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The present study investigates the effects of developmental principles on processing of Japanese relative clauses. Based on Slobin (1973), a set of developmental principles was formulated in Prideaux (1979): these are the principles of cognitive precedence, functional exploitation, grammatical uniqueness and structural integrity. The operation of these principles in language acquisition is tested on Japanese speaking children's processing of conjoined sentences and relative clauses in comprehension and imitation. Two hypotheses are formulated as to differential processing of four types of relative clauses based on the principle of structural integrity: one concerns predictable ease of processing of left-branching relative clauses (SS,SO types) over center-embedded structures (OS,00 types), and the other concerns ease of processing of subject focused relative clauses (SS,0S types) over object focused ones (SO,00 types). Sixteen children ranged from five to eight in age served as the subjects. The results indicate that the developmental principles are operative in Japanese children's processing of conjoined sentences and relative clauses. Among the relative clause structures, left-branching relative clauses were processed significantly better than center-embedded structures, thus supporting the hypothesis of non-interruption. The other hypothesis which states that subject focus is easier to process than object focus, however, is not supported by the data. The present study indicates that the position of the relative clause is the most important factor to affect the child's processing of relative clause structures. The results that children had considerable processing difficulty with center-embedded structures provide evidence for the universal constraint against interruptions.
A complete reference guide to modern Japanese grammar, it fills many gaps left by previous textbooks. Grammar points are put in context by examples from a range of Japanese media. Arranged alphabetically, it includes a detailed index of terms.
This book presents a cross-section of recent generative research into the syntax of relative clauses constructions. Most of the papers collected here react in some way to Kayne's (1994) proposal to handle relative clauses in terms of determiner complementation and raising of the relativized nominal. The editors provide a thorough introduction of these proposals, their background and motivations, arguments for and against. There are detailed studies in the syntax and the semantics of relative clauses constructions in Latin, Ancient Greek, Romanian, Hindi, (Old) English, Old High German, (dialects of) Dutch, Turkish, Swedish, and Japanese. The book should be of interest to any linguist working within generative syntax.
"Experimental studies were conducted with high-intermediate and advanced learners of Japanese (15 English speakers and 18 Korean speakers). Tests examined the learners' knowledge of the two grammatical properties in Japanese---namely, the lack of wh-movement and the presence of pro. Korean is different from English but similar to Japanese with respect to the parameters in question. Following FTFA, it is hypothesized that English-speaking learners initially transfer their L1 values, and that eventually they are able to switch parameters to the L2 values by accessing UG. The results of several tasks (including interpretation tasks and judgment tasks) confirm this hypothesis; while Korean speakers generally performed well irrespective of proficiency levels, English-speaking intermediate learners transferred their L1 values, failing to accept grammatical Japanese sentences that are not possible in English. English-speaking advanced learners, on the other hand, performed better than intermediate learners, and exhibited evidence that they had acquired the two properties of Japanese, supporting FTFA." --