items, (6) Unique Adjectives & Superlatives and Other Ranking Adjectives
4.1. Second mention, shared knowledge, and situational use The most striking result in Table 2 is that three of the 21 books surveyed do not contain any descriptions of the definite article. Especially interesting is the fact that Book 3 of Grammar in Context, the highest level in the series, discusses Ø1 and a(n), but not the. This separation of the from the other articles is understandable in low-level grammars, as is the case in Grammar in Context Basic, for it might be better not to open Pandora’s Box in a book designed for beginning learners. However, it is difficult to imagine the benefit of discussing only Ø1 and a(n) in grammars for advanced learners. Overall, the results of the survey show that ESL/EFL grammars generally do a good job in covering definite article usage, as all the six grammar series in Table 2 discuss the three most important uses of the definite article: second mention, shared knowledge, and situational use. Although most grammars explain second mention and give its examples separately, none of the six grammar series offers separate explanations for shared knowledge and situational use, however. They often provide examples of shared knowledge and situational use, and sometimes those of other uses, under one umbrella Table 2 Nine Categories of Definite Noun Phrases and Their Treatment in Six ESL/EFL Grammar Series (21 Books in Total)
1. Grammar Dimensions-Book 1, 4th edition (Badalamenti & Henner-Stanchina, 2007) Book 2, 4th edition (Wisniewska, Riggenbach, & Samuda, 2007) Book 3, 4th edition (Thewlis, 2007) Book 4, 4th edition (Frodesen & Eyring, 2007) 2. Focus on Grammar-Level 1, 3rd edition (Schoenberg & Maurer, 2006) Level 2, 3rd edition (Schoenberg, 2006) Level 3, 3rd edition (Fuchs, Bonner, & Westheimer, 2006) Level 4, 3rd edition (Fuchs & Bonner, 2006) Level 5, 3rd edition (Maurer, 2006) 3. Grammar in Context Basic (Elbaum & Peman, 2006) Book 1, 4th edition (Elbaum, 2006) Book 2, 4th edition (Elbaum, 2006) Book 3, 4th edition (Elbaum, 2006) 4. Basic English Grammar, 3rd edition (Azar & Hagan, 2006) Fundamentals of English Grammar, 3rd edition (Azar, 2003) Understanding and Using English Grammar, 3rd edition (Azar, 1999) 5. Grammar Sense 1 (Pavlik, 2004) Grammar Sense 2 (Pavlik, 2004) Grammar Sense 3 (Bland, 2004) 6. Basic Grammar in Use, 2nd edition (Murphy, 2002a) English Grammar in Use, 2nd edition (Murphy, 2002b) Sub-total (total number of books) Total (each series counted as one)
SM
SK
O O O
O O O
SU
O O O
PM
O
UI O O O O O
O O O _
O _
_
_
_
_
_
_
O _ O
O _
O _ O
O _
O _ O
O
O
O
O
O
O O O O O 15 6
O O O O O 12 6
O O O O 10 6
O O
O O O O 12 6
4 3
_ O _
UA
RA
O
O O
O
SR
GN
O O O
O
O O
O _ O _
_
_
_
_
O _ O _
_
O O _
_
_
O O O 6 3
O O
O 9 5
1 1
6 3
Note. SM ¼ second mention, SK ¼ shared knowledge, SU ¼ situational use, PM ¼ postmodification, UI ¼ unique items, UA ¼ unique adjectives, RA ¼ superlatives and other ranking adjectives, SR ¼ sporadic reference, and GN ¼ generic use.
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description such as the following: (a) ‘‘Use the when you know or assume that your listener is familiar with and thinking about the same specific thing or person you are talking about’’ (Azar, 1999, p. 115); (b) ‘‘The listener can identify the noun if he or she can see or hear it’’ (Bland, 2004, p. 265); and (c) ‘‘A noun is definite when the speaker and listener both know which particular person, place, or thing is being talked about’’ (Maurer, 2006, p. 132). Descriptions of definite article usage such as these are so broad that learners are still left to figure out for themselves when a noun is considered definite. However, if second mention is deemed worthy enough to deserve a separate explanation, shared knowledge and situational use are equally worthy of separate explanations. 4.2. Generic the Another noteworthy result in Table 2 is that no grammars intended for beginning students cover generic the. In fact, most of them seem to intentionally avoid discussing it because they limit their discussion of generic reference to the generic uses of a(n) and Ø1. Introducing the generic uses of a(n) and Ø1 without introducing generic the, however, can confuse the learner because dictionary-type definitions and encyclopedia entries, both of which ESL/EFL learners frequently encounter, seem to be special genres containing numerous examples of generic the. Consider the following definition of fax in the Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture (1992, p. 466), in which the is used in first mention for the fax machine, as well as the printed material: ‘‘the printed material received or sent electronically by the fax machine.’’ Some beginning learners may be able to figure out the is used before printed material because of the phrase received or sent electronically, but having learned only the generic uses of a(n) and Ø1, most of them would believe that the dictionary made a mistake by using the, instead of a, in the phrase by the fax machine. Thus, discussion of generic the should never be intentionally left out when introducing the use of the other two generic forms a(n) and Ø1. For doing so can do more harm than good to the learner by creating the misconception that only a(n) or Ø1 can be used generically. 4.3. The null article Despite the continual interest it has generated over the past three decades among researchers, the null article (Ø2) never made its way into any ESL/EFL grammars. Although it can be expected that ESL/EFL grammars not devoted to article usage overlook non-surface articles, the use of null in sentences where learners of English might expect a surface article is an area that can be given more attention. Consider the following sentence in which the null article is used before the singular count nouns writer and reader (Raimes, 1993, p. 251): (5) The form of a text is determined by the interaction of writer, reader, and content. Hewson (1972, p. 128) explains that a non-surface article is used in pairs of words and enumerations, as in (5) above, and that this usage is found in all syntactic positions: (a) subject, e.g. Brother and sister were at breakfast; (b) object, e.g. Kitty hurriedly gathered up gloves and fan; (c) subject and object together, e.g. dog succeeded dog; (d) after preposition, e.g. twirling the stem of a wine-glass between thumb and first finger; (e) with two prepositions, e.g. it has to grow, and to be handed down from father to son; and (f) predicate of to be, e.g. I can’t be buyer and seller too.7 Another area of null, as well as definite, article usage almost never discussed in ESL/EFL grammars concerns (the) last/ next followed by temporal nouns. Most grammars do not discuss this extremely confusing area of Ø2 and definite article usage at all, and a simple perfunctory explanation of the phenomenon, such as the following in Basic Grammar in Use (Murphy, 2002a), can be misleading for learners of English: ‘‘We do not use the with next/last þ week/month/year/ summer/Monday, etc., e.g. I’m not working next week (not the next week)’’ (p. 292). Indeed, phrases such as the next week occur infrequently in such a context; however, the can certainly be used with next week. Yoo (2007b, p. 1527), for example, explains how the use of the before next week changes the meaning of the temporal noun in the following example, which he found in a college newspaper editorial on Friday of the orientation week: 7 There are two constraints for using the null article in pairs of words and enumerations: one, the nouns must belong to the same immediate syntactic constituent, e.g. It is funny how rogue knows rogue vs. *Set thief to catch thief; and two, the nouns must also be known as, or felt to be, part of each other, e.g. I settled myself in my chair and, putting match to gasper, awaited the inside story vs. I put a match to his cigarette (Hewson, 1972, pp. 128e129). This intimate use of null is also found in familiar household personalities and the governing body of a particular people, e.g. Father is angry and Congress is in session (Hewson, 1972, p. 128).
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(6) The next week will be fun. The next week in (6), Yoo explains, refers to ‘‘from Saturday to Friday,’’ which is different from what Ø2 next week would refer to. He then proceeds to discuss the fact that the same contrast in meaning, which holds true for month and year, is not observed in the last/next þ decade/century as decade and century almost never combine with Ø2 last/next. Thus, the last decade, for example, means either ‘‘the last ten years’’ or ‘‘the decade before this one,’’ making its interpretation context-dependent. Yoo (2007a, p. 84) also observes that unlike any other nouns in English, time can combine with either Ø2 or the without any change in reference: (7) (The) last time I saw her, she was still in grad school. Admittedly, dissecting a non-surface article into two different entities as Ø1 and Ø2 may prove too difficult a concept for most learners of English and may seem to have few obvious pedagogical applications. Without resorting to the difficult notion the null article, however, advanced-level grammars can and should give more attention to the two areas of null article usage discussed above by presenting them as the deletion of surface articles. 5. What corpus findings show In examining definite article usage in four different registersdconversation, fiction, newspaper language, and academic prosedBiber et al. (1999) also use categories quite similar to, albeit fewer than, the ones in the literature and in ESL/EFL grammars discussed above: (1) anaphoric, (2) indirect anaphoric, (3) situational, (4) cataphoric, and (5) generic. In fact, the only difference is their term indirect anaphoric reference, which refers to the same article usage as associative use and shared knowledge, as can be seen in their example of indirect anaphoric reference (Biber et al., 1999, p. 263): (8) The Mercedes took a hard bounce from a pothole. ‘‘Christ,’’ said Sherman, ‘‘I didn’t even see that.’’ He leaned forward over the steering wheel. The headlights shot across the concrete columns in a delirium. As Table 3 shows below, the remaining types of definite article usage are grouped under either idiom or uncertain. 5.1. Situational use and anaphoric reference What is most striking about the corpus findings presented in Table 3 is the fact that situational use, e.g. (9), is by far the most common definite article usage in conversations: (9) You know last week my aunty she put her down in the kitchen and the telephone rang. And the telephone’s on the wall in the kitchen. picked it up. All of a sudden she turns around, just sees my little cousin screaming . My little cousin’s pulled the kettle of boiling water down her, all down her back. (conv) (Biber et al., 1999, p. 267) If we assume that low-level students in an ESL situation are more likely to encounter conversations than the other three registers and that those in an EFL situation like Korea are to be encouraged to become competent first in spoken Table 3 Percentage use of different types of definite article usage across registers (based on Biber et al., 1999, Table 4.10)
Anaphoric Indirect Anaphoric Situational Cataphoric Generic Idiom Uncertain
Conversation
Fiction
News
Academic
25% 5% 55% 5% Less than 2.5% Less than 2.5% 10%
30% 10% 10% 15% Less than 2.5% Less than 2.5% 25%
30% 15% 10% 30% 5% Less than 2.5% 5%
25% 15% 10% 40% 5% Less than 2.5% 5%
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communication, ESL/EFL materials writers should heed this finding as only four of the nine books designed for beginning or low-intermediate students in Table 2 give an example of situational use. This problem is compounded by the fact that none of them provides adequate explanations of situational use. In contrast, five of the most basic books in the six grammar series discuss anaphoric reference (second mention) in detail. Although most ESL/EFL materials writers seem to believe that anaphoric reference is the most common use of the definite article, only in fiction is anaphoric reference found to be more common than the other uses. Moreover, Biber et al. (1999, p. 266) found that anaphoric reference is marked not only by the followed by a repeated noun, e.g. the doctor in (10), but also by a range of other devices such as personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, and the followed by a synonym, e.g. he in (10) and the 14-year-old and the girl in (11): (10) A doctor was allowed to carry on working after telling fellow general practitioners he had contracted Aids, health officials revealed yesterday. <. . .> The doctor, who died last summer, broke health service guidelines. (news) (Biber et al., 1999, p. 263) (11) A teenager who existed on a junk food diet developed scurvy, the bane of seamen two centuries ago, it was revealed yesterday. The 14-year-old, from Northern Ireland, lived on cola, chocolate, hamburgers and crisps. Her doctor said he had heard of only four or five western teenagers with the disease, caused by a deficiency in vitamin C. The girl did not eat much fruit and was not keen on vegetables, said Dr Kevin McKenna. (news) (Biber et al., 1999, p. 268) Compare also (10) and (11) with the following example typically found in an ESL/EFL grammar, in which the definite article is followed by repeated nouns: (12) Yesterday I saw some dogs. The dogs were chasing a cat. The cat was chasing a mouse. The mouse ran into a hole. The hole was very small. (Azar, 1999, p. 115) A series of sentences such as these indeed help learners of English understand the anaphoric use of the, but these kinds of unattested examples could also lead students to produce non-native like discourse even after they internalize the rule, affecting their communicative competence as a whole.8 5.2. Cataphoric reference Of the four major uses of the definite article discussed in the literaturedi.e. anaphoric, associate, situational, and cataphoricdcataphoric use (postmodification) received the least attention from the ESL/EFL grammars surveyed in this study. Given the complexity of the phenomenon, which will become evident in the ensuing discussion, it is understandable that most ESL/EFL grammars do not discuss postmodification in great detail. However, the corpus findings presented in Table 3 suggest that postmodification should indeed be discussed in detail, at least in advancedlevels, as cataphoric use is frequently found in newspaper language and academic prose. In fact, cataphoric use was the most common type of definite article usage in academic prose, accounting for 40% of all the instances of the. The fact that all four books that discuss postmodification in Table 2 are for upper-intermediate or advanced students suggest that ESL/EFL materials writers do recognize the need for teaching postmodification to high-level students. Nevertheless, the problem is their inadequate treatment of its use, which can be attributed to the inherent difficulty in encapsulating the phenomenon into simple rules. Although not surveyed in this study, Master (1986, p. 88) provides an explanation of postmodification more detailed than those provided by the four books that discuss it in Table 2: The general effect of adding a relative clause or a prepositional phrase to a noun is to make the noun definite (second-mention) with the. If the noun is uncountable, the limits it to a certain location or amount. The only exception to this rule is in definitions. 8 In an attempt to operationalize the construct communicative competence, Hymes (1972) argues that successful communication requires the following four components: (1) the possible, i.e. grammatically possible, (2) the feasible, i.e. easy to process, (3) the appropriate, i.e. socially and culturally acceptable, and (4) the attested, i.e. actually done. For example, the sentence I have hunger is possible (and feasible) but not attested because people usually say, ‘‘I’m hungry.’’
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the þ NOUN
þ
Examples: relative clauses prepositional phrases
275
relative clause or prepositional phrase
the experiment that was performed the air that we exhale the experiment in progress the air in the mountains
While such explanations provide the learner with a good starting point, they can also foster the misconception that postmodification always requires the. Consider examples (13) and (14) from Quirk et al. (1985, p. 269, 279), which students who believe that all postmodifications make a noun definite, except in definitions, may regard (13b) and (14b) as ungrammatical: (13)
a. The bicycle John bought has been stolen. b. A bicycle John bought has been stolen.
(14)
a. The winter of 1963 was an exciting time. b. Winter in 1963 was not like this last winter.
Quirk et al. explain that in (13) the bicycle assumes unique reference, but a bicycle does not, and that in (14) the winter of 1963 refers to calendar time and Ø winter in 1963 seasonal climate. Unlike (14b), Master (1986, p. 202) further contends, the deletion of the is ‘‘never possible with of-phrase postmodification,’’ as in The wine of France is a product of art and science. Contrary to Master’s contention, Christophersen (1939, p. 148) offers two environments in which such deletion does occur: (a) ‘‘when the collocation is so fixed as to form almost a composite name for a single notion,’’ e.g. presence of mind, liberty of thought, and freedom of speech, and (b) ‘‘when the first substantive is an action-noun having as its object the regimen of of,’’ e.g. breach of the regulations, contemplation of their beauty, and discussion of other slaughters. Closely related to the inclination to leave out the article in verb þ object þ of constructions, e.g. to catch (lose) Ø sight of and to take Ø possession (charge, care, notice) of, the second environment explains why the is not used before possession in (15a) or control in (16b) (Christophersen, 1939, p. 149): (15)
a. I am in possession of a copy of the book. b. The copy is in the possession of the present writer.
(16)
a. She is in control of the stores. b. They are under the control of a woman.
In (15a), the is not used before possession because it is the subject I that does the possessing. In (15b), however, it is the object of the preposition of of, i.e. the present writer, that does the possessing. Likewise, the subject she does the controlling in (16a), but it is a woman, the object of of, that does the controlling in (16b). As can be seen in this short discussion of postmodification, the question of whether to use the when a noun is postmodified concerns the very nature of whether to use any article at all, the question at the heart of the conundrum that many scholars have tried to solve for many decades.
6. Conclusion In order to determine whether what ESL/EFL grammars say about the definite article is informed by what scholars discuss in the literature and supported by what corpus findings actually show, this paper first presented a brief overview of the literature on the definite article the and the ‘‘most definite’’ null article and then compared popular ESL/EFL grammars’ coverage of the and corpus findings on definite article usage. In addition to the overall finding that the six grammar
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series investigated in this study show sensitivity to the level of the learner, which governs to a large extent the choice of which areas to cover on definite article usage (e.g. 4.2. Generic the), three other main findings emerged out of the study. First, although most ESL/EFL grammars provide examples of all the uses of the discussed in the literature, they are usually provided under such a general explanation that learners of English are often left to figure out for themselves the differences of each use (see 4.1. Second mention, shared knowledge, and situation use). Second, the distinction between the null article and the definite article found in the literature has not been embraced by ESL/EFL materials writers, and it is doubtful that it will ever be, considering that the distinction does not seem to have obvious pedagogical applications, except in a few contexts discussed in this paper (see 4.3. The null article). Finally, the finding that most ESL/EFL grammars discuss in detail the anaphoric use of the (second mention) while overlooking the other uses of the, especially situational and cataphoric uses,9 should be cause for alarm in light of the corpus findings that anaphoric use is not as common as situational or cataphoric use in conversation or academic prose, respectively (see 5.1. Situational use and anaphoric reference & 5.2. Cataphoric reference). Since the birth of the field applied linguistics in the 40’s, it has always been taken for granted that providing learners with theoretically sound pedagogy is of great importance. With the recent development of corpus linguistics, the need for pedagogy to reflect actual use, not just be grounded in theory, has also been brought to the attention of both teachers and researchers. Biber and Reppen (2002, p. 207), for instance, point out that such pedagogy can result in ‘‘radical changes that facilitate the learning process for students.’’ As this study shows, bringing about these ‘‘radical changes’’ most often entails simply consulting existent corpus studies, and it would be a great disservice to learners if we did not. Acknowledgements I thank the two anonymous reviewers and Ken Hyland for their invaluable comments and suggestions, which helped to shape the arguments in this paper more clearly. This work was supported by the Special Research Grant of Sogang University. Appendix. List of the books in Table 1 Azar, B. S. (1999). Understanding and using English grammar. (3rd ed.). New Jersey: Longman. Azar, B. S. (2003). Fundamentals of English grammar. (3rd ed.). New Jersey: Longman. Azar, B. S., & Hagan, S. A. (2006). Basic English grammar. (3rd ed.). New Jersey: Longman. Badalamenti, V., & Henner-Stanchina, C. (2007). Grammar dimensions: Form, meaning, and use. Book 1. (4th ed.). Boston: Heinle & Heinle. Bland, S. K. (2004). Grammar sense. Book 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Elbaum, S. N. (2006). Grammar in context. Book 1, Book 2, and Book 3. (4th ed.). Boston: Heinle & Heinle. Elbaum, S. N., & Peman, J. P. (2006). Grammar in context basic. Boston: Heinle & Heinle. Frodesen, J., & Eyring, J. (2007). Grammar dimensions: Form, meaning, and use. Book 4. (4th ed.). Boston: Heinle & Heinle. Fuchs, M., & Bonner, M. (2006). Focus on grammar: An integrated skills approach. Level 4. (3rd ed.). New York: Longman. Fuchs, M., Bonner, M., & Westheimer, M. (2006). Focus on grammar: An integrated skills approach. Level 3. (3rd ed.). New York: Longman. Maurer, J. (2006). Focus on grammar: An integrated skills approach. Level 5. (3rd ed.). New York: Longman. Murphy, R. (2002a). Basic grammar in use: Reference and practice book for students of English. (2nd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press. Murphy, R. (2002b). English grammar in use: A self-study reference and practice book for intermediate students. (2nd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press. Pavilk, C. (2004). Grammar sense. Book 1 and Book 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 9 Having classified the nongeneric uses of the into four categories, Liu and Gleason (2002) proposed the following difficulty hierarchy for ESL learners (from more difficult to less difficult): cultural, textual (i.e. anaphoric), structural (i.e. cataphoric), and situational. Using the same framework, Garcı´a Mayo (2008) was able to confirm Liu and Gleason’s scale of difficulty for Spanish EFL learners as well.
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Schoenberg, I. E. (2006). Focus on grammar: An integrated skills approach. Level 2. (3rd ed.). New York: Longman. Schoenberg, I. E., & Maurer, J. (2006). Focus on grammar: An integrated skills approach. Level 1. (3rd ed.). New York: Longman. Thewlis, S. H. (2007). Grammar dimensions: Form, meaning, and use. Book 3. (4th ed.). Boston: Heinle & Heinle. Wisniewska, I., Riggenbach, H., & Samuda, V. (2007). Grammar dimensions: Form, meaning, and use. Book 2. (4th ed.). Boston: Heinle & Heinle. References Beglar, D., & Hunt, A. (2002). Implementing task-based language teaching. In J. Richards, & W. Renandya (Eds.), Methodology in language teaching: An anthology of current practice (pp. 96e106). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Berry, R. (1993). Articles. Collins COBUILD English Guides No. 3. London: HarperCollins. Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. London: Longman. Biber, D., & Reppen, R. (2002). What does frequency have to do with grammar teaching? Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 24, 199e208. Celce-Murcia, M. (2001). Language teaching approaches: an overview. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (3rd ed.). (pp. 3e11) Boston: Heinle & Heinle. Celce-Murcia, M., & Larsen-Freeman, D. (1999). The grammar book: An ESL/EFL teacher’s course (2nd ed.). Boston: Heinle & Heinle. Chesterman, A. (1991). On definiteness: A study with special reference to English and Finnish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Christophersen, P. (1939). The articles: A study of their theory and use in English. Copenhagen: Einar Munksgaard. Cole, T. (2000). The article book: Practice toward mastering, a, an, and the (Revised edition).. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Dulay, H., Burt, M., & Krashen, S. (1982). Language two. New York: Oxford University Press. Ellis, R. (2003). Task-based language learning and teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fotos, S. (2001). Cognitive approaches to grammar instruction. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (3rd ed.). (pp. 267e283) Boston: Heinle & Heinle. Garcı´a Mayo, M. P. (2008). The acquisition of four nongeneric uses of the article the by Spanish EFL learners. System, 36, 550e565. Grice, P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole, & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics volume 3: Speech acts (pp. 41e58). New York: Academic Press. Hawkins, J. (1978). Definiteness and indefiniteness. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Academic Press. Hewson, J. (1972). Article and noun in English. The Hague: Mouton. Hymes, D. H. (1972). On communicative competence. In J. Pride, & J. Holmes (Eds.), Sociolinguistics: Selected readings (pp. 269e293). Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Ionin, T., Ko, H., & Wexler, K. (2004). Article semantics in L2 acquisition: the role of specificity. Language Acquisition, 12, 3e39. Ionin, T., Zubizarreta, M. L., & Bautista Maldonado, S. (2008). Sources of linguistic knowledge in the second language acquisition of English articles. Lingua, 118(4), 554e576. Klages-Kubitzki, M. (1995). Article usage in English: A computer-based self-teaching programme on the basis of a functional theory of reference. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Lightbown, P. M., & Spada, N. (2006). How languages are learned. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Littlewood, W. (2004). The task-based approach: some questions and suggestions. English Language Teaching, 58(4), 319e326. Liu, D., & Gleason, J. L. (2002). Acquisition of the article the by nonnative speakers of English: an analysis of four nongeneric uses. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 24, 1e26. Long, M. H. (1991). Focus on form: a design feature in language teaching methodology. In K. de Bot, R. Ginsberg, & C. Kramsch (Eds.), Foreign language research in cross-cultural perspective (pp. 39e52). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Long, M. H. (1996). The role of the linguistic environment in second language acquisition. In W. Ritchie, & T. Bhatia (Eds.), Handbook of research on second language acquisition (pp. 413e468). New York: Academic Press. Longman dictionary of English language and culture. (1992). London: Longman. Lyons, C. (1999). Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Master, P. (1986). Science, medicine, and technology: English grammar and technical writing. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Master, P. (1996). Systems in English grammar: An introduction for language teachers. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. New York: Longman. Raimes, A. (1993). Out of the woods: emerging tradition in the teaching of writing. In S. Silberstein (Ed.), State of the art TESOL essays: Celebrating 25 years of the discipline (pp. 237e260). Illinois: Pantagraph Printing. Robertson, D. (2000). Variability in the use of the English article system by Chinese learners of English. Second Language Research, 16(2), 135e172. Wesche, M. B., & Skehan, P. (2002). Communicative, task-based, and content-based language instruction. In R. B. Kaplan (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of applied linguistics (pp. 207e228). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Willis, D., & Willis, J. (2001). Task-based language learning. In R. Carter, & D. Nunan (Eds.), The Cambridge guide to teaching English to speakers of other languages (pp. 173e179). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Yoo, I. W. (2007a). Definite article usage before last/next time in spoken and written American English. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 12(1), 83e105. Yoo, I. W. (2007b). Five factors in interpreting the last decade/century and the next decade/century in American English. Journal of Pragmatics, 39(9), 1526e1546. Yoo, I. W. (2008). A corpus analysis of (the) last/next þ temporal nouns. Journal of English Linguistics, 36(1), 39e61. Isaiah WonHo Yoo is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Sogang University, where he teaches graduate-level applied linguistics/ TESOL courses and undergraduate-level EFL courses. After an undergraduate psychology education at UC Berkeley, he earned a Ph.D. in applied linguistics from UCLA and taught EAP for three years at MIT.
The English definite article: What ESL/EFL grammars say and what corpus findings show Isaiah WonHo Yoo* Department of English, Sogang University, C.P.O. Box 1142, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Abstract To ascertain whether what ESL/EFL grammars say is informed by what scholars discuss in the literature and supported by what corpus findings actually show, this paper first presents a brief overview of the literature on the English definite article and then compares popular ESL/EFL grammars’ coverage of the and corpus findings on definite article usage. The main findings of the study can be summarized as follows. First, although most ESL/EFL grammars provide examples of all the uses of the discussed in the literature, they are usually provided under such a general explanation that learners must figure out for themselves the differences of each use. Second, the distinction made in the literature between the and the ‘‘most definite’’ null article has not been embraced by ESL/EFL materials writers, and it is doubtful that it will ever be, considering that this distinction seems to have few obvious pedagogical applications. Finally, the finding that most ESL/EFL grammars discuss in detail the anaphoric use of the, while overlooking situational and cataphoric uses, should be cause for alarm in light of the corpus findings that anaphoric use is not as common as situational or cataphoric use in conversation, newspaper language, or academic prose. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: the definite article; the null article; ESL/EFL grammars; corpus linguistics
1. Introduction There is no arguing that learning English as a second or foreign language is an arduous task for most adult learners, irrespective of their language background or intelligence. What is at issue is whether or not attaining native-like proficiency is possible for them, and in this regard, the definite article poses the most formidable challenge not only to those whose mother tongue does not have articles but also to those whose native language does have articles (e.g. Chesterman, 1991; Garcı´a Mayo, 2008; Ionin, Ko, & Wexler, 2004; Ionin, Zubizarreta, & Bautista Maldonado, 2008; Klages-Kubitzki, 1995; Robertson, 2000). Klages-Kubitzki (1995), for instance, has found that German university lecturers in English departments, not to mention students, still make a number of mistakes with definite article usage in their written English, 49.39% of all their mistakes being the incorrect addition of the, e.g. In his novel Caleb Williams, Godwin fights against the unjust society (p. 85). Why is it then that the definite article causes seemingly insurmountable difficulty for adult ESL/EFL learners? Of the many possible sources of difficulty, one contributing factor might be that fluency was once overemphasized at the * Tel.: þ82 2 705 8340; fax: þ82 2 715 0705. E-mail address: [email protected] 1475-1585/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2009.07.004
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expense of accuracy in such popular methods and approaches as the Natural Approach, the Whole Language, and the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) (Celce-Murcia, 2001), a fact which naturally resulted in downplaying the importance of teaching accurate article usage (e.g. Dulay, Burt, & Krashen, 1982; Lightbown & Spada, 2006). After all, article misuse does not hinder spoken communication in most situations. With the recognition of the need to strike a balance between fluency and accuracy, however, came the recent development of focus-on-form instruction (Long, 1991, 1996) within the CLTapproach (see Fotos, 2001), which in turn led to the growing recognition of the importance of incorporating grammar lessons in such CLT methods as Task-Based Instruction (e.g. Beglar & Hunt, 2002; Ellis, 2003; Littlewood, 2004; Wesche & Skehan, 2002; Willis & Willis, 2001). Of all the areas of grammar, perhaps no other area has been more elusive of exact formulation than the definite article: scholars do not agree on what constitutes definiteness, and teachers do not agree on what should be taught, if the definite article is to be taught at all. Moreover, with the recent development of corpus linguistics, our intuitions on how language works have often been proven wrong (Biber & Reppen, 2002), calling into question whether what we teach in the classroom reflects what people actually do in the real world. By comparing the literature on the English definite article, popular ESL/EFL grammars’ coverage of the, and corpus findings on definite article usage, this study tries to shed light on whether what ESL/EFL grammars say is informed by what scholars discuss in the literature and is supported by what corpus findings actually show. 2. The definite article and the ‘‘most definite’’ article 2.1. The definite article the The use of the can be categorized into three groups: referential, nonreferential, and generic. Most of the monographs on the English article system, as well as ESL/EFL grammars, however, have dealt only with the referential and generic uses. The referential use of the can be further broken down into the following six categories: anaphoric, associative, situational, and cataphoric uses (Chesterman, 1991; Hawkins, 1978; Lyons, 1999), along with sporadic and unique references (Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartvik, 1985). Examples of each of these six referential uses, as well as those of the generic and non-referential uses, are as follows:1 Referential Uses (a) Anaphoric use (i.e. second mention) An elegant, dark-haired woman, a well-dressed man with dark glasses, and two children entered the compartment. I immediately recognized the woman. The children also looked vaguely familiar. Bill swore. The oath embarrassed his mother. (b) Associative use I had to get a taxi from the station. On the way the driver told me there was a bus strike. They’ve just got in from New York. The plane was five hours late. (c) Situational use Pass me the bucket, please. I hear the prime minister behaved outrageously again today. (d) Cataphoric use (i.e. postmodification) I remember the beginning of the war very well. The fact that you’ve known them for years is no excuse. (e) Unique reference When is the first flight to Chicago tomorrow? Ada and I have the same hobby. We must catch the next bus.
1 The examples of anaphoric, associative, situational, and cataphoric uses are from Hawkins (1978), Chesterman (1991), and Lyons (1999); the examples of unique reference and sporadic reference are from Quirk et al. (1985). The examples of generic and non-referential uses are from Chesterman (1991).
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(f) Sporadic reference2 My sister enjoys the theatre. What’s on the radio this evening? Mary took the bus to London. Generic Use The horse is a useful animal. Non-referential Use He’s always playing the fool. 2.2. The ‘‘most definite’’ null article Many scholars have argued for the existence of two separate forms of zero in English: the zero article, or Ø1, precedes mass nouns and plural count nouns, whereas the null article, or Ø2, precedes singular proper nouns and some singular count nouns. Yoo (2008, p. 41) illustrates this contrast in the following examples: (1)
a. Athena loves Ø1 milk and Ø1 cookies. b. Ø2 Matthew was Ø2 best man at my wedding.
Regarding the degree of definiteness,3 Chesterman (1991) asserts that the null article is even more definite than the: nouns with null are ‘‘conceptually closer and therefore also conceptually clearer to the speaker’’ than those with the (p. 84). Making a similar claim is Christophersen (1939), who argues that there is a rivalry between the and no surface article with the names of cultural features such as parks, museums, theaters, and schools. He notes that long-established, thus more familiar, fixtures such as churches, castles, courts, bridges, forests, parks, islands, and bays, but not features of recent date, such as libraries or museums, are used with no surface article, i.e. the null article. In the early days of railways, he explains, the was used with the name of stations, but as such names have become familiar, the is no longer used.4 3. Methodology To ascertain what ESL/EFL grammars say about the definite article, the decision was made to survey popular ESL/ EFL grammar series with separate volumes for different levels because many institutions and language programs adopt grammar series, rather than grammars without specified levels, as the textbooks for their different levels of grammar classes. By surveying grammars more likely to be used as textbooks, we may also be able to get a glimpse at what students learn in the classroom. In addition, care was taken to ensure that at least one grammar series was reviewed from the following four major publishers: Cambridge University Press, Heinle & Heinle, Longman, and Oxford University Press. Because exact figures showing the popularity of all the ESL/EFL grammar series were not available, selecting the books to be reviewed mostly depended on the information I gathered from the representatives of each of the four publishers at the annual convention of the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) held in Seattle, Washington, in 2007. Although most writing and integrated-skills books also contain some discussion of grammar points, they have been excluded from the survey because very few of them directly address definite article usage. Also excluded from the survey are grammar references for teachers, such as The Grammar Book (Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1999), 2
Sporadic reference is so named because ‘‘reference is made to an institution which may be observed recurrently at various places and times’’ (Quirk et al., 1985, p. 269). 3 Most of the scholars who dealt with the English definite article have preoccupied themselves with the task of defining the theoretical notion ‘‘definiteness.’’ The discussion of what constitutes definiteness, however, is out of the scope of the present study as this paper is mostly concerned with how definite article usage is presented in ESL/EFL grammars. 4 Hewson (1972) also notes that although not usually used with proper nouns, the is used with those naming a foreign, thus unfamiliar, building, e.g. the Mariinsky Palace, because they need the clarifying power of the definite article, as with those naming a river, whose boundaries are also vague.
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and ESL/EFL references that are devoted to the article system, such as Articles (Berry, 1993) and The Article Book: Practice toward Mastering a, an, and the (Cole, 2000). The corpus findings used in this study, on the other hand, were taken from the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999), which contains the results of corpus-based analyses of data retrieved from over 40 million words of text. This ground-breaking grammar ‘‘describes the actual use of grammatical features’’ in four major registersdi.e. conversation, fiction, newspaper language, and academic prosedand in two supplementary registersdi.e. non-conversational speech and general prose (non-fiction) (Biber et al., 1999, p. 4). For definite article usage, however, Biber et al. present only the results of corpus analyses of data from the four major registers. 4. What ESL/EFL grammars say In the six ESL/EFL grammar series that I have surveyed (each series counted as one grammar), there seem to be seven situations in which a noun is considered definite:5 (1) second mention, (2) shared knowledge, (3) situational use, (4) postmodification, (5) unique items, (6) unique adjectives, and (7) superlatives and other ranking adjectives. As can be seen in Table 1 below, these seven categories of definite article usage more or less match the referential uses of the in the literature as (5) unique items, e.g. the sun, (6) unique adjectives, e.g. the same class, and (7) superlatives and other ranking adjectives, e.g. the last chapter, can all be subsumed under (e) unique reference. (b) Associative use, on the other hand, can be subsumed under (2) shared knowledge because all instances of associative use require shared knowledge between speaker and hearer. For example, in the following utterance, successful communication depends on the shared knowledge between speaker and hearer that a computer comes with a device called ‘‘mouse’’ and that there is only one mouse connected to one computer: (3) I bought a computer last month, and the mouse is already broken. However, some uses of the can only be explained by shared knowledge and not by associative use. In utterances like When’s the meeting?, the use of the derives not from associating the meeting to an object or a context already mentioned in a preceding sentence but from the knowledge shared by both speaker and hearer. Unlike associative use, situational use does not require shared knowledge. Consider the following example from Grammar Sense 3 (Bland, 2004, p. 265): (4) OK. Could you please pass the rice? Requests such as (4) can be commonly heard at the dinner table, and one might argue that speaker and hearer have the shared knowledge that there is rice on the table. However, even if the hearer did not have that knowledge, he would look for rice upon hearing the request,6 assuming that the request is truthful and relevant (Grice, 1975), i.e. there must be some rice on the table and ‘‘the rice’’ in the speaker’s request refers to that rice. In other words, successful communication does not depend on shared knowledge between speaker and hearer as it does in associative use: If the hearer did not know that a computer comes with a mouse, upon hearing the utterance in (3), he would respond by saying, ‘‘What? What mouse?’’ Table 2 below shows whether or not each of the seven categories of definite article usage found in ESL/EFL grammars, as well as sporadic reference and generic the, is covered in a given series. Unlike the other seven referential uses of the, the term sporadic reference is never used in any of the 21 books surveyed, and only one of them provides an adequate account of this particular use (Frodesen & Eyring, 2007): Before locations associated with certain typical or habitual activities. The listener/reader may have no idea of the exact location to which the speaker/writer is referring, e.g. Have you been to the beach this summer? She needs to pick up a few things at the store (p. 88). 5 The six ESL/EFL grammar series surveyed in this study use various combinations of these seven terms to explain definite article usage. For a succinct general overview of definite article usage using these terms, please refer to Master (1996, pp. 220e223). 6 As does Lyons (1999, xvii), I follow the convention that the speaker is female and the hearer male.
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Table 1 Comparison of Definite Article Usage in the Literature and ESL/EFL Grammars In the Literature (a) Anaphoric Use (b) Associative Use (c) Situational Use (d) Cataphoric Use (e) Unique Reference
In ESL/EFL Grammars (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (7)
[ < [ [ [
Second Mention Shared Knowledge Situational Use Postmodification Unique Items, (6) Unique Adjectives & Superlatives and Other Ranking Adjectives
4.1. Second mention, shared knowledge, and situational use The most striking result in Table 2 is that three of the 21 books surveyed do not contain any descriptions of the definite article. Especially interesting is the fact that Book 3 of Grammar in Context, the highest level in the series, discusses Ø1 and a(n), but not the. This separation of the from the other articles is understandable in low-level grammars, as is the case in Grammar in Context Basic, for it might be better not to open Pandora’s Box in a book designed for beginning learners. However, it is difficult to imagine the benefit of discussing only Ø1 and a(n) in grammars for advanced learners. Overall, the results of the survey show that ESL/EFL grammars generally do a good job in covering definite article usage, as all the six grammar series in Table 2 discuss the three most important uses of the definite article: second mention, shared knowledge, and situational use. Although most grammars explain second mention and give its examples separately, none of the six grammar series offers separate explanations for shared knowledge and situational use, however. They often provide examples of shared knowledge and situational use, and sometimes those of other uses, under one umbrella Table 2 Nine Categories of Definite Noun Phrases and Their Treatment in Six ESL/EFL Grammar Series (21 Books in Total)
1. Grammar Dimensions-Book 1, 4th edition (Badalamenti & Henner-Stanchina, 2007) Book 2, 4th edition (Wisniewska, Riggenbach, & Samuda, 2007) Book 3, 4th edition (Thewlis, 2007) Book 4, 4th edition (Frodesen & Eyring, 2007) 2. Focus on Grammar-Level 1, 3rd edition (Schoenberg & Maurer, 2006) Level 2, 3rd edition (Schoenberg, 2006) Level 3, 3rd edition (Fuchs, Bonner, & Westheimer, 2006) Level 4, 3rd edition (Fuchs & Bonner, 2006) Level 5, 3rd edition (Maurer, 2006) 3. Grammar in Context Basic (Elbaum & Peman, 2006) Book 1, 4th edition (Elbaum, 2006) Book 2, 4th edition (Elbaum, 2006) Book 3, 4th edition (Elbaum, 2006) 4. Basic English Grammar, 3rd edition (Azar & Hagan, 2006) Fundamentals of English Grammar, 3rd edition (Azar, 2003) Understanding and Using English Grammar, 3rd edition (Azar, 1999) 5. Grammar Sense 1 (Pavlik, 2004) Grammar Sense 2 (Pavlik, 2004) Grammar Sense 3 (Bland, 2004) 6. Basic Grammar in Use, 2nd edition (Murphy, 2002a) English Grammar in Use, 2nd edition (Murphy, 2002b) Sub-total (total number of books) Total (each series counted as one)
SM
SK
O O O
O O O
SU
O O O
PM
O
UI O O O O O
O O O _
O _
_
_
_
_
_
_
O _ O
O _
O _ O
O _
O _ O
O
O
O
O
O
O O O O O 15 6
O O O O O 12 6
O O O O 10 6
O O
O O O O 12 6
4 3
_ O _
UA
RA
O
O O
O
SR
GN
O O O
O
O O
O _ O _
_
_
_
_
O _ O _
_
O O _
_
_
O O O 6 3
O O
O 9 5
1 1
6 3
Note. SM ¼ second mention, SK ¼ shared knowledge, SU ¼ situational use, PM ¼ postmodification, UI ¼ unique items, UA ¼ unique adjectives, RA ¼ superlatives and other ranking adjectives, SR ¼ sporadic reference, and GN ¼ generic use.
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description such as the following: (a) ‘‘Use the when you know or assume that your listener is familiar with and thinking about the same specific thing or person you are talking about’’ (Azar, 1999, p. 115); (b) ‘‘The listener can identify the noun if he or she can see or hear it’’ (Bland, 2004, p. 265); and (c) ‘‘A noun is definite when the speaker and listener both know which particular person, place, or thing is being talked about’’ (Maurer, 2006, p. 132). Descriptions of definite article usage such as these are so broad that learners are still left to figure out for themselves when a noun is considered definite. However, if second mention is deemed worthy enough to deserve a separate explanation, shared knowledge and situational use are equally worthy of separate explanations. 4.2. Generic the Another noteworthy result in Table 2 is that no grammars intended for beginning students cover generic the. In fact, most of them seem to intentionally avoid discussing it because they limit their discussion of generic reference to the generic uses of a(n) and Ø1. Introducing the generic uses of a(n) and Ø1 without introducing generic the, however, can confuse the learner because dictionary-type definitions and encyclopedia entries, both of which ESL/EFL learners frequently encounter, seem to be special genres containing numerous examples of generic the. Consider the following definition of fax in the Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture (1992, p. 466), in which the is used in first mention for the fax machine, as well as the printed material: ‘‘the printed material received or sent electronically by the fax machine.’’ Some beginning learners may be able to figure out the is used before printed material because of the phrase received or sent electronically, but having learned only the generic uses of a(n) and Ø1, most of them would believe that the dictionary made a mistake by using the, instead of a, in the phrase by the fax machine. Thus, discussion of generic the should never be intentionally left out when introducing the use of the other two generic forms a(n) and Ø1. For doing so can do more harm than good to the learner by creating the misconception that only a(n) or Ø1 can be used generically. 4.3. The null article Despite the continual interest it has generated over the past three decades among researchers, the null article (Ø2) never made its way into any ESL/EFL grammars. Although it can be expected that ESL/EFL grammars not devoted to article usage overlook non-surface articles, the use of null in sentences where learners of English might expect a surface article is an area that can be given more attention. Consider the following sentence in which the null article is used before the singular count nouns writer and reader (Raimes, 1993, p. 251): (5) The form of a text is determined by the interaction of writer, reader, and content. Hewson (1972, p. 128) explains that a non-surface article is used in pairs of words and enumerations, as in (5) above, and that this usage is found in all syntactic positions: (a) subject, e.g. Brother and sister were at breakfast; (b) object, e.g. Kitty hurriedly gathered up gloves and fan; (c) subject and object together, e.g. dog succeeded dog; (d) after preposition, e.g. twirling the stem of a wine-glass between thumb and first finger; (e) with two prepositions, e.g. it has to grow, and to be handed down from father to son; and (f) predicate of to be, e.g. I can’t be buyer and seller too.7 Another area of null, as well as definite, article usage almost never discussed in ESL/EFL grammars concerns (the) last/ next followed by temporal nouns. Most grammars do not discuss this extremely confusing area of Ø2 and definite article usage at all, and a simple perfunctory explanation of the phenomenon, such as the following in Basic Grammar in Use (Murphy, 2002a), can be misleading for learners of English: ‘‘We do not use the with next/last þ week/month/year/ summer/Monday, etc., e.g. I’m not working next week (not the next week)’’ (p. 292). Indeed, phrases such as the next week occur infrequently in such a context; however, the can certainly be used with next week. Yoo (2007b, p. 1527), for example, explains how the use of the before next week changes the meaning of the temporal noun in the following example, which he found in a college newspaper editorial on Friday of the orientation week: 7 There are two constraints for using the null article in pairs of words and enumerations: one, the nouns must belong to the same immediate syntactic constituent, e.g. It is funny how rogue knows rogue vs. *Set thief to catch thief; and two, the nouns must also be known as, or felt to be, part of each other, e.g. I settled myself in my chair and, putting match to gasper, awaited the inside story vs. I put a match to his cigarette (Hewson, 1972, pp. 128e129). This intimate use of null is also found in familiar household personalities and the governing body of a particular people, e.g. Father is angry and Congress is in session (Hewson, 1972, p. 128).
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(6) The next week will be fun. The next week in (6), Yoo explains, refers to ‘‘from Saturday to Friday,’’ which is different from what Ø2 next week would refer to. He then proceeds to discuss the fact that the same contrast in meaning, which holds true for month and year, is not observed in the last/next þ decade/century as decade and century almost never combine with Ø2 last/next. Thus, the last decade, for example, means either ‘‘the last ten years’’ or ‘‘the decade before this one,’’ making its interpretation context-dependent. Yoo (2007a, p. 84) also observes that unlike any other nouns in English, time can combine with either Ø2 or the without any change in reference: (7) (The) last time I saw her, she was still in grad school. Admittedly, dissecting a non-surface article into two different entities as Ø1 and Ø2 may prove too difficult a concept for most learners of English and may seem to have few obvious pedagogical applications. Without resorting to the difficult notion the null article, however, advanced-level grammars can and should give more attention to the two areas of null article usage discussed above by presenting them as the deletion of surface articles. 5. What corpus findings show In examining definite article usage in four different registersdconversation, fiction, newspaper language, and academic prosedBiber et al. (1999) also use categories quite similar to, albeit fewer than, the ones in the literature and in ESL/EFL grammars discussed above: (1) anaphoric, (2) indirect anaphoric, (3) situational, (4) cataphoric, and (5) generic. In fact, the only difference is their term indirect anaphoric reference, which refers to the same article usage as associative use and shared knowledge, as can be seen in their example of indirect anaphoric reference (Biber et al., 1999, p. 263): (8) The Mercedes took a hard bounce from a pothole. ‘‘Christ,’’ said Sherman, ‘‘I didn’t even see that.’’ He leaned forward over the steering wheel. The headlights shot across the concrete columns in a delirium. As Table 3 shows below, the remaining types of definite article usage are grouped under either idiom or uncertain. 5.1. Situational use and anaphoric reference What is most striking about the corpus findings presented in Table 3 is the fact that situational use, e.g. (9), is by far the most common definite article usage in conversations: (9) You know last week my aunty she put her down in the kitchen and the telephone rang. And the telephone’s on the wall in the kitchen.
Anaphoric Indirect Anaphoric Situational Cataphoric Generic Idiom Uncertain
Conversation
Fiction
News
Academic
25% 5% 55% 5% Less than 2.5% Less than 2.5% 10%
30% 10% 10% 15% Less than 2.5% Less than 2.5% 25%
30% 15% 10% 30% 5% Less than 2.5% 5%
25% 15% 10% 40% 5% Less than 2.5% 5%
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communication, ESL/EFL materials writers should heed this finding as only four of the nine books designed for beginning or low-intermediate students in Table 2 give an example of situational use. This problem is compounded by the fact that none of them provides adequate explanations of situational use. In contrast, five of the most basic books in the six grammar series discuss anaphoric reference (second mention) in detail. Although most ESL/EFL materials writers seem to believe that anaphoric reference is the most common use of the definite article, only in fiction is anaphoric reference found to be more common than the other uses. Moreover, Biber et al. (1999, p. 266) found that anaphoric reference is marked not only by the followed by a repeated noun, e.g. the doctor in (10), but also by a range of other devices such as personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, and the followed by a synonym, e.g. he in (10) and the 14-year-old and the girl in (11): (10) A doctor was allowed to carry on working after telling fellow general practitioners he had contracted Aids, health officials revealed yesterday. <. . .> The doctor, who died last summer, broke health service guidelines. (news) (Biber et al., 1999, p. 263) (11) A teenager who existed on a junk food diet developed scurvy, the bane of seamen two centuries ago, it was revealed yesterday. The 14-year-old, from Northern Ireland, lived on cola, chocolate, hamburgers and crisps. Her doctor said he had heard of only four or five western teenagers with the disease, caused by a deficiency in vitamin C. The girl did not eat much fruit and was not keen on vegetables, said Dr Kevin McKenna. (news) (Biber et al., 1999, p. 268) Compare also (10) and (11) with the following example typically found in an ESL/EFL grammar, in which the definite article is followed by repeated nouns: (12) Yesterday I saw some dogs. The dogs were chasing a cat. The cat was chasing a mouse. The mouse ran into a hole. The hole was very small. (Azar, 1999, p. 115) A series of sentences such as these indeed help learners of English understand the anaphoric use of the, but these kinds of unattested examples could also lead students to produce non-native like discourse even after they internalize the rule, affecting their communicative competence as a whole.8 5.2. Cataphoric reference Of the four major uses of the definite article discussed in the literaturedi.e. anaphoric, associate, situational, and cataphoricdcataphoric use (postmodification) received the least attention from the ESL/EFL grammars surveyed in this study. Given the complexity of the phenomenon, which will become evident in the ensuing discussion, it is understandable that most ESL/EFL grammars do not discuss postmodification in great detail. However, the corpus findings presented in Table 3 suggest that postmodification should indeed be discussed in detail, at least in advancedlevels, as cataphoric use is frequently found in newspaper language and academic prose. In fact, cataphoric use was the most common type of definite article usage in academic prose, accounting for 40% of all the instances of the. The fact that all four books that discuss postmodification in Table 2 are for upper-intermediate or advanced students suggest that ESL/EFL materials writers do recognize the need for teaching postmodification to high-level students. Nevertheless, the problem is their inadequate treatment of its use, which can be attributed to the inherent difficulty in encapsulating the phenomenon into simple rules. Although not surveyed in this study, Master (1986, p. 88) provides an explanation of postmodification more detailed than those provided by the four books that discuss it in Table 2: The general effect of adding a relative clause or a prepositional phrase to a noun is to make the noun definite (second-mention) with the. If the noun is uncountable, the limits it to a certain location or amount. The only exception to this rule is in definitions. 8 In an attempt to operationalize the construct communicative competence, Hymes (1972) argues that successful communication requires the following four components: (1) the possible, i.e. grammatically possible, (2) the feasible, i.e. easy to process, (3) the appropriate, i.e. socially and culturally acceptable, and (4) the attested, i.e. actually done. For example, the sentence I have hunger is possible (and feasible) but not attested because people usually say, ‘‘I’m hungry.’’
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the þ NOUN
þ
Examples: relative clauses prepositional phrases
275
relative clause or prepositional phrase
the experiment that was performed the air that we exhale the experiment in progress the air in the mountains
While such explanations provide the learner with a good starting point, they can also foster the misconception that postmodification always requires the. Consider examples (13) and (14) from Quirk et al. (1985, p. 269, 279), which students who believe that all postmodifications make a noun definite, except in definitions, may regard (13b) and (14b) as ungrammatical: (13)
a. The bicycle John bought has been stolen. b. A bicycle John bought has been stolen.
(14)
a. The winter of 1963 was an exciting time. b. Winter in 1963 was not like this last winter.
Quirk et al. explain that in (13) the bicycle assumes unique reference, but a bicycle does not, and that in (14) the winter of 1963 refers to calendar time and Ø winter in 1963 seasonal climate. Unlike (14b), Master (1986, p. 202) further contends, the deletion of the is ‘‘never possible with of-phrase postmodification,’’ as in The wine of France is a product of art and science. Contrary to Master’s contention, Christophersen (1939, p. 148) offers two environments in which such deletion does occur: (a) ‘‘when the collocation is so fixed as to form almost a composite name for a single notion,’’ e.g. presence of mind, liberty of thought, and freedom of speech, and (b) ‘‘when the first substantive is an action-noun having as its object the regimen of of,’’ e.g. breach of the regulations, contemplation of their beauty, and discussion of other slaughters. Closely related to the inclination to leave out the article in verb þ object þ of constructions, e.g. to catch (lose) Ø sight of and to take Ø possession (charge, care, notice) of, the second environment explains why the is not used before possession in (15a) or control in (16b) (Christophersen, 1939, p. 149): (15)
a. I am in possession of a copy of the book. b. The copy is in the possession of the present writer.
(16)
a. She is in control of the stores. b. They are under the control of a woman.
In (15a), the is not used before possession because it is the subject I that does the possessing. In (15b), however, it is the object of the preposition of of, i.e. the present writer, that does the possessing. Likewise, the subject she does the controlling in (16a), but it is a woman, the object of of, that does the controlling in (16b). As can be seen in this short discussion of postmodification, the question of whether to use the when a noun is postmodified concerns the very nature of whether to use any article at all, the question at the heart of the conundrum that many scholars have tried to solve for many decades.
6. Conclusion In order to determine whether what ESL/EFL grammars say about the definite article is informed by what scholars discuss in the literature and supported by what corpus findings actually show, this paper first presented a brief overview of the literature on the definite article the and the ‘‘most definite’’ null article and then compared popular ESL/EFL grammars’ coverage of the and corpus findings on definite article usage. In addition to the overall finding that the six grammar
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series investigated in this study show sensitivity to the level of the learner, which governs to a large extent the choice of which areas to cover on definite article usage (e.g. 4.2. Generic the), three other main findings emerged out of the study. First, although most ESL/EFL grammars provide examples of all the uses of the discussed in the literature, they are usually provided under such a general explanation that learners of English are often left to figure out for themselves the differences of each use (see 4.1. Second mention, shared knowledge, and situation use). Second, the distinction between the null article and the definite article found in the literature has not been embraced by ESL/EFL materials writers, and it is doubtful that it will ever be, considering that the distinction does not seem to have obvious pedagogical applications, except in a few contexts discussed in this paper (see 4.3. The null article). Finally, the finding that most ESL/EFL grammars discuss in detail the anaphoric use of the (second mention) while overlooking the other uses of the, especially situational and cataphoric uses,9 should be cause for alarm in light of the corpus findings that anaphoric use is not as common as situational or cataphoric use in conversation or academic prose, respectively (see 5.1. Situational use and anaphoric reference & 5.2. Cataphoric reference). Since the birth of the field applied linguistics in the 40’s, it has always been taken for granted that providing learners with theoretically sound pedagogy is of great importance. With the recent development of corpus linguistics, the need for pedagogy to reflect actual use, not just be grounded in theory, has also been brought to the attention of both teachers and researchers. Biber and Reppen (2002, p. 207), for instance, point out that such pedagogy can result in ‘‘radical changes that facilitate the learning process for students.’’ As this study shows, bringing about these ‘‘radical changes’’ most often entails simply consulting existent corpus studies, and it would be a great disservice to learners if we did not. Acknowledgements I thank the two anonymous reviewers and Ken Hyland for their invaluable comments and suggestions, which helped to shape the arguments in this paper more clearly. This work was supported by the Special Research Grant of Sogang University. Appendix. List of the books in Table 1 Azar, B. S. (1999). Understanding and using English grammar. (3rd ed.). New Jersey: Longman. Azar, B. S. (2003). Fundamentals of English grammar. (3rd ed.). New Jersey: Longman. Azar, B. S., & Hagan, S. A. (2006). Basic English grammar. (3rd ed.). New Jersey: Longman. Badalamenti, V., & Henner-Stanchina, C. (2007). Grammar dimensions: Form, meaning, and use. Book 1. (4th ed.). Boston: Heinle & Heinle. Bland, S. K. (2004). Grammar sense. Book 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Elbaum, S. N. (2006). Grammar in context. Book 1, Book 2, and Book 3. (4th ed.). Boston: Heinle & Heinle. Elbaum, S. N., & Peman, J. P. (2006). Grammar in context basic. Boston: Heinle & Heinle. Frodesen, J., & Eyring, J. (2007). Grammar dimensions: Form, meaning, and use. Book 4. (4th ed.). Boston: Heinle & Heinle. Fuchs, M., & Bonner, M. (2006). Focus on grammar: An integrated skills approach. Level 4. (3rd ed.). New York: Longman. Fuchs, M., Bonner, M., & Westheimer, M. (2006). Focus on grammar: An integrated skills approach. Level 3. (3rd ed.). New York: Longman. Maurer, J. (2006). Focus on grammar: An integrated skills approach. Level 5. (3rd ed.). New York: Longman. Murphy, R. (2002a). Basic grammar in use: Reference and practice book for students of English. (2nd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press. Murphy, R. (2002b). English grammar in use: A self-study reference and practice book for intermediate students. (2nd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press. Pavilk, C. (2004). Grammar sense. Book 1 and Book 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 9 Having classified the nongeneric uses of the into four categories, Liu and Gleason (2002) proposed the following difficulty hierarchy for ESL learners (from more difficult to less difficult): cultural, textual (i.e. anaphoric), structural (i.e. cataphoric), and situational. Using the same framework, Garcı´a Mayo (2008) was able to confirm Liu and Gleason’s scale of difficulty for Spanish EFL learners as well.
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Schoenberg, I. E. (2006). Focus on grammar: An integrated skills approach. Level 2. (3rd ed.). New York: Longman. Schoenberg, I. E., & Maurer, J. (2006). Focus on grammar: An integrated skills approach. Level 1. (3rd ed.). New York: Longman. Thewlis, S. H. (2007). Grammar dimensions: Form, meaning, and use. Book 3. (4th ed.). Boston: Heinle & Heinle. Wisniewska, I., Riggenbach, H., & Samuda, V. (2007). Grammar dimensions: Form, meaning, and use. Book 2. (4th ed.). Boston: Heinle & Heinle. References Beglar, D., & Hunt, A. (2002). Implementing task-based language teaching. In J. Richards, & W. Renandya (Eds.), Methodology in language teaching: An anthology of current practice (pp. 96e106). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Berry, R. (1993). Articles. Collins COBUILD English Guides No. 3. London: HarperCollins. Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. London: Longman. Biber, D., & Reppen, R. (2002). What does frequency have to do with grammar teaching? Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 24, 199e208. Celce-Murcia, M. (2001). Language teaching approaches: an overview. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (3rd ed.). (pp. 3e11) Boston: Heinle & Heinle. Celce-Murcia, M., & Larsen-Freeman, D. (1999). The grammar book: An ESL/EFL teacher’s course (2nd ed.). Boston: Heinle & Heinle. Chesterman, A. (1991). On definiteness: A study with special reference to English and Finnish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Christophersen, P. (1939). The articles: A study of their theory and use in English. Copenhagen: Einar Munksgaard. Cole, T. (2000). The article book: Practice toward mastering, a, an, and the (Revised edition).. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Dulay, H., Burt, M., & Krashen, S. (1982). Language two. New York: Oxford University Press. Ellis, R. (2003). Task-based language learning and teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fotos, S. (2001). Cognitive approaches to grammar instruction. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (3rd ed.). (pp. 267e283) Boston: Heinle & Heinle. Garcı´a Mayo, M. P. (2008). The acquisition of four nongeneric uses of the article the by Spanish EFL learners. System, 36, 550e565. Grice, P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole, & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics volume 3: Speech acts (pp. 41e58). New York: Academic Press. Hawkins, J. (1978). Definiteness and indefiniteness. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Academic Press. Hewson, J. (1972). Article and noun in English. The Hague: Mouton. Hymes, D. H. (1972). On communicative competence. In J. Pride, & J. Holmes (Eds.), Sociolinguistics: Selected readings (pp. 269e293). Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Ionin, T., Ko, H., & Wexler, K. (2004). Article semantics in L2 acquisition: the role of specificity. Language Acquisition, 12, 3e39. Ionin, T., Zubizarreta, M. L., & Bautista Maldonado, S. (2008). Sources of linguistic knowledge in the second language acquisition of English articles. Lingua, 118(4), 554e576. Klages-Kubitzki, M. (1995). Article usage in English: A computer-based self-teaching programme on the basis of a functional theory of reference. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Lightbown, P. M., & Spada, N. (2006). How languages are learned. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Littlewood, W. (2004). The task-based approach: some questions and suggestions. English Language Teaching, 58(4), 319e326. Liu, D., & Gleason, J. L. (2002). Acquisition of the article the by nonnative speakers of English: an analysis of four nongeneric uses. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 24, 1e26. Long, M. H. (1991). Focus on form: a design feature in language teaching methodology. In K. de Bot, R. Ginsberg, & C. Kramsch (Eds.), Foreign language research in cross-cultural perspective (pp. 39e52). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Long, M. H. (1996). The role of the linguistic environment in second language acquisition. In W. Ritchie, & T. Bhatia (Eds.), Handbook of research on second language acquisition (pp. 413e468). New York: Academic Press. Longman dictionary of English language and culture. (1992). London: Longman. Lyons, C. (1999). Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Master, P. (1986). Science, medicine, and technology: English grammar and technical writing. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Master, P. (1996). Systems in English grammar: An introduction for language teachers. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. New York: Longman. Raimes, A. (1993). Out of the woods: emerging tradition in the teaching of writing. In S. Silberstein (Ed.), State of the art TESOL essays: Celebrating 25 years of the discipline (pp. 237e260). Illinois: Pantagraph Printing. Robertson, D. (2000). 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Yoo, I. W. (2007a). Definite article usage before last/next time in spoken and written American English. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 12(1), 83e105. Yoo, I. W. (2007b). Five factors in interpreting the last decade/century and the next decade/century in American English. Journal of Pragmatics, 39(9), 1526e1546. Yoo, I. W. (2008). A corpus analysis of (the) last/next þ temporal nouns. Journal of English Linguistics, 36(1), 39e61. Isaiah WonHo Yoo is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Sogang University, where he teaches graduate-level applied linguistics/ TESOL courses and undergraduate-level EFL courses. After an undergraduate psychology education at UC Berkeley, he earned a Ph.D. in applied linguistics from UCLA and taught EAP for three years at MIT.