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Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 13:3 (2023) ► pp.409–437

L2 acquisition of definiteness in Japanese floating numeral quantifiers

Can overt L1 morphology help?

ORCID logo | University of York
ORCID logo | University of York
This study investigates the second language (L2) acquisition of a constraint on definiteness in Japanese floating numeral quantifiers (NQs) by native English and Korean speakers. The constraint arises because of the specific structural relation between a floating NQ and its associated noun, resulting in an obligatorily indefinite interpretation. The indirect – or, covert – encoding of definiteness in this structure allows investigation of predictions based on the cline of difficulty proposed by Cho and Slabakova (2014), whereby L2 acquisition of a covert property may be facilitated if the first language (L1) expresses the relevant feature overtly. English is such a language, having overt morphology to express definiteness, whereas Korean has floating NQs that are obligatorily, and covertly, indefinite, as in Japanese. Sensitivity to definiteness in Japanese floating NQs was measured using an acceptability judgement task. Although both L1-Korean and L1-English speakers of Japanese showed sensitivity to the constraint at group level, follow-up analyses suggested that the Korean group had more consistent knowledge. We argue that the complexity of the acquisition task – which was greater for the English-speakers than the Korean-speakers – played a bigger role in attainment than overt versus covert encoding of the relevant feature in the L1.
Keywords: L2 Japanese, definiteness, feature reassembly, syntax-semantics interface, poverty of the stimulus
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Definiteness and numeral quantifiers in Japanese, Korean, and English
    • 2.1Definiteness
    • 2.2Numeral quantifiers
  • 3.Defining the L2 acquisition tasks and predictions
    • 3.1The acquisition problem
    • 3.2Predictions
  • 4.The experimental study
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2The proficiency test
    • 4.3Experimental task design
    • 4.4Procedure
  • 5.Results
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1Implications for the cline of difficulty approach
    • 6.2Learning mechanisms
    • 6.3Future research directions
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.20110.kum
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