The acquisition of functional categories by L2 learners

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K00865
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 02100:Foreign language education-related
• Research Institution: Joetsu University of Education
• Principal Investigator: NOJI MIYUKI 上越教育大学, 大学院学校教育研究科, 教授 (40251863)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 中島 基樹 長野県立大学, グローバルマネジメント学部, 准教授 (60609098)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: wh複写 / 部分的wh移動 / whyの倒置エラー / tough構文における演算子移動 / 残留代名詞 / L１の影響 / インプットの影響 / 自他交替可能な非対格動詞

Outline of Final Research Achievements

As for the acquisition of C, L1 Japanese learners of English (JLEs) were found to use partial wh-movement and wh-copying as in German. Another finding was that non-inverted “why” questions were produced more in simple wh-questions than in complex wh-questions. Thirdly, the predicates in tough constructions produced by JLEs at a relatively early stage of acquisition were congruent with the input data from English textbooks, which suggests an influence of the input. However, various linguistic properties observed in learners’ data including errors were rather consistent with L1 Japanese, which suggests the influence of L1 as well. As for the acquisition of the functional category v, JLEs were previously reported to show a difficulty in the intransitive use of English unaccusative verbs that also have a transitive use. The results of a textbook analysis suggest the important role of input frequencies in the degree of the difficulty.

Free Research Field

第二言語習得、言語学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

機能範疇Cは英語の疑問文等で見られる主語・助動詞倒置や演算子移動を引き起こし，機能範疇vは動詞の自他交替を担うと考えられている。本研究ではこういった現象に関して違いを示す日本語が母語の英語学習者がこれらの機能範疇の習得に際して様々な非目標言語的な振る舞いを示すことを明らかにした。またその原因についても追及を行った。これらは今後の研究の進展につながる足掛かりとなるであろう。一方，機能範疇Cとｖの習得に関連して学習者が示した様々な困難を明らかにし，考えられる原因として提示した内容に関しては今後英語教育の領域でより良い指導につながる可能性が期待できるであろう。