A Study of Acquisition Process of Japanese as a Second Language and its Linguistic Environments

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Several researches and studies were conducted under the study of acquisition process of Japanese as a second language and its linguistic environments from 1997 to 2001.One of the studies, based on the acquisition of Japanese demonstratives and certain case particles, provides evidence that semantic factors can be a source of variation. The findings indicate : i) There are few indications of language transfer in learners' variable uses of the demonstratives and the particles under study. ii) The learners' variable outputs are conditioned by the semantic features of noun phrases that co-occur with the demonstratives and the particles. iii) Specifically, the learners are producing output on the basis of the combinatorial patterns, in which the semantic features provide crucial environmnents for the selection of the two non-proximetal demonstratives A- and SO- and the two locative particles NI and DE.A study of the difference of acquisition order between first language (L1) and the second language (L2) was also conducted and the findings indicate : i) The acquisition order of Japanese demonstratives is different between L1 and L2 learners, ii) Input from mothers and teachers could be one factor contributing to this difference. The results imply that differences of input from caretakers might be a crucial factor in determining the differences in the orders of acquiring Japanese demonstratives.