Abstract
Japanese case particles, such as ‘ga’ and ‘wo’ play a primary role in showing grammatical relationships in sentences. According to the studies on the acquisition of case particles, a time lag exists between production and comprehension of particles. In order to thoroughly investigate the acquisition process of Japanese particles, it seems preferable to examine children's speech production and comprehension concurrently. However, we find very few such comparative studies.
In this study, production and judgement of the case particles ‘ga’ and ‘wo’ in simple transitive sentences were investigated in an experimental cross-sectional study for 103 three to five year old subjects.
This study results in three findings: 1) ‘Ga’ in simple transitive sentences started to be used as an agent-marker at around 4 years. Then its use generalized to become a subject-marker and its grammatical function as found in adult grammar was acquired after 5 years. 2) Grammatical judgement of transitive sentences first made use of the SOV order of free words, sequential order of ‘ga’ ‘wo’, and grammatical function of those particles concurrently. After 5 years, children could predominantly use the grammatical function of case particles. 3) Production of particles preceeded judgement; self production of particles developed meta-linguistic ability, and grammatical judgement developed hereby.
