2005 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Form-Function Mapping in Interlanguage Development
| Project/Area Number |
15520331
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Japanese language education
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| Research Institution | Aichi University of Education |
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Principal Investigator |
INABA Midori Aichi University of Education, Faculty of Education, Associate Professor, 教育学部, 助教授 (50273298)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2003 – 2005
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| Keywords | first language acquisition / second language acquisition / discourse / Japanese / narrative / tense / English / frog story |
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| Research Abstract |
The present study investigates the developmental profiles of JL1 and JL2 learners with particular attention to linguistic development in narrative discourse. The fictional stories elicited from Japanese children and adults and JL2 (Japanese as a second language) learners were analyzed to explore developmental features. The research consists of eight basic studies viewing narrative development from mainly three different but related points of view : narrative structure, anchor tense, and aspectual marking.
The results from the JL1 research indicate that children learn to use the expressive options of a particular native language to carry out narrative discourse functions, supporting the argument by Berman and Slobin (1994) that forms acquire broader and more discourse-motivated functions across different developmental phases.
The results from the JL2 research indicate that JL2 learners, who are supposed to have mature knowledge of narrative-discourse knowledge but do not have full L2 linguistic command, depend largely on their own L1 processing strategy of narrative-discourse, rather than apply that of the L2, when their general L2 linguistic knowledge is insufficient. They tend to seek linguistic tools that will permit them to maintain their L1 perspectives, rather than to look for perspectives peculiar to the L2 in verbalizing events in an L2, providing further evidence for Kellerman's (1995) proposal of the transfer to nowhere principle.
Since this research is limited to picture-based storytelling, further studies drawing on other genre narratives, linguistic categories, and so on are called for.
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