Transitivity in Japanese sentence production: Speech errors of the dative NI and the accusative O

Abstract

This study examines native Japanese speakers’ speech errors of the case particles, the dative ni and the accusative o, occurring in object NPs of two-place predicates. The speech error data demonstrate that the semantic basis of ni and o errors in native Japanese speakers’ utterances is closely related to transitivity (as discussed by Hopper and Thompson 1980). Japanese speakers tend to use the accusative o for the object NPs (even when the dative ni is required by the verb) if the meanings of the events and actions that the speakers wish to talk about are relatively high in transitivity and ni if the events are relatively low in transitivity and if they involve some kind of directionality. The findings suggest that Japanese speakers utilize dynamic online semantic mapping when selecting case particles in speech and that such mapping may facilitate online sentence production when the verb selection (the retrieval of the target verb) is not finalized.