Second Language Acquisition of English Prepositions by Japanese, Chinese, and Korean Speaking Learners

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24520613
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Foreign language education
• Research Institution: Shinshu University
• Principal Investigator: BONG Hyun Kyung 信州大学, 学術研究院総合人間科学系, 准教授 (50434593)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): KATO Kozo 信州大学, 学術研究院総合人間科学系, 教授 (20169501)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 英語前置詞 / 母語役割 / 習得難易度 / 中間言語 / 日本人母語話者 / 韓国語母語話者 / 中国語母語話者

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study sets to investigate how second language learners (Japanese-, Chinese-, and Korean- Speaking Learners) acquire English prepositions and how learned cross-linguistic associations are formed and how they are represented in a second language users’ mental lexicon. An experimental study has been conducted, to test the hypotheses derived from the two competing theories: Prototype theory (Cognitive Model of Language Acquisition) for the Prototypciality hypothesis vs. UG theory (Minimalist Model of Language Acquisition) for the Economy Driven Development Hypothesis and the Feature Reconstruction Hypothesis. Research questions consist: (i) differential difficulty (developmental order): which prepositions are easier to acquire than others ; and which senses of prepositions are more difficulty to acquire than others, and (ii) roles of lemmatic properties of the first language (L1) and the target second language (L2), and (iii) variability and divergence.

Free Research Field

第二言語習得研究