The Acquisition of Nominative Case Marking in L2 Japanese: A Corpus Study

Abstract

This study investigates how L2 learners of Japanese with different L1 backgrounds (Korean, English, or Chinese) acquire nominative Case marking in Japanese. Analyses of data from a speaking corpus show that the nominative Case marking was almost perfect, incorrect Case marking being quite limited, throughout the entire stages examined in this study, irrespective of the learner's L1 backgrounds. On the other hand, some L1 effects were observed from early stages especially in terms of the nominative Case marking on the object of nominative object constructions. These findings suggest not only that the functional category of T is present in early L2 grammar, but also that its source is L1. Another important finding is that L1 English learners of L2 Japanese, like Japanese monolingual children, overgenerated the nominative ga for the accusative o in the course of the acquisition of nominative object constructions, which suggests a parameter resetting. Thus the Full Transfer/Full Access hypothesis (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1994) rather than the Minimal Tree hypothesis (Vainikka & Young-Sholten, 1994) or Full Access (Epstein, Flynn, & Martohardjono, 1996) is supported.