2018 Friday Poster 6361

Friday, November 2, 2018 | Poster Session I, Metcalf Small | 3pm

The L2 acquisition of Japanese relative clauses by L1 Chinese learners: evidence from the interpretation of the universal quantifier zen’in ‘all’
Y. Chen

Japanese and Chinese relative clauses (RCs) have been argued to have different syntactic structures, although they are both prenominal (e.g., Aoun & Li, 2003; Fukui & Takano, 2000). According to previous studies, one difference is that in Japanese RCs, the head NP is base-generated external to the RC (e.g., Hoji, 1985; Murasugi, 2000) while in Chinese RCs, the head NP is raised from within the RC (Aoun & Li, 2003). This syntactic difference between Japanese and Chinese leads to different reconstruction effects with respect to scope. In Japanese RCs where a universal quantifier all occurs at the RC subject position, the head NP must have a wider scope over all, as in (1a). By contrast, in the equivalent Chinese RCs, there are two possible interpretations: the head NP has a scope over all or all has a scope over the head NP, as in (1b).

This study investigated whether L1 Chinese learners can acquire the syntactic knowledge that the head NP of Japanese RCs is base-generated externally by examining how they interpret the universal quantifier zen’in ‘all’ inside Japanese RCs. Two research questions were explored. First, are there L1 transfer effects when L1 Chinese learners interpret the universal quantifier within Japanese RCs? Second, can L1 Chinese learners of L2 Japanese acquire the knowledge that the interpretation of ∀>head NP is unavailable for the universal quantifier inside Japanese RCs? This Japanese knowledge is underdetermined for L1 Chinese learners because it cannot be derived from input and it is not explicitly taught in Japanese language classrooms.

A Japanese truth value judgment task and its equivalent task in Chinese were created. There were 24 critical items, each of which had two conditions: head NP>∀ and ∀>head NP. Two lists were created, each of which included only one condition of each critical

item. There were 24 fillers included in each list. A total of 24 L1 Chinese learners of L2 Japanese participated in both Japanese and Chinese tasks and 5 native Japanese speakers participated in the Japanese task as native controls.

Since there are 12 items in each critical condition, based on the binominal distribution, if a participant accepted/rejected 9 items or more in one condition, she would be considered to have consistently accepted/rejected the items in that condition. The results showed that the native Japanese controls consistently accepted head NP>∀ items and rejected

∀>head NP items, as predicted. By contrast, 17 out of 20 learners (85%) consistently accepted head NP>∀ and∀>head NP items in both Chinese and Japanese, suggesting L1 transfer. However, 3 learners behaved like native Japanese controls in the Japanese task by consistently accepting NP>∀ items and rejecting ∀>head NP items. Meanwhile, they also consistently accepted head NP>∀ and∀>head NP items in Chinese. The results suggested that the 3 learners had acquired the knowledge that the universal quantifier cannot take a wider scope over the head NP in Japanese, which further implicates that L1 Chinese learners can acquire the syntactic knowledge that the head NP of Japanese RCs is base-generated externally.

References

Aoun, J., & Y.-H. Li. (2003). Essays on the representational and derivational nature of grammar: the diversity of wh-constructions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Fukui, N., & Y. Takano. (2000). Nominal structure: An extension of the Symmetry Principle. In P. Svenonius (Ed), The derivation of VO and OV (pp. 219-254). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Hoji, H. (1985). Logical Form constraints and configurational structures in Japanese. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, Seattle.

Murasugi, K. (2000). Antisymmetry analysis of Japanese relative clauses. In A. Alexiadou, P. Law, A. Meinunger, & C. Wilder (Eds.), The syntax of relative clauses, (pp. 231-264). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.