L1 Acquisition of Japanese Deictic Verbs Iku and Kuru

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K02699
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Tama Art University
• Principal Investigator: Takanashi Miho 多摩美術大学, 美術学部, 准教授 (70756155)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: 認知言語学 / ダイクシス / 直示動詞 / usage-based model / 使用依拠モデル / 言語習得 / 移動事象

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study aimed to investigate: 1) how children acquire the deictic verbs iku, which means ‘to go’ in English and kuru means ‘to come’ in English. 2) at what age children can use the verbs as accuracy as adult native speakers, by applying the theory of usage-based models in cognitive linguistics. To clarify these issues, we adopted corpus analyses and carried out some experiments using videos.The series of results, in general, indicated that the acquisition proceeded consecutively, and most children at the ages of 10 to 12 could use iku and kuru to describe motion events as accurately as adult native speakers.

Free Research Field

言語学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

「行く」「来る」は基本語彙であると同時に直示動詞でもあるため、本研究によって、言語の基本的機能とその習得メカニズムを明らかにできる。延いては、言語と一般認知能力との関係解明にも貢献できる。この点が学術的に意義があるといえる。また、母語の習得メカニズムへの解明に繋がることから、母語話者の言語習得（国語教育）、外国語習得（日本語教育や日本語母語話者の外国語習得）等の応用言語学の分野へも寄与できると考える。