The current research is intended as a reexamination of some observations concerning the acquisition of English locative verbs provided both from the first/second language research. By making use of a preference task in Experiment 1 and a grammaticality judgment task in Experiment 2, the present study attempts to address the following two research questions: 1) Are the content locative verbs really more canonical (or unmarked) than the container verbs, as suggested by Bowerman (1982)? 2) Is there any effect of transfer if L1 and L2 differ with respect to syntax-semantics correspondences (e.g., Joo, 2003; Juffs 1996a)? The result of Experiment 1 suggests that non-alternating content verbs are the easiest English locative verbs for Japanese L2 learners. In contrast, alternating container verbs proves to be the most difficult, which contradicts with the explanation based solely on learner factors like transfer. The result of Experiment 2, on the other hand, supports the prediction of Bullock (2004), suggesting that transfer is triggered by the difference in the L1/L2 parameter. In an attempt to solve this contradiction, it is suggested that a factor related to language universals (i.e. a marked nature of container verbs, cf. Talmy (1972)) might also play some role in the acquisition process of English locative verbs. As the data seems to be in line with this explanation, this study constitutes another case supporting Full Transfer/Full Access hypothesis (Schwarz and Sprouse, 1996).

This research project was set up to examine how native English speakers and L2 speakers with different levels of language experience make use of the cues of syllable duration and length of pause to identify compound words and phrases. Selected groups of native English speakers, Japanese speakers with extensive experience of English, and Japanese speakers whose knowledge of English was limited took part in a forced choice task. We selected twenty compound words and twenty corresponding two-separate words (phrases) as targets, and inserted a silence of 100ms between the first syllables/words and the second syllables/words in all the targets. After having been given one of the stimuli, the participants were asked to identify the targets either as compound words or as phrases. The results show that the native English speakers and both groups of Japanese speakers, regardless of their experience of English, used the length of pause rather than syllable duration to identify compound words and phrases.

The present paper aims to investigate the process of the resetting of the subject parameter by Japanese learners of English (JLEs) within the theoretical framework of the Minimalist Program, particularly the mechanism of feature inheritance developed by Chomsky (2007, 2008) and Miyagawa (2005). We will claim that the resetting process is twofold: JLEs must learn that the agreement feature percolates down from C to T and that unlike Japanese, the focus feature remains on C. The result of our survey of 399 junior high school students revealed that it is relatively easy for JLEs to acquire percolation of the agreement feature to T, and some of them find it difficult to remove the focus feature from T. This results in a “hybrid” parametric value by which JLEs correctly accept the English expletive construction but incorrectly accept ill-formed null subject constructions as well by misinterpreting sentence-initial elements as Japanese-type topical subjects.

The aim of this study is to investigate how L2 learners sort out the relations among L2 verbs belonging to the same semantic domain and to show to what degree their lexical knowledge of L1 influences the learning process of L2 quantitatively. Specifically, we studied how L1 speakers of Chinese and learners of Chinese whose native language is Korean or Japanese apply various Chinese verbs to 13 videos depicting different carrying actions. Other participants who spoke Korean or Japanese as their native language also saw the same videos and named them in their L1 verbs. We compared how L2 learners named the various carrying events in L2 (Chinese) and how native speakers of Chinese named them. We then compared the production pattern of Chinese verbs by Korean or Japanese L2 learners and the production of pattern of verbs in their L1. The results revealed that it is extremely difficult for L2 learners to use different Chinese carrying verbs in the same way native speakers of Chinese do. Furthermore, the influence of the lexical knowledge of L1 to the learning process of L2 was apparent. The L2 learners' usage pattern of Chinese carrying verbs directly reflected how they divided the events by names in their native language.

This study investigates the extent to which ESL learners from different language backgrounds are sensitive to subject-verb agreement and case errors in L2 sentence processing. Proficient German, Japanese and Chinese-speaking ESL learners participated in a speeded grammaticality judgement task and an untimed sentence completion task. Despite demonstrating excellent knowledge of both grammatical phenomena in the untimed task, the learners differed from the native speaker controls in the speeded grammaticality judgement task in that they showed less sensitivity to agreement than to case irrespective of their language background. Our findings indicate that learners' frequently noted problems with verbal inflectional morphology, which have also previously been hypothesised to reflect a production-specific ‘mapping’ deficit, are not indeed only limited to second language production but extend to comprehension. The results also suggest that the role of L1 influence in L2 morphosyntactic processing is more limited than might be expected.