Cognitive factors on second language development

How learners develop their connective expressions in Japanese

Abstract

　This study analyzes connective expressions in spoken language data from 90 Japanese learners, and investigates how two cognitive factors, the way of thinking and language processing skills, affect language development.

　Processability Theory (Pienemann 1998) views language acquisition as an acquisition of the procedural skills needed for processing the target language, and proposes a developmental hierarchy for these automatised procedural skills: lemma access > category procedure > phrasal procedure > S-procedure > subordinate clause procedure. Minami (1993) classified Japanese connectives into three types: A (e.g. -nagara), B (e.g. -tara), and C (e.g. kara) based on Japanese syntactic structure. Applying Processability Theory as the theoretical framework, this study predicted the developmental sequence of Japanese connectives:

　　A (phrasal procedure) > C (S-procedure) > B (subordinate clause procedure).

　The results are as follows:

1. The variation of connective expressions shows the tendency to increase from simple basic expressions to complex expressions: cause > adversative > hypothetical cause > hypothetical adversative (concessive). Novice learners do not have enough working memory to think of what to say, because they also have to process grammatical information consciously at the same time. That is why the expressions are limited to simple thought.

2. The accuracy of each type of connective increased to over 90% in this order: A > C > B. This result suggests that the processing skills develop following the developmental hierarchy proposed by Processability Theory.