Illicit Argument Drop by Japanese-speaking Learners of English

Abstract

This study investigates how sensitive elementary/pre-intermediate-level Japanese-speaking learners of English (JLEs) are to the ungrammaticality of sentences involving illicit subject drop. In an effort to elicit JLEs' implicit linguistic knowledge of illicit subject drop, the experiments conducted in this study adopted the self-paced reading task, which is considered to reduce interference of explicit linguistic knowledge. The results show a trend for JLEs' sensitivity to illicit subject drop, supporting the view that even JLEs, whose native language exhibits topic-prominence, can reset a parameter to the subject-prominence value.