There Constructions Used by Japanese Speakers of English: Their Linguistic Features and Acceptability

Abstract

The concept of World Englishes should allow Japanese speakers of English (JS) to develop Japanese English as their own additional language to express their own identity. In Japan, however, previous research has primarily focused on errors JS make, and has not paid adequate attention to Japanese English expressions which are grammatically correct, but not commonly used by native speakers of English (NS). The general purposes of the present study were to collect such grammatically correct Japanese English expressions which were not preferred by NS, and to analyze why those differences emerge between Japanese English and native English. It specifically focused on the use of there constructions, using the Nagoya Interlanguage Corpus of English (NICE) which contains a large collection of essays on social topics written by adult JS and NS of English. It examined differences between JS and NS in terms of linguistic features such as tense, plurality of the logical subject, the post-logical-subject elements, quantifiers and others. It also examined the acceptability of there constructions, and how their sentence structures were changed by NS and JS evaluators who edited the sentences. It was found that JS preferred to use present tense, plural logical subjects, quantifiers, relative clauses and logical subjects which denote “beings”. A large portion of there constructions with these linguistic features were edited by the evaluators. Possible factors that may account for the preferential use of the constructions are also discussed.