CHALLENGING PROTOTYPE DESCRIPTIONS - PERCEPTION OF NOUN COUNTABILITY AND INDEFINITE VS ZERO ARTICLE USE

This paper addresses the difficulty of article acquisition by examinin g the perception of noun countability by native speakers of English an d Japanese speakers of English. A review of the literature on the inte rlanguage variation in article use leads us to challenge the prototype descriptions of indefinite vs. zero article use based on noun countab ility as presented in many grammar books. This study was designed to t est the hypothesis that native speakers and non-native speakers may ha ve different perceptions of what constitutes countability and that thi s intuitive judgment of noun countability would affect the use of the indefinite vs. zero article in particular contexts. The subjects in th is experiment were asked (i) to judge intuitively the nouns extracted from two essays in terms of countability and (ii) to supply articles a s needed in the same essays where all articles had been deleted. The r esults (particularly, the analysis of instances of 'obligatory' indefi nite article use) suggest a possible link between the indefinite vs. z ero article suppliance by Japanese subjects and their earlier decision s as to the countability of a given noun. The discussion of the result s includes fundamental questions centered around different perceptions of noun countability, in particular 'noncount' noun perception which seems to influence negatively on the use of the indefinite article.