Article ID: 2024_01
This study aimed to compare the range of spatial demonstratives used by Chinese native speakers, Japanese native speakers and Chinese learners of Japanese. Japanese native speakers and Chinese learners of Japanese indicated a specific location within a space, by using either the Japanese spatial demonstratives “koko, soko, asoko”. Chinese native speakers indicated locations with the Chinese spatial demonstratives “zhe, na”. The experiment adopted two conditions: the adjacent condition, where the speaker and the hearer were positioned next to each other, and the separated condition, where they were physically separated. The results show that Japanese native speakers used the spatial demonstratives based on the physical distance from the speaker and a psychological factor between the speaker and hearer. In comparison, Chinese native speakers used the demonstratives based on both the physical and psychological distance from the speaker. We also found that Chinese learners of Japanese used Japanese spatial demonstratives in between their native language and their second language. These results indicate that the second language learners acquire not only the physical spatial distance of the terms, but also the psychological concepts of spatial relations in Japanese demonstratives.
