Acquisition of te form by native Chinese speakers learning Japanese at the beginner's level

Abstract

The present study investigates how native Chinese speakers learning Japanese only for four months in China (n=101) acquire te-form in four categories and five inflection types of 54 different verbs (Cronbach's reliability, α=.86). The results of the te form test indicate that already-learned verbs were better performed in te inflections than pseudo-verbs. Yet, both of these categories exhibited over 88.00% accuracy: -nde form was the most difficult and -ite/itte was the second most difficult te inflection to produce correctly. The study concluded that native Chinese speakers learning Japanese, even for a short period of four months, adequately apply their knowledge of te inflection rules to various verbs, with some assistance of lexical memory.