Cross-Linguistic Influence in the Acquisition of English Articles by Urdu-Speaking English as a Foreign Language Learners: Evidence from Written and Spoken Corpora

Abstract

The acquisition of English articles presents a persistent challenge for learners whose first language lacks an article system. This study investigates cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in the acquisition of English definite and indefinite articles by Urdu first-language (L1) speakers, focusing on how the absence of articles in Urdu shapes learner performance. The research draws on theories of cross-linguistic influence, transfer, and morphological markedness to examine predictions concerning null-article transfer, missing noun phrase morphology, and the relative difficulty of encoding definiteness and specificity in English. A learner corpus consisting of 300 written texts and 60 spoken interview transcripts produced by 120 intermediate and advanced Urdu-speaking English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners enrolled at Pakistani universities was analyzed using error analysis and obligatory occasion analysis. Article errors were classified according to omission, commission, substitution, and overuse patterns across spoken and written production. The findings confirmed the predicted null-article transfer effect, with omission errors accounting for 64% of all article-related errors, substantially exceeding commission errors. However, analysis also revealed an important proficiency-related pattern: advanced learners demonstrated a tendency to overuse the definite article in referentially transparent contexts, suggesting the development of a compensatory strategy aimed at avoiding omission errors. Further analyses indicated that morphological markedness, referential context type, lexical frequency, and input exposure significantly influenced learners' article choices and error distributions. Differences between written and spoken production also suggested that planning time and communicative demands affected the accuracy of article use. These findings highlight the dynamic interaction between first-language transfer and developmental learning processes during second language acquisition. The study contributes to the growing body of research on cross-linguistic influence by providing evidence from the relatively underrepresented Urdu–English language pair. It also offers practical implications for English language teaching by emphasizing the need for explicit instruction targeting definiteness, specificity, and article usage in meaningful communicative contexts for Urdu-speaking EFL learners.