Second Language Acquisition Research on Null Elements

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24520681
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Foreign language education
• Research Institution: Kwansei Gakuin University
• Principal Investigator: Yamada Kazumi 関西学院大学, 理工学部, 准教授 (90435305)
• Research Collaborator: YATSUSHIRO KAZUKO The Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft(ZAS), Research fellow
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 項削除 / sloppy読み / strict読み / 日本語学習者 / スペイン語学習者 / 英語学習者 / ドイツ語学習者 / 母語の影響

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This is a study, following Oku (1997) and Saito (2007) among others, where we hypothesized that null arguments in Japanese are Argument Ellipsis (AE) and explored interpretation of null arguments in L2 grammar. In our examination, we conducted eight separate types of cross-linguistic studies: acquisition of Japanese by speakers of Spanish, German, and non-pro-drop languages, acquisition of English by speakers of Japanese and German, acquisition of German by speakers of Japanese and English, and acquisition of Spanish by Japanese speakers. The results of each study showed both positive and negative L1 influences. In addition, the influence of L1 was not limited to an early stage of L2 development but was also observed at a later stage (Wakabayashi, 1997). We concluded that interpretation of null arguments in the L2 acquisition process can be explained in the L2 acquisition model proposed by Miyamoto (2012), which is based on Ishino’s (2010) Feature Transfer and Feature Learning (FTFL).

Free Research Field

第二言語習得