Comprehension of the Japanese Non-reason -kara Clause

Abstract

The Japanese -kara clause semantically extends from content domain via the epistemic domain to the speech-act domain, resulting in a polysynaptic form. The Korean language also has these three domains whereas the Chinese language has the content and epistemic domains but lacks the speech-act domain. Accordingly, Chinese learners of Japanese might have deficits in acquisition of the speech-act domain. To show this, the present study compared the acquisition of 48 native Korean and 48 Chinese speakers learning Japanese (N=96 in total) by controlling their grammatical ability. The results indicated that Koreans scored equally high across the three domains while Chinese scored high in both the content and the epistemic domains but low in the speech-act domain. Consequently, the absent of a target language feature in the first language strongly affects acquisition of the target language.