Deconstructing English Articles A Construction Grammar Approach To Teaching Articles In English

Abstract

The semantics of the articles is crucial for their proper usage in L2 speakers. However, we believe that for their proper acquisition a pairing of concrete form and concrete meaning must take place. In other words, a schema must be created for various meanings of articles. Therefore, in this paper English articles will be viewed from the aspect of Construction grammar. Working within the framework of CxG we will perceive the noun phrases of the type a/the+ N as lexico-syntactic meaningful constructions where the articles attribute a particular meaning to the noun(s) they determine. Together they constitute Determination (article) Construction. Each particular meaning of the articles can be conceptualized and adequate abstract constructional schemas and subschemas as a schematic pairing of form and meaning can be created. In addition, we will use the Serbo-Croatian semantic equivalents of English articles such as indefinite pronouns neki, poneki, koji, kakav, numerals jedan, ijedan, adverbs nekako and makar, demonstrative determiners onaj, adjectives, negative forms ni, nikakav, possessive pronominals and many more. They will serve as a starting point for offering possible constructional schema models for meaningful constructions a/the +N. Other meanings and usages of the articles will be treated in the same way.We believe that by initializing the conceptualization and encouraging schema development in ESL/EFL students whose mother tongue is Serbo-Croatian reasonable strategies for article choice in English can be provided This is aimed at enhancing their learning process and facilitating acquisition of articles through their understanding and association with concrete lexemes (which would ideally lead to their conceptualization) rather than through abstract concepts of specificity and (in)definiteness as previous studies have done.