The English article system poses a unique challenge to learners of English, especially for those with article-less first language backgrounds. This multifactorial corpus-based study investigates Chinese and Japanese speakers' use of definite, indefinite, and zero articles, based on 2,461 noun phrases annotated for relevant syntactic, morphological, and semantic factors. A multinomial extension of Multifactorial Prediction and Deviation Analysis with Regressions (MuPDAR; Gries & Deshors 2014) provides insights into how such factors affect the nativelikeness of the non-native speakers' article use, and how such effects differ for the three article types and for the first language backgrounds. The results show that noun countability and pluralization, among other independent variables, had significant effects on the accuracy of Chinese and Japanese speakers' use of English articles, and such effects are significantly different for the three types of English articles: definite, indefinite, and zero articles. Limitations of this study will be discussed at the end.
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