Research on the Acquisition of Morpheme by English Learners Integrating Mechanisms of Lexical Processing and Sentence Processing?

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 20K13123
• 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: Kansai University
• Principal Investigator: Tamura Yu 関西大学, 外国語学部, 准教授 (40826385)
• Project Period (FY): 2020-04-01 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: 複数形形態素 / 語彙処理 / 文処理 / オンライン実験

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The study investigated how English language learners acquire and process plural forms from three aspects: lexical, sentence, and meaning processing, using online psycholinguistic experiments. The results showed that the processing mechanisms for lexicon and meaning were similar between native speakers and second language learners. However, differences were observed in the processing of grammatical number agreement, suggesting that learners may have difficulty utilizing plural form information in sentence processing. These findings indicate one of the factors contributing to the difficulty in acquiring grammatical aspects in second language acquisition.

Free Research Field

第二言語習得

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究は，英語学習者の複数形の習得と処理メカニズムを，語彙・文・意味の3つの側面から多角的に調査したものである。その結果，語彙と意味の処理では母語話者と学習者の間に類似性が見られる一方で，文法的な数の一致処理には違いがあることが明らかになった。この知見は、第二言語習得における文法的側面の習得の困難さの一因を示唆するものであり，第二言語習得研究の理論的発展に寄与すると期待される。