| Chapter 2: | Background Study |
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content. Berry (1991) argued that articles do convey additional information to the text since the omission of an article or the misuse of articles will, in many cases, produce disastrous consequences. For instance, the utterance He’s uneducated man may well be understood as an educated man. For another instance, the meaning and implication in the utterance I’m looking for a wife is quite different from that of I’m looking for the wife. Pica (1983a) concluded, in her investigation of native speakers’ use of articles in exchanges involving the requesting and the giving of directions, that “even though participants spoke in grammatically correct utterances, communication broke down when articles were used in reference to items in one participant’s experience but not in another’s” (p. 231). In other words, the correct and appropriate use of articles may be crucial for successful communication by showing what assumptions the speaker makes about the listener.
The misuse or inappropriate use of articles may cause a breakdown of communication. This shows from one perspective the importance and significance of studying the use of articles. From another angle, it can be noted that what has attracted researchers are the functions articles fulfill. One of the essential functions of the articles is to mark specific/non-specific reference both extralingusitically and by intralinguistic cross-reference. As suggested by Maratsos (1976),
Researchers’ interest in studying the acquisition or the use of articles is also closely related to the fact that articles are difficult to learn and teach even though they are very frequently used. It has been noted that article misuse often persists even for very highly proficient learners of English. As observed by Karmiloff-Smith (1979), “interestingly enough,