Japanese learners' acquisition and use of compound nouns

英语复合名词（名词+动词+-er，例如，猫食（cat eater）是生产性的。据报道，以英语为母语的儿童和以西班牙语为第二语言的英语学习者在应该使用这种复合词的地方出现错误。本研究的两个实验结果表明，日语学习者也会犯错误，但错误的种类与其他学习者不同。根据以往的研究和本研究的数据，我们认为错误的原因是：1）句法规则在形态操作中的应用，2）其他语素的使用错误（如- ing）。

English compound nouns (Noun+Verb+-er,e.g.,cat eater) are productive. It has been reported that children learning English as their mother tongue and Spanish speaking learners of English as a second language produce errors in places where this kind of compound should be used. The results of two experiments in this study showed that Japanese speaking learners of English also make errors but the kinds of errors are different from those produced by other learners. Based on data from previous studies and from this study, it was suggested that the errors are attributable to : 1) the application of syntactic rules to morphological operations, and 2) errors in the use of other morphemes (i.e.,-ing).