This study observes the prosodic constraints that govern the pattern of simplification of Japanese contracted sounds in the acquisition processes of first (L1) and second language (L2) learners : Japanese children and English speaking learners of Japanese.
Japanese language has a group of palatalized consonants, known to scholars of Japanese language as the 'contracted' sounds, [CjV]. In accordance with the prosodic constraints of Japanese, which is mora-timed, a CjV mora has to be the same length as a CV mora. However, in addition to typical moraic timing errors, learners of Japanese whose L1 is English appear to treat Japanese contracted sounds initially as consonant + glide clusters, where there is an equivalent [Cj] cluster in English, or otherwise tend to insert an epenthetic vowel [CijV]. The phonological status of the palatal glide [j] is still controversial in both English and Japanese. The acquisition process of the Japanese “CjV” unit by English speaking learners could offer the clue to clarify this issue.
Given the similarity between palatalized consonants and consonant clusters in their phonetic status, the acquisition literature of consonant clusters is considered initially. In general, L1 learners at an early stage of acquisition employ a reduction strategy to cope with the production difficulties associated with the clusters. Sonority appears to be the causal factor referred to most frequently. If the sonority hypothesis governs the reduction pattern, syllable initial clusters reduce to whichever consonant in the cluster creates a maximal sonority rise, and syllable final clusters reduce to whichever consonant in the cluster creates a minimal sonority descent; e.g. Onsets “pl” → “p” Codas “lp” → “l” (Ohala, 1999). The former would possibly be the case if the “CjV” unit in Japanese were treated as a consonant cluster. The results of this study show a contrastive reduction pattern between L1 and L2 learners. Due to the moraic timing constraint, Japanese children would not epenthesize vowels in producing contracted sounds, while L2 learners violated moraic timing by lengthening a vowel or inserting gemination as well as an epenthetic vowel. The reduced consonant also differed between the two groups, and the result shed light on the clarification of the phonological status of /Cj/ sequences in Japanese and English. The findings of the study also point to Japanese children's early acquisition of palato-alveolars, which accounts for the prevalence of the recognition that children are good at producing the contracted sounds.

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The acquisition of argument structure has recently received considerable attention in SLA. This study seeks to add its findings regarding the knowledge of English locative patterns attained by Korean L2 learners to this line of inquiry. Following Bley-Vroman & Joo (2001) and Schwartz et al. (2003), an acceptability judgment task was administered to a group of adult Korean learners of English as a second language and to a group of native English speakers. The task consisted of items representing three different sentence patterns in which locative verbs appear : (a) Locative Alternation, (b) PP-Omission, and (c) Raising-to-Subject; these patterns were used to test for knowledge of semantic verb classes and how they map to syntax. The results are inconclusive regarding (c), but do provide evidence that Korean L2 learners can come to have principled, target-like knowledge of English locative verb classes in patterns (a) and (b).

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It has been claimed that SLA of syntax, at its early stage at least, is carried out by the full transference of Ll parametric values (Schwartz, 1998a & b; Schwartz & Sprouse, 1994, 1996; Tsimpli & Smith, 1991; Tsimpli & Roussou, 1991). The mechanism of L1 transfer is explained by Tsimpli & Smith in more concrete terms : L1 transfer is an association process where learners map L1 features onto L2 morphophonological forms, i.e. learners “misanalyse” the input. The present paper investigates this possibility through a study of the acquisition of obligatory subjects (referential DPs, and expletives 'it' and 'there') by Japanese learners of English, and gives further support to the “misanalysis” theory. It has been claimed, within the framework proposed by Chomsky (1995), that structural differences between English and Japanese subjects are explicable in terms of the feature specifications associated with them. Japanese allows a null subject in tensed clauses whereas English does not; this is due to the D feature in Tense (T) being weak in Japanese and strong in English (Wakabayashi, 1997, 2002; cf. Yatsushiro, 1999). However, this parametric difference is claimed to be easily conquered by Japanese learners of English (Hirakawa, 2003; Wakabayashi, 1997, 2002; Wakabayashi & Negishi, 2003; Zobl, 1990). The present study examines the validity of the above, by investigating whether noun phrases appearing immediately before the verb in Japanese-English Interlanguage are really subjects in the sense of English. We argue, by presenting experimental data, that at least elementary to intermediate level Japanese speakers misanalyse English Subject-Verb structure as Topic-Null Subject-Verb (Kuribara, 2000, 2003), whilst they know that there must be an overt phrase before a predicate. A grammaticality judgement test has been administered to three groups of learners whose English proficiency ranged from elementary to post-intermediate. The test contains two types of constructions : null subjects placed in various structural contexts, and DP topic-Subject structures. The data show that learners tend to tolerate null subject clauses where the verbs are preceded by phrasal categories (such as DPs) significantly more than clauses where the verbs are preceded by heads or no lexical items at all. As to DP Topic-Subject structures, the majority of elementary and intermediate learners have accepted all the constructions, regardless of whether the topic is O-marked or not, or whether the subject is overt or null. These results clearly indicate that the elementary and intermediate learners have not acquired the strong D feature. What they have learnt seems to be that English generates the subject and/or the topic before the verb (in the sense of Japanese), and that (at least one of) the phrase (s) always requires morphophonological material. (cf. Hawkins, 2001; Kuribara, 2000, 2003).

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