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Pair-list readings in Korean-Japanese, Chinese-Japanese and English-Japanese interlanguage

University of York, hm536{at}york.ac.uk

In English and Chinese, questions with a wh-object and a universally quantified subject (e.g.What did everyone buy?) allow an individual answer (Everyone bought apples.) and a pair-list answer (Sam bought apples, Jo bought bananas, Sally bought...). By contrast, the pair-list answer is reportedly unavailable in Japanese and Korean. This article documents an experimental investigation of the interpretation of such questions in non-native Japanese by learners whose first languages (Lls) are Korean, Chinese or English. The results show that, regardless of L1, only a minority of advanced second language (L2) Japanese learners demonstrate knowledge of the absence of pair-list readings in Japanese. In English-Japanese and Chinese-Japanese interlanguage, L1 transfer readily accounts for this finding: the L1 grammar, which allows pair-list readings, may obstruct acquisition of the more restrictive Japanese grammar. But in Korean-Japanese interlanguage, L1 transfer predicts rejection of pair-list answers. However, in a Korean version of the experimental task, a native Korean control group robustly accepts pair-list readings, contra expectations. A proposal to account for this finding is put forward, under which the Korean-Japanese interlanguage data become compatible with an L1-transfer-based model of L2 acquisition. Moreover, the native-like rejection of pair-list readings by some advanced learners of all three L1 backgrounds is argued to imply that UG constraints operate at the L2 syntax-semantics interface.

Key Words: L2 Japanese • pair-list readings • wh-questions • quantifier interpretation • L2 poverty of the stimulus • syntax - semantics interface • Korean • Chinese

Second Language Research, Vol. 24, No. 2, 189-226 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0267658307086301


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