Approaching the acquisition of Japanese conditional markers from a proposed implicational markedness hierarchy

Abstract

The acquisition of Japanese conditionals is regarded as one of the most complicated items for foreign learners of Japanese to acquire. However, when it comes to account for this fact, there is no ready answer. By focusing on the acquisition of conditionals by Norwegian learners of Japanese, this study discusses whether modal constraints on the use of Japanese conditional markers can account for learners' difficulty and whether such difficulty can be systematically predicted by applying an implicational markedness relationship framework. In the course of the argument, a universal implicational markedness hierarchy for modal constraints on conditional markers is proposed. The hypothesis suggests that relative degrees of learning difficulty for the Norwegian learners will be determined by differences in degree of markedness between the native language and Japanese on the implicational hierarchy. Experimental results provide significant evidence to support that this is the case.