A linguistically-informed way of introducing Japanese verbs to second language learners
-
J.-R. Hayashishita
,
Daiki Tanaka
Abstract
This paper describes how the Japanese speakers’ knowledge is organized in regards to verbs, and proposes a linguistically-informed way of introducing it to second language learners. It is maintained by a number of researchers that each verb is stored with the information of its argument structure in the speaker’s mental lexicon. That is, a given verb is stored with the information of how many arguments it takes and what types of arguments they are. In this paper, capitalizing on this assumption, we will maintain that the knowledge of the native speakers of Japanese is organized in such a way that if a verb gives rise to n-number of different meanings, there are n-number of lexical entries, and each such entry is independently stored with the information concerning the meaning of the verb, the verb arguments and their accompanying particles. After the description of the organization of Japanese speakers’ knowledge in regards to verbs, as an effective way of introducing this to Japanese language learners, the paper proposes the format of an innovative approach to Japanese verbs reference book. This proposed format capitalizes on full sentence definitions in the sense of the Collins Cobuild Dictionary.
Acknowledgements
The research presented in this paper was partially supported by three instances of the University of Otago’s Internationalisation of the Curriculum Initiative Grant in 2015, 2016 and 2017, and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, No. 16K02631. Input from the team working on our Japanese verbs reference book project shaped our view of how Japanese verbs should be introduced to Japanese language learners. We are grateful to team members including Rachel Payne, Iwao Takai, Noriko Ohsaki, Manabu Saito, Misato Ido, Ayaka Suzuki, Yusuke Toji, Sanae Tamura, Kazue Takeda, Tomoko Toji, Kyoko Mikami, Emi Mukai, Felix Campbell, Lisa Oseki, You Kaku and Satoshi Oseki. Rachel Payne also helped us improve the English exposition of this paper. We are thankful to two anonymous reviewers, whose comments helped us revise our paper significantly. Finally, we would like to thank the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, Professor Minami Masahiko, for orchestrating such a transparent and fair review process.
Appendix
In this section, we provide a sample of the verbs reference book we are currently constructing (i. e. Hayashishita et al. In preparation).
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© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Regular Articles
- Learnability issues in L2 Japanese: Prosody and ambiguity resolution
- A linguistically-informed way of introducing Japanese verbs to second language learners
- Special Section
- Special Section Editors’ Notes
- On the peculiar nature of double complement unaccusatives in Japanese
- Japanese embedded questions are nominal: Evidence from quantificational variability effect
- Book Reviews
- Mutsuko Endo Hudson, Yoshiko Matsumoto, and Junko Mori: Pragmatics of Japanese: Perspectives on Grammar, Interaction and Culture
- Hisashi Noda and Kumiko Sakoda: Learners’ Corpora and Japanese Language Education Research
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Regular Articles
- Learnability issues in L2 Japanese: Prosody and ambiguity resolution
- A linguistically-informed way of introducing Japanese verbs to second language learners
- Special Section
- Special Section Editors’ Notes
- On the peculiar nature of double complement unaccusatives in Japanese
- Japanese embedded questions are nominal: Evidence from quantificational variability effect
- Book Reviews
- Mutsuko Endo Hudson, Yoshiko Matsumoto, and Junko Mori: Pragmatics of Japanese: Perspectives on Grammar, Interaction and Culture
- Hisashi Noda and Kumiko Sakoda: Learners’ Corpora and Japanese Language Education Research
