Processing subject and object relative clauses in Japanese by Turkish speaking learners トルコ人日本語学習者による日本語主語関係節及び目的語関係節の処理 Barış Kahraman, Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University,
[email protected]
13th International Conference of the EAJS TALLINN UNIVERSITY 25 AUGUST
INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND
PREVIOUS STUDIES in JAPANESE Different results were observed in previous studies. ORs are easier than SRs⇒ consistent with LDH
Subject relative clauses (SRs): 先生を見かけた学生はたばこを吸っていた。 The student who saw the teacher was smoking a cigarette.
Object relative clauses (ORs): 先生が見かけた学生はたばこを吸っていた。
(e.g. Kashiwagi, 2011: L1 English; Ozeki & Shirai, 2007: L1 Chinese)
SRs are easier than ORs⇒ consistent with SDH (e.g. Kanno, 2001: L1 English; Kanno, 2007: L1 Chinese, Indonesian, Sinhalese, Thai, Vietnamese)
The student who the teacher saw was smoking a cigarette.
Comprehension ease of SRs and ORs differ. Where does this difference come from?
Previous studies generally employed offline tasks (Accuracy rates of SRs and ORs were compared).
⇒How about the real-time comprehension of RCs. Learners’L1 is typologically different from Japanese. ⇒How about the learners whose L1 is typologically similar to Japanese?
PRESENT STUDY
The number of syntactic nodes between RC-head and a gap determines the difficulty of RCs (O’Grady, 1997) SRs are easier than ORs
AIM: The present study investigates how Turkish L1 learners comprehend Japanese SRs and ORs, and examines the validity of LDH and SDH in Japanese. METHOD: Self-paced reading task (自己ペース読文課題) ⇒ We can see the time spent on reading each word
LINEAR DISTANCE HYPOTHESIS
(SRs): ___i 先生を見かけた学生iはたばこを吸っていた。 (ORs): 先生が___i見かけた学生iはたばこを吸っていた。 The number of intervening elements between RC-head and a gap determines the difficulty of RCs (Gibson, 1998) ORs are easier than SRs in Japanese.
MAJOR FINDINGS Turkish speaking learners of Japanese read SRs faster than ORs. SRs were easier to process than ORs. SDH can account for the results, but LDH cannot.
EXPERIMENT AIM: We examine whether there is a processing asymmetry between SRs and ORs in L2 Japanese. PARTICIPANTS: 26 higher-intermediate Turkish speaking learners of Japanese at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University.
RESULTS ACCURACY: SRs ⇒ 96%;
ORs
READING TIMES: **
2000
MATERIALS: 24 sets of SRs and ORs + 72 fillers
The child who was looking for the parents at department store suddenly cried.
ORs:
デパートで両親が探していた子供は急に泣き出した。
The child who the parents were looking for at department store suddenly cried.
1800 読み時間（ms）
words: 1 2 3 4 5 6 SRs: デパートで両親を探していた子供は急に泣き出した。
1600 1400 1200
OR
1000
SR 800
PROCEDURE: Sentences were presented on PC in word by word noncumulative fashion. Participants were instructed to read sentences in a natural pace and answer YES-NO question accurately. PREDICTION: SDH ⇒ SR < OR; LDH ⇒ OR < SR
⇒ 94%
1デパートで
[F1 (1,25) = 7.74, p < .01; F2 (1,23) = 3.88, p = .06] 2両親が／を
3探していた
4子供は
5急に
6泣き出した
SRs were read faster than ORs. ⇒ SRs were easier to process than ORs Processing asymmetry between SRs and ORs was observed at RC-head.
GENERAL DISCUSSION Turkish speaking learners comprehended SRs more easily than ORs in Japanese. The results are consistent with Kanno (2001, 2007) and L1 sentence processing studies (e.g., Ishizuka, 2005), but inconsistent with Kashiwagi (2011) and Ozeki & Shirai (2007). SDH can explain the results, whereas LDH cannot. When L1 is typologically similar to L2, the number of syntactic nodes between RC-head and a gap has a stronger impact on L2 relative clause processing than the linear distance between RC-head and a gap.
FUTURE STUDIES We need to examine the possible influences of other factors such as: Frequencies of SRs and ORs Animacy of nouns within RCs Expectation We also need to investigate the processing of other types of RCs.
