Second Language Acquisition Research and Japanese Language Teaching: A Functionalist Approach

Abstract

This article examines the mechanism of grammar acquisition in a second language and explores how linguistic categories can be acquired effectively. Currently, the mainstream second language teaching approach is the communicative approach. As far as the acquisition of linguistic categories is concerned, however, the communicative approach is based on a ‘learning by doing’ model, which assumes that learners will acquire linguistic categories through exposure to language input and interaction. Therefore, insights into how individual grammatical items should be taught are still quite limited, and thus investigation concerning effective methods of teaching linguistic categories based on second language acquisition research is sorely needed. Here, I examine two linguistic domains (tense-aspect and relative clauses) for which the acquisition process has been researched and understood to some degree both in Japanese and other languages. I will also consider how acquisition can be facilitated, in particular from a functional-cognitive linguistics perspective.

Acknowledgements

This article is based on a special lecture delivered on 14 July 2009 at the JSAA-ICJLE 2009 International Conference, University of New South Wales, Sydney. I thank the audience for their questions and comments, and Kevin Gregg for his valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. Any remaining errors are mine.

Notes

¹See Gass and Selinker, Second Language Acquisition, and Ortega, Understanding Second Language Acquisition.

²See Lightbown and Spada, How Languages Are Learned.

³This also applies to the acquisition of lexical items. See, for example, Kellerman, ‘Giving Learners a Break’.

⁴Krashen, ‘Some Issues Relating to the Monitor Model’.

⁵Bloom, ‘Précis of How Children Learn the Meanings of Words’.

⁶Dulay and Burt, ‘Natural Sequences in Child Second Language Acquisition’.

⁷Schumann, ‘The Acquisition of English Negation’.

⁸One exception is Larsen-Freeman, ‘An Explanation for the Morpheme Acquisition Order’.

⁹See Bates and MacWhinney, ‘Functionalist Approaches to Grammar’, Tomasello, Constructing a Language, and Ellis, ‘Constructions, Chunking, and Connectionism’.

¹⁰Learners are known to often create restricted representation of a linguistic category at the beginning, which is restricted to typical, basic members of the category – called prototypes. For example, in the case of simple past tense in English, change-of-state verbs are prototypes. See, for example, Shirai and Andersen, ‘The Acquisition of Tense-Aspect Morphology’.

¹¹‘Aspect’ is a linguistic category that characterizes how a speaker views the temporal contour of a situation described, i.e. whether situation is ongoing, completed, durative, punctual, etc. When it is expressed by grammatical means such as English be + V-ing, or Japanese -te i-(ru), it is called grammatical aspect. When it is expressed by lexical means, it is lexical aspect. Lexical aspect is also referred to as inherent aspect, aktionsart, or situation aspect/type.

¹²Jacobsen, The Transitive Structure of Events in Japanese, and Ebert, ‘Ambiguous Perfect-Progressive Forms Across Languages’.

¹³For instance, Kindaichi, ‘Kokugo dōshi no ichibunrui’, Yoshikawa, ‘Gendai Nihongo dōshi no asupekuto no kenkyū’, and Kudō, Asupekuto/tensu taikei to tekusuto.

¹⁴Shirai, ‘The Semantics of the Japanese Imperfective -teiru’.

¹⁵See Shirai, ‘The Semantics of the Japanese Imperfective -teiru’.

¹⁶For instance, Smith, The Parameter of Aspect.

¹⁷Shirai, ‘The Semantics of the Japanese Imperfective -teiru’.

¹⁸Andersen and Shirai, ‘Discourse Motivations’ and Shirai and Andersen, ‘The Acquisition of Tense-Aspect Morphology’.

¹⁹See Bickerton, Roots of Language.

²⁰Shirai and Andersen, ‘The Acquisition of Tense-Aspect Morphology’.

²¹Bickerton, Roots of Language.

²²In English, progressive marking is acquired before past marking, while in Japanese past tense -ta is acquired earlier than -te i-(ru). This is due to various factors such as frequencies and saliency/consistency of the forms. The point is that Bickerton predicts that universally children look for grammatical markers that mark semantic notions (telicity, or lack of telicity) and try to map grammatical markers onto such notions, regardless of which one comes first.

²³Shirai and Nishi, ‘How What We Mean Impacts How We Talk’.

²⁴Shirai, ‘Inherent Aspect and Acquisition of Tense/Aspect Morphology in Japanese’.

²⁵Shirai, ‘The Emergence of Tense-Aspect Morphology in Japanese’.

²⁶Shirai and Suzuki, ‘The Acquisition of the Japanese Imperfective Aspect Marker’.

²⁷Li and Shirai, The Acquisition of Lexical and Grammatical Aspect.

²⁸Shirai and Kurono, ‘The Acquisition of Tense-Aspect Marking’.

²⁹Sugaya and Shirai, ‘The Acquisition of Progressive and Resultative Meanings’.

³⁰Ishida, ‘Effects of Recasts on the Acquisition of the Aspectual Form’.

³¹Sugaya and Shirai, ‘The Acquisition of Progressive and Resultative Meanings’.

³²Ibid.

³³Ishida, ‘Effects of Recasts on the Acquisition of the Aspectual Form’.

³⁴Shirai, ‘Inherent Aspect and Acquisition of Tense/Aspect Morphology in Japanese.’

³⁵See Taylor, ‘The Use of Overgeneralization and Transfer Learning Strategies by Elementary and Intermediate Students of ESL’.

³⁶Nishi, ‘Verb Learning and the Acquisition of Aspect’; Nishi and Shirai, ‘Where L1 Semantic Transfer Occurs’.

³⁷Keenan and Comrie, ‘Noun Phrase Accessibility and Universal Grammar’.

³⁸See Gass, ‘Language Transfer and Universal Grammatical Relations’, Doughty, ‘Second Language Instruction Does Make A Difference’, and Eckman, Bell, and Nelson, ‘On the Generalization of Relative Clause Instruction’ for English. See Hyltenstam, ‘The Use of Typological Markedness Conditions’ for Swedish. See Croteau, ‘Second Language Acquisition of Relative Clause Structures’ for Italian. See Mitchell, ‘The Acquisition of Relative Pronoun Structures’ for French.

³⁹Ellis, The Study of Second Language Acquisition.

⁴⁰Tarallo and Myhill, ‘Interference and Natural Language Processing’.

⁴¹See Ozeki and Shirai, ‘Does the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy Predict’ for Japanese. See Jeon and Kim, ‘Development of Relativization in Korean’ for Korean. See Yip and Matthews, ‘Relative Clauses in Cantonese-English Bilingual Children’ for Cantonese.

⁴²Mak, Vonk, and Schriefers, ‘The Influence of Animacy on Relative Clause Processing’, and Traxler, Morris, and Seely, ‘Processing Subject and Object Relative Clauses’.

⁴³Ozeki and Shirai, ‘Does the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy Predict’, Ozeki, Daiichi daini gengo ni okeru Nihongo meishi; and for the KY corpus, see Kamada, ‘KY-Kōpasu’.

⁴⁴Mak, Vonk, and Schriefers, ‘The Influence of Animacy on Relative Clause Processing’.

⁴⁵Andersen, ‘Models, Processes, Principles, and Strategies’.

⁴⁶Uemura, ‘Deeta-beesu de shiraberu’.

⁴⁷See Mak, Vonk, and Schriefers, ‘The Influence of Animacy on Relative Clause Processing’.

⁴⁸Ozeki and Shirai, ‘Does the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy Predict’.

⁴⁹See Eckman, Bell, and Nelson, ‘On the Generalization of Relative Clause Instruction’.

⁵⁰See Krashen, ‘Some Issues Relating to the Monitor Model’ for natural order, and Pienemann, Language Processing and Second Language Development for processability theory.

⁵¹See White, Second Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar.

⁵²Goldschneider and DeKeyser, ‘Explaining the “Natural Order of L2 Morpheme Acquisition” in English’.

⁵³The universality of this order has also been recently questioned; see Luk and Shirai, ‘Is the Acquisition Order’.

⁵⁴Tomasello, Constructing a Language.

⁵⁵Ellis, ‘Constructions, Chunking, and Connectionism’.

⁵⁶See, for example, Ishida, ‘Effects of Recasts on the Acquisition of the Aspectual Form’.

⁵⁷Andersen, ‘The One to One Principle of Interlanguage Construction’.

⁵⁸Bardovi-Harlig and Reynolds, ‘The Role of Lexical Aspect’.

⁵⁹Zobl, ‘Grammars in Search of Input and Intake’.

⁶⁰Gass, ‘From Theory to Practice’, Eckman, Bell and Nelson, ‘On the Generalization of Relative Clause Instruction’, and Doughty, ‘Second Language Instruction Does Make a Difference’.

⁶¹Zobl, ‘Grammars in Search of Input and Intake’.

⁶²Ibid.

⁶³Akiha, Horie, and Shirai, ‘Kakujoshi no gakushū shidō ni okeru’.

⁶⁴Mitchell, ‘The Acquisition of Relative Pronoun Structures’.

⁶⁵See Croteau, ‘Second Language Acquisition of Relative Clause Structures’, Doughty ‘Second Language Instruction Does Make A Difference’, and Eckman, Bell, and Nelson, ‘On the Generalization of Relative Clause Instruction’.

⁶⁶Singh, ‘Influences of High and Low Variability’.

⁶⁷Goldberg and Casenhiser, ‘Construction Learning and Second Language Acquisition’.

⁶⁸In their study, they had native English speakers, both adults and children, learn a construction that does not exist in English, thus simulating adult L2 and child L1 acquisition.

⁶⁹Bybee, ‘Usage-based Grammar and Second Language Acquisition’.

⁷⁰Geeraerts, ‘Recontextualizing Grammar’.