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OCR
HUNGARIAN-ENGLISH GRAMMATICAL CONTRASTS: THE NOUN PHRASE Table 6. Generic reference in English and in Hungarian English Hungarian Most common: zero music, men a zene, az ember(ek), a Next most common: a(n) | a man a, aZ ferfi, az angolok Least common: the the English Music belongs to everyone. A zene mindenkié. Men have little respect for life. Az emberek nem tisztelik az életet. A man is a man. A férfi az férfi. The English speak various dialects of En- I Az angolok az angol nyely különböző diglish. alektusait beszélik. 5.3.2.1 Degree of difficulty Every time the learner wants to use a noun phrase in English, they have to decide whether they are making specific or generic reference. In generic reference the zero article is used with noncount nouns, while in the case of count nouns learners must make a further decision: all the three articles can be used for generic reference, but it is the zero article (with the noun in the plural) that is the most common, and the definite article the least common. A general rule of thumb is that the zero article + plural noun is the safest bet, while the definite article the is rarely needed. Trains are faster than ships. A train is faster than a ship. The train is faster than the ship. There is some semantic difference among the three forms of expression: the zero article followed by a plural noun refers to trains in general, the indefinite article indicates that any train is faster than any ship, and the train refers to the class or category of trains. This contrast may be regarded as a ‘divergent phenomenon’, i.e. the learner is faced with the task of making a choice where there is no choice in their L1, and in choosing they have to appreciate subtle differences in meaning. According to classical CA, divergent categories pose the greatest problems to learners, and — although there is no direct link between difference and learning difficulty — experience shows that this difference DOES indeed cause great difficulty for Hungarian learners of English, both in speech and writing, including translating. Since the definite article a(z) is identified by Hungarian learners with English the, and the difference between generic and specific meaning is not perceived as a marked difference, its transferability is high, misleading learners, inducing them to use the automatically where they would use a(z) in Hungarian. «77 ¢
