The Acquisition of Purpose Clauses with tame ni and yō ni by Advanced Chinese-speaking Learners of Japanese

Abstract

This study examined Chinese speakers' knowledge of the distinction between Japanese purpose clauses with tame ni and those with yō ni (e.g. Nihongo kyōsi-ni [naru tame ni / nareru yō ni] benkyō site iru ‘I am studying Japanese [in order to become / so as to be able to become] a Japanese teacher'). Tame ni is used when the event denoted by the purpose clause is controllable by the subject of the main clause, whereas yō ni is used when the event expressed is uncontrollable by the main-clause subject. Based on a comparison between Japanese and Chinese and the nature of positive evidence for transfer, it is hypothesized that Chinese-speaking learners of Japanese will overgeneralize tame ni, and that this overgeneralization will persist until advanced levels. Advanced Chinese learners of Japanese and Japanese native speakers were tested using a preference task in which sentences with tame ni and yō ni were compared. Results supported the predictions, indicating that the transfer-and-learnability account of second language acquisition, originally proposed to explain data from Indo-European languages, can be extended to data involving a non-Indo-European target language (Japanese) and first language (Chinese).