Volume 42, Issue 1

This study tested nine groups of listeners on their discrimination of three pitch accent patterns in Japanese-like nonwords. We performed three analyses on listeners’ pitch discrimination accuracy. The first compared two tonal language-speaking groups (Mandarin and Cantonese), the second involved L1 English groups with tonal or nontonal L2 classroom experience, and the third L2/3 Japanese learners at two proficiency levels. The main finding of the study revealed that speaking a tonal L1 or having learned a tonal language as an L2 facilitates the discrimination of Japanese pitch accent patterns. However, accuracy differences between the two tonal L1 groups were not detected on the discrimination task. In addition, Japanese proficiency only increased perceptual accuracy for L1 tonal speakers. These findings provide further evidence for facilitative transfer of tone experience to the prelexical processing of pitch in an L2/3.

This study explored the acquisition of Japanese word-initial voiceless stops by Mandarin trilinguals with advanced proficiency in their third language Japanese. The relationship between their full-time equivalent (FTE) years of Japanese input and their production and perception of the target stops was also investigated. Mandarin trilinguals and Japanese bilinguals completed a production experiment by reading Japanese words with the target stops, and completed a perception experiment by listening to Japanese stop continua with synthetic stimuli varying in voice onset time (VOT) values. The results showed that the Mandarin trilinguals produced the target stops with longer VOT values than the Japanese bilinguals, and had perceptual category boundaries at longer VOT values than the bilinguals. The trilinguals’ production and perception skills revealed phonetic interference from both their native Mandarin and second language English. The correlation analysis between the trilinguals’ FTE and their mean VOT values and mean category boundaries indicated that longer FTE for trilinguals may not directly translate into target-like performance.

This study explored the impact of working memory (WM) on speech production among L2 Japanese learners. Previous empirical research has shown that WM plays a significant role in L2 Japanese speech production. The current study focused exclusively on data from native English speakers who were enrolled in Japanese language programs at universities in North America. Statistical analyses revealed a significant correlation between performance on the Japanese Speaking Span Test and the learners’ ability to construct syntactically complex sentences in Japanese. The findings suggest that learners with higher working memory capacity are not only more capable of producing syntactically complex sentences, but also tend to maintain greater grammatical accuracy in their spoken Japanese.

This study tested the applicability of the Interface Hypothesis by investigating the acquisition of discourse constraints concerning Japanese pronouns. It extends previous studies on second language (L2) Italian in three ways. First, the two factors affecting the choice of antecedents for pronouns, topichood and subjecthood, were separated to determine the more crucial one. Second, it investigated the distribution of subject and object pronouns. Third, it considered the effects of the antecedents’ surface word order. The written interpretation and production tasks show that (i) subjecthood is crucial in determining antecedents for null pronominal subjects in Japanese, not topichood or word order, and (ii) L2 grammar is not different from monolingual grammar except when interpreting specific null pronominal subjects, attributable to a task effect. The latter fails to support the Interface Hypothesis but supports the view that all aspects of the discourse-syntax interface are not necessarily problematic in L2 acquisition.

In the UG-based framework of third language acquisition research, there has been limited investigation into the acquisition of East Asian languages compared to European languages. This paper focuses on the acquisition of East Asian languages, specifically examining interpretation of null arguments in Japanese. By taking into account the variation in agreement across languages, it is possible to predict how learners interpret null arguments in Japanese, given that Japanese null arguments exhibit argument ellipsis (AE). Interestingly, although Chinese is an agreement-less language like Japanese, Chinese null subjects behave differently from Japanese null subjects. This paper investigates crosslinguistic influence (CLI) in interpretation of null arguments in L3 Japanese grammar of L1-Chinese L2-English speakers. The findings indicate that L3 Japanese learners, regardless of their proficiency levels, interpret null subjects in a similar manner to those of L1 Japanese speakers. Our results allow us to address the most important issues in contemporary L3 acquisition theory; namely, the source, type and manner of CLI.