L2 Acquisition of the Specificity Constraint of Japanese Plural -Tati

Abstract

This study investigates the second language (L2) acquisition of specificity marked by the Japanese plural -tati, within the framework of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (FRH) (Lardiere, 2008, 2009). Japanese -tati optionally expresses plurality, but it is also constrained by specificity—a noun suffixed with -tati is obligatorily specific hence incompatible with contexts with no specific referent. We examine whether L2 learners can acquire the specificity constraint of -tati and whether a similar property in the first language (L1) facilitates acquisition. We target L2 Japanese learners with two different L1s: Korean, which has a plural marker with a similar specific reading (-tul); and English, whose counterpart (-s) does not concern specificity. The results of an acceptability judgement task showed that native Japanese speakers are sensitive to the specificity constraint, and that the L2 learners' knowledge of the target property is, despite their descriptively target-like response pattern, not as evident, with no concrete evidence of L1 effects. Nevertheless, an individual analysis confirmed that some advanced L2 learners in each L1 group have robust knowledge of the constraint, suggesting that L2 acquisition of this constraint is at least possible. We attribute the considerable difficulty and the absence of L1-related difference in the L2 acquisition of -tati to opacity of the form-meaning mapping due to its multiple meanings of plurality, specificity, and associativity (‘x and others’ reading). That is, a single form with more than one meaning can increase the difficulty of establishing the form-meaning correlations. In terms of the FRH, a prerequisite for mapping an L1 meaning to an L2 form and for subsequent feature reassembly is that the form-meaning correlation must be detected (otherwise, neither L1 transfer nor L2 acquisition will occur). Therefore, we argue that the challenge lies with the initial feature mapping, and that the findings can be explained within the FRH.