Acceptability Judgements of English Motion Constructions for Japanese EFL Learners Revisited

Abstract

According to Talmy (2000), languages can be divided into S(atellite)-framed languages and V(erb)-framed languages depending on what components of a Motion event such as Manner and Path are characteristically shown in what syntactic constituents in a language. English belongs to the former, and Japanese the latter. English allows Manner to be expressed not only by manner-of-motion verbs as in Tom ran to the park but also by a participle as in Tom went to the park by running. In contrast, Japanese does not allow it to be expressed by manner-of-motion verbs used as a main verb, but requires directed motion verbs such as kuru “come” and iku “go” to be used as a main verb, as in Tom-ga kooen-ni hasitte itta, where Manner is expressed as a gerund, or a so-called te-form. In addition, English allows Path to be expressed both as goal PPs like to the park and locative PPs like in the park, which means English locative PPs are ambiguous between directional and locational readings. At the same time, Japanese locative PPs are unambiguously locational as in Tom-ga kooende hasitta. However, it remains unclear whether and how such typological differences between the two languages influence the acquisition of each language. Moreover, previous studies on the acquisition of English motion constructions by Japanese EFL learners mainly have the following problems to address: (i) different studies have applied different methods to the similar research questions, and have come to different conclusions, and (ii) there remains a possibility that some methods in previous studies were not reliable enough to correctly evaluate the acceptability of target sentences for the participants because multiple test sentences or a couple of pictures were presented simultaneously to the participants. In this study, the author investigated the acceptability judgements of English motion construction for Japanese EFL learners using a unified and improved method. An acceptability judgement task with pairs of pictures was used and the data was analyzed using a two-way ANOVA followed by a multiple comparison test. Participants were composed of 46 Japanese university students, 26 of whom majored in English, and 11 native speakers of English. Each test sentence was presented with one pair of pictures. They responded on 5 point scale how natural they felt each of the test sentences was. A total of 32 English motion constructions and 20 periphrastic expressions were included in the test. The analyses resulted in the following: (i) goal PPs were more acceptable as directional readings for Japanese EFL learners than locative PPs (ii) locative PPs were more acceptable as locational readings for Japanese EFL learners than directional readings, and (iii) Japanese EFL learners tend to accept excessively periphrastic expressions of English motion constructions. In conclusion, these results suggest that typological differences between English and Japanese may influence the acquisition of English for Japanese EFL learners, and that it may be pedagogically beneficial for these learners to pay attention to comparative characteristics of both English and Japanese to develop “metalinguistic awareness and abilities” (Otsu, 2012, p.179).