Possibility of Overused “no” in Second Language Japanese:

Analysis by Part-of-Speech and Learners’ First Language Using I-JAS

Abstract

This study analyzes the errors of overuse of “no” in Japanese by learners of Japanese by part-of-speech and by learners’ first language using a cross-sectional corpus named I-JAS. Although errors of overuse of “no” have been widely observed, the purpose of this study is to identify the environment in which overuse of “no” is likely to occur by analyzing it from the three perspectives of i-adjectival modification, na-adjectival modification, and verb modification. The results of the survey showed that regardless of the native language, errors of overuse of “no” are common in the i-adjective modification structure, and among them, errors of overuse of “no” in the i-adjective modification structure are especially common for Chinese and English speakers. On the other hand, for Korean speakers, the overuse of “no” was found to be infrequent.