Semantic 'blocking' effects of functional categories in Japanese EFL learners' interlanguage grammars

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概要

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• Recent research addressing the extent to which adult L2 learners have access to Universal Grammar (UG) has focussed on formal features of functional categories which are not activated in the L1. This study continues this line of enquiry by investigating whether Japanese speakers can acquire a formal feature which drives relative-operator movement in English relative clauses, but is not instantiated in Japanese, with respect to the following two principles of UG :(a) a 'Generalised Blocking Principle' ( T a k e d a , 1999) for the applicability of semantic operations to calculate the meaning of relative clauses, and (b) a 'Subjacency' principle for the diagnosis for wh-movement involved in relative clause formation. To test whether Japanese speakers can acquire the formal feature [+ R] in English relative clauses, and hence are sensitive to the Generalised Blocking Principle and the Subjacency effects, a grammaticality judgement task with a five-point scale was administered to five different proficiency levels of adult Japanese speakers, as well as to English native controls. This test had a set of grammatical and ungrammatical relative clauses violating Subjacency. The results showed that not only less proficient learners but also advanced learners failed to reject some types of relative clauses violating the Subjacency conditions. However, this does not mean that even advanced learners still have trouble acquiring the formal feature which blocks the free application of semantic operations in English. We suggest that where a feature inducing a blocking effect is absent in the L1, it may not necessarily continue to be absent in the L2.

• 上越教育大学の論文

著者

• Ohba Hiromasa

  Division Of Languages : Department Of Foreign Languages Joetsu University Of Education

関連論文

• The Acquisition of Wh-movement by Avanced Japanese Learners of English
• Semantic 'blocking' effects of functional categories in Japanese EFL learners' interlanguage grammars

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