The influence of Japanese and instructions on developmental processes of subjects by Japanese learners of English

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 20K13107
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Basic Section 02100:Foreign language education-related
• Research Institution: University of Shizuoka
• Principal Investigator: Suda Koji 静岡県立大学, 国際関係学部, 教授 (60390390)
• Project Period (FY): 2020-04-01 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: 日本人英語学習者 / 主語の習得 / 主語と主題の区別

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study investigates the knowledge of Japanese and English subjects by Japanese learners of English. With regard to the subject in English, we find that junior high school students have difficulty in acquiring personal and number features, and university students also have difficulty in acquiring number features. As for the subject in Japanese, junior high school students tend to judge the animate noun placed at the beginning of a sentence as the subject, regardless of particles such as "ha" and "ga". Moreover, when animacy information is not available, junior high school students make more errors in choosing the noun at the beginning of a sentence as the subject. In addition, it is revealed that there is no relationship between the knowledge of English subjects and judgment of Japanese subjects, indicating that English subjects are appropriately acquired even if Japanese subjects cannot be judged correctly.

Free Research Field

第二言語習得

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

日本人にとって英語の習得は困難であり，その要因として日英語の言語間の違いが影響していると提案されている。日本語と英語の文中における主語はその扱いが異なっており，英語では文頭に主語が明示される必要があるが，日本語ではその必要はない。しかし，これまでの言語習得研究では，日本人英語学習者にとって文頭に名詞句を置くことはそれほど困難ではないことがわかっている。本研究では，日英語の主語の扱いの違いが日本人の英語習得にどのような影響を与えるのか検証し，中学生であっても日本語の主語の知識は不確定であること，言語間の違いでは英語の主語の習得困難さについて説明できないことを提案する。