Second language acquisition of a regional dialect of American English by native Japanese speakers

The amount of influence that a learner's native language has on the acquisition of a second language is an issue which has received considerable attention in research on second language acquisition. The thesis of this paper is that, within the context of the Interlanguage Hypothesis (Selinker 1972) and the Markedness Differential Hypothesis (Eckman 1977), some important properties of a learner's interlanguage (IL) can be predicted.More specifically, it is shown that speakers of Cantonese and Japanese internalize different IL rules in attempting to deal with English word-final voice contrasts. Whereas speakers of Cantonese devoice word-final obstruents in the target language, Japanese speakers insert a word-final schwa after the voiced obstruent. However, each of these rules can be correlated with facts about the phonology of the native language, supporting the conclusion that some important aspects of ILs can be predicted on the basis of a comparison of the native and target languages.

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Interpretation of binding and orientation of the Chinese reflexive ziji by English and Japanese speakers

Second language Research ◽

10.1191/026765898670904111 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 14 (4) ◽

pp. 324-340 ◽

Cited By ~ 25

Author(s):

Boping Yuan

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Second Language Acquisition ◽

Language Acquisition ◽

Empirical Study ◽

English Speakers ◽

Long Distance ◽

L1 Transfer ◽

Japanese Speakers ◽

Subject Orientation ◽

Nonfinite Clauses

This article reports on an empirical study of the interpretation of the Chinese reflexive ziji by English and Japanese speakers. In English, reflexives can only take a local (LOC) antecedent, whereas the Chinese reflexive ziji and the Japanese reflexive zibun can have a long-distance (LD) antecedent as well as a local one. Another property of the long-distance reflexives is subject orientation. However, reflexives in English allow both subject NPs and object NPs as their antecedents. The results of the study suggest that L1 transfer occurs in second language acquisition (SLA) of the Chinese reflexive ziji. However, not everything can be explained by L1 interference. It is found that: it is much easier for Japanese speakers than for English speakers to acquire the LD binding of ziji; binding of ziji is asymmetric in finite and nonfinite clauses in English speakers' L2 grammars of Chinese; acquiring subject orientation of ziji is problematic to both English and Japanese speakers, and no implicational relationship is found between LD binding of ziji and subject orientation of ziji; LD binding of ziji entails LOC binding of ziji, and it also generally entails no LD object binding. Implications of these findings are discussed.

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