L1 Turkish transfer in the acquisition of L2 English definite article

This study investigates whether the acquisition of English definite article by Turkish speakers is affected by the system of definiteness/specificity marking in Turkish and whether there is a correlation between this transfer and the proficiency level. Since Turkish is a language which has no article system, but a morphological marking on only objects, namely accusative marking, the acquisition of English articles may be problematic. Also Turkish learners may transfer this feature on objects into English positively and the absence of any marking on subjects which indicates definiteness/specificity negatively. This topic was examined by administering a grammaticality judgment task to 30 advanced and 30 elementary students. The results showed that there was no persistent effect of L1 Turkish on L2 English definite article although all the participants were more aware of a definite article on objects and the higher their proficiency level was the better they performed on the task, concluding that Turkish learners can acquire English definite article without a serious transfer effect caused by their first language and the learners have less problems as they get more advanced.