A Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis of Caused Motion Expressions: How do Japanese Learners Express INTO-Path?

Abstract

This is a contrastive interlanguage analysis of caused motion event descriptions. It compares four intermediate level L2 Japanese learner (J-L2) groups (English, Hungarian, Chinese and Italian L1 speakers learning Japanese) with a native Japanese speaker group (J-L1) to examine how L2 learners describe caused motion events and how they are different from L1 speakers. The description pattern of all the learners’ L1s in caused motion descriptions is different from the target language, Japanese. We conducted a video-based production experiment that consisted of 52 video clips and analyzed how each group refers to each semantic component. The target events of this study are three types of caused motion events: co-motional (CARRY), ballistic (KICK) and manipulative (PUT). We examined the occurrence of INTO-path and means of causation in each group. The results showed similar tendencies in all J-L2 groups regardless of their L1s. J-L2 groups express INTO-path less frequently than J-L1 groups. Moreover, while J-L1 learners frequently used compound verbs, J-L2 learners rarely used them. This may result from the Japanese description patterns being complex, which leads to difficulty for learners regardless of the typological patterns of the descriptions.