Volume 25, Issue 1

This study examines discourse strategies in personal narratives told by Japanese-as-a-foreign-language (JFL) learners. Both JFL learners and native Japanese speakers were asked to talk about any injury-related experience that they wished. Compared to intermediate JFL learners, advanced learners (1) told longer narratives using more words, a greater variety of words, and more onomatopoetic expressions, (2) switched to their first language less frequently and used fewer message replacements, repetitions, and confirmations, and committed fewer errors, and (3) used reported speech and onomatopoeias more frequently. A comparison of narratives told by JFL learners with those produced by native Japanese speakers revealed that while intermediate learners used rising intonation more frequently than did native Japanese speakers, advanced learners tended to use more words when using reported speech even when judged by native Japanese speakers’ norm. Overall, in the examination of JFL learners’ narrative discourse patterns with particular attention to the length of their stories and the discourse strategies they employed, the study suggests that JFL learners do not necessarily follow native-style narrative patterns, even after their language skills are relatively highly developed. The study instead implies the possibility of either U-shaped patterns of behavioral growth or the strong influence of L1 discourse strategies on L2 narratives (or a combination of both).

Using a questionnaire comprising voiced-or-voiceless choices by native Japanese speakers, the present study investigated the influence of the phonological-length and etymological-type of first elements on sequential voicing or rendaku of the initial consonant of the CVCVCV-structured Wago-like nonwords /hukari/ and /hasuri/. Experiment 1 revealed an overall trend where voicing determination (i.e., voicing power) from one mora to three morae was observed to have a descending order of strength. After controlling for printed-frequency, script type, and free-standing single kanji, Experiment 2 showed that single-mora Wago first-elements had stronger voicing power on second elements than those consisting of two and three morae. Considering the combined results of Experiments 1 and 2, it may be concluded that a single CV mora Wago of first elements had greater voicing power than two or three morae cases. Experiment 3 demonstrated that first element Wago exerted stronger voicing power upon second elements than either Kango or Gairaigo, which exerted equally influence. However, after controlling for printed-frequency and script type, Experiment 4 indicated that the first element Wago and Kango resulted in rendaku on second elements with greater voicing power than Gairaigo. Thus, the present study demonstrated that both the first-element phonological-length and etymological-type appear to influence rendaku of the voiceless consonants of second elements.

It is generally agreed that, in Japanese, NP-external placement of quantity expressions (often referred to as ‘quantifier float’) can occur with noun phrases in the nominative and accusative cases and sometimes with ni-marked cases, and most of the accounts have been syntactically based. Interpreting approximate quantity as one of the indicators of a low degree of specificity (less commitment on the part of the speaker to refer to particular entities), this study examines these statements in a wider context of a correlation between a low degree of specificity and the permissibility of NP-external constructions occurring with noun phrases marked by ni and even other oblique cases. The study supports the validity of the hypothesis by examples found in a CD corpus and on the Internet and by the result of a large scale native speaker grammaticality test, suggesting that perception of grammaticality is sensitive to semantic factors such as the degree of specificity.

One of the commonest words in Japanese, nai has received varying theoretical treatments from linguists, with differing practical consequences. The paper seeks to provide a clear synchronic descriptive account, identifying the issues concerned and considering different positions in the light of relevant criteria. Topics addressed include the incidence of suppletion in Japanese, the weighting of morphological and syntactic criteria in word class assignment, gradience of membership, and the question of diachronic influences on current analyses.

This article proposes a sonority-based approach to Sino-Japanese morphophonemic alternations. An earlier OT analysis by Kurisu (2000) sees Sino-Japanese obstruent gemination as the result of minimization of the number of syllables induced by a gradient alignment constraint. However, gradient evaluation of constraints runs counter to McCarthy’s (2003) argument that OT constraints are categorically evaluated. The goal of this article is to resolve this problem by developing a unified OT analysis of obstruent gemination and syllabification of stem-final nasals as codas with reference to onset sonority distinctions. Less sonorous segments have a stronger preference to syllabify as onsets than do more sonorous segments. This preference relationship between segment classes and syllabification has been formalized as the Onset Sonority Hierarchy (Prince & Smolensky 1993; Baertsch 2002; Smith 2003; Moreton et al 2006; etc). By taking the position that local conjunction of onset sonority and peak constraints plays the central role in creating the observed syllabification pattern through interaction with faithfulness and other markedness constraints, this analysis also makes it possible to view the segmental restrictions on the onsets of the second syllables of Sino-Japanese stems as a concomitant onset sonority effect.