A Preliminary Study on Japanese CSL Learners’ Acquisition of Mandarin Potential Expressions

Anwei Yu, Huichen S. Hsiao*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

This study aims to investigate Japanese Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) learners’ acquisition of the Mandarin potential complement ‘V bu C’ (V不C), in hope of shedding light on the effect of language proficiency on the language sense of L2 learners. Based on the results of previous studies [1–3], an acceptability judgment test on a 7-point Likert scale is administered to 58 native Mandarin speakers and 62 Japanese CSL learners, divided into two groups based on Mandarin proficiency, to probe whether there are significant differences between groups for the acceptability of grammatical and ungrammatical sentences containing ‘V bu C’ (V不C) and the negative modal verb ‘bu neng’ (不能). The preliminary results indicate a significant difference between the responses of native Mandarin speakers and Japanese CSL learners of all levels for both grammatical and ungrammatical sentences (all ps < .001), implying that learners struggle to discern the usages of ‘V bu C’ (V不C) and ‘bu neng’ (不能). In addition, a significant difference is also observed between the responses of beginning-intermediate and intermediate-advanced Japanese CSL learners (all ps < .05), indicating that the linguistic sense of intermediate-advanced learners is advancing toward that of native speakers, but has not yet reached the near-native level of proficiency.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationChinese Lexical Semantics - 24th Workshop, CLSW 2023, Revised Selected Papers
EditorsMinghui Dong, Jia-Fei Hong, Jingxia Lin, Peng Jin
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages423-434
Number of pages12
ISBN (Print)9789819705856
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024
Event24th Workshop on Chinese Lexical Semantics, CLSW 2023 - Singapore, Singapore
Duration: 2023 May 192023 May 21

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume14515 LNAI
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference24th Workshop on Chinese Lexical Semantics, CLSW 2023
Country/TerritorySingapore
CitySingapore
Period2023/05/192023/05/21

Keywords

  • Acceptability Judgment Test
  • Chinese Modal Verbs
  • Japanese CSL Learners
  • Potential Complement

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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