In Sri Lanka, native (L1) speakers of Sinhala, the majority language, often speak English as a second language (L2). While English morphologically marks both [+Def] and [-Def] articles, Sinhala only morphologically marks [-Def], while unmarked NPs are implicitly [+Def]. The present study investigates how variation in speakers’ patterns of L2 English article use is influenced by age, gender and regional background.

A sentence-completion sociolinguistic survey (adapted from Ionin et al. 2004 and Chung 2011) studied 405 Sinhala-speaking Sri Lankan participants’ use of English articles, using a total of 30 tokens consisting of three tokens each across 10 contexts, controlled for definiteness and specificity. Data was quantitatively analysed using a generalised linear mixed-effects model to observe factor interactions.

The study finds that between-speaker variation in L2 English article use among Sri Lankan speakers is significantly influenced by social factors. Specifically, standard patterns were used significantly more frequently (p < 0.001) among participants who were: (1) older; (2) male; and (3) urban Colombo residents (vs. rural speakers). These findings may be accounted for by Sri Lanka’s sociohistorical situation, in which exposure to English, particularly via formal education, has fluctuated across generations and by region. Women leading linguistic change away from standard norms and towards local prestige norms may account for the gender findings.

This paper highlights the value of variationist sociolinguistics studies into morphological variation in less studied L2 English varieties, such as Sri Lankan English, where unique country-specific factors influence language variation.