Past Tense Morphology in Chinese-Japanese Interlangauge: Evidence for Prosodic Transfer

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of variable past tense morphology in second language (L2) acquisition. Numerous studies have demonstrated that the production of past tense morphology in English poses persistent difficulties to some L2 learners (e.g. Lardiere, 1998a; 1998b; Hawkins & Liszka, 2003). We examine the validity of two hypotheses which have been proposed to explain the cause of such difficulties, namely the Representational Deficit Hypothesis (RDH) (Hawkins, 2001; Hawkins & Liszka, 2003) and the Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis (PTH) (Goad, Steel & White, 2003; Goad & White, 2004; 2006). The former holds that there is variability in past tense morphology because learners whose first language (L1) lacks the past tense feature are unable to acquire it post-puberty. The PTH, on the other hand, claims that learners are able to acquire the past tense feature but have difficulties in the production of a past tense morpheme when prosodic structures to organize inflectional material differ between their L1 and L2. In this study, we investigate whether Chinese-speaking learners of Japanese are able to achieve the target-like knowledge and production of past tense morphology in Japanese; Japanese has the past tense feature while Chinese does not. Chinese and Japanese are similar, however, with regard to how prosodic structures for inflectional material are organized. Thus, if Chinese speakers have difficulties producing past tense morphology in Japanese, the locus of the problem is likely to be their inability to acquire the past tense feature, supporting the RDH. If, on the other hand, Chinese speakers do not have problems with Japanese past tense morphology, the problem we observe in Chinese-English interlanguage is likely to be due to the difference in prosodic structures, supporting the PTH. Testing 12 Chinese-speaking learners who were at intermediate and advanced levels, we found that although some Chinese speakers had difficulties with past tense inflection, others were able to use the Japanese past tense inflection -ta reliably, both in written form and spontaneous production. Therefore, our results support the PTH.