ACQUISITION OF JAPANESE VOCABULARY BY CHINESE BACKGROUND LEARNERS The Roles of Transfer in the Productive and Receptive Acquisition of Cognates and Polysemy T. KATO A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Modern Language Studies University of New South Wales October, 2006 ACQUISITION OF JAPANESE VOCABULARY BY CHINESE BACKGROUND LEARNERS -The Roles of Transfer in the Productive and Receptive Acquisition of Cognates and Polysemy- Toshihito Kato ABSTRACT As is widely known, Japanese and Chinese not only share the common logographic orthography called “kanji”or“hanzi” respectively, but also share a number of kanji compounds as cognates, many of which share the same or similar meaning. The major objective of this dissertation is to investigate the roles of transfer and the difficulty in Chinese background learners’ (CBLs’) use and acquisition of Japanese kanji compounds and kanji words. In particular, under what condition and how CBLs transfer Chinese words into Japanese counterparts is investigated. The results of a lexicality judgement test, an oral production test, and a translation test showed that acquisition of partially deceptive cognates, which share the same orthography with partly the same and partly different meanings, was often prolonged. It was also found that the difficulty of acquisition of partially deceptive cognates varied according to their cross-linguistic semantic condition and task type. In the oral production test, CBLs frequently used L1 words by adapting them into L2 phonology both successfully and unsuccessfully when they had no prior knowledge of the L2 counterparts. In addition, negative transfer was detected even when CBLs had a correct knowledge of the L2 word. The results of the translation test revealed that CBLs are liable to misinterpret the meaning of partially deceptive cognates when one of their meanings happens to make sense within the context. Additionally, it is suggested that ii CBLs might create different types of interlanguage depending upon the cross-linguistic semantic condition and relative frequency of the L2 input for each meaning of the partially deceptive cognates. The transferability of polysemy was found to be constrained by prototype condition, learners’ existing L2 knowledge, and task type. While transferability correlated well with the perceived prototypicality of the L1 items in CBLs’ oral production, transfer was also at work for the less prototypical items in their comprehension task. The findings indicate that the transferability of Chinese words into their Japanese counterparts is constrained by multiple factors. Further, both positive and negative transfer influence CBLs’ production, comprehension, and interlanguage construction of Japanese vocabulary in a complex manner. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to those whose support and help made this dissertation possible. First and foremost, I would like to thank Associate Professor Chihiro Kinoshita Thomson, my academic supervisor. She has given me insightful suggestions and encouragement throughout the years that I have been at the University of New South Wales. Without her guidance and patience, this dissertation would not have been possible. I am also extremely grateful to my co-supervisor Dr. Yew-Jin Fang for her patience and encouragement, especially in the later stages of thesis writing. Many thanks are also due to Ms. Kazue Okamoto, Yukika Ojima, Kikuko Nakamura and other lectures at the University of New South Wales who helped me to collect the valuable data for this study. My gratitude also goes to Ms. Jessica Wu, whose help with Chinese language and data collection has been indispensable to me. I am deeply indebted to Associate Professor Tatsuhiko Matsushita of Obirin University for his help and stimulating discussion. This motivated me to pursue the topic in this study. I also thank Dr. Kayoko Evon for her advice on statistical analysis of the data. I thank Dr. Paula McAndrew, who read the draft and polished the English of the thesis. I would like to express my gratitude to all my family members in Japan who have given me their support throughout the period of my stay in Sydney. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………. 1 0.1 Introduction ………………………………………………………………… 1 0.2 Objectives of the Present Research……...…………………………………... 10 0.3 Organisation of Chapters…………………………………………………….. 10 PART I: REVIEW OF RELATED RESEARCH…………………………………. 12 1. RESEARCH ON LANGUAGE TRANSFER……………………………………… 13 1.1 A Brief History of Transfer Research and the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis………………………………………………………………….…13 1.2 The Constraints of Transfer or Transferability……………………………… 22 1.3 Transfer as a Production Procedure…………………………………………. 34 1.4 Transfer as a Reception Procedure………………………………………….. 45 1.5 Transfer as a Learning Procedure……………………………………………. 55 1.6 Avoidance……………………………………………………………………..59 2. RESEARCH ON L2 VOCABULARY ACQUISITION AND L2 LEXICO- SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT…………………………………………………… 67 2.1 A Brief Overview of L2 Vocabulary Research…………………………….. 67 2.2 Receptive versus Productive Vocabulary…………………………………… 70 2.3 Learnability of L2 Vocabulary………………………………………………. 77 2.4 L2 Lexico-semantic Development………………………………………….. 85 2.5 Polysemy and Prototype…………………………………………………….. 99 2.6 Cognates……………………………………………………………………. 110 2.7 Bilingual Mental Lexicon…………………………………..………………. 121 2.8 Japanese Kanji Compounds………………………………………………… 130 2.9 Summary of Findings and Problems in the Existing Literature….………… 140 PART II: CHINESE BACKGROUND LEARNERS’ (CBLs’) USE AND ACQUISITION OF JAPANESE VOCABULARY…………………....143 3. THE ROLES OF TRANSFER IN CBLs’ USE AND ACQUISITION OF FOUR TYPES OF JAPANESE KANJI COMPOUNDS (STUDY A)……………. 145 3.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………… 145 v 3.2 Research Question and Hypotheses………………………………………… 147 3.3 Methodology………………………………………………………………... 148 3.3.1 Participants…………………………………………………………… 148 3.3.2 Instrument……………………………………………………………. 149 3.3.3 Procedures……………………………………………………………. 157 3.4 Results and Discussion…………………………………………………….. 157 3.4.1 Use and Acquisition of Good Cognates……………………………... 158 3.4.2 Use and Acquisition of Non-cognate Kanji Compounds….…………. 160 3.4.3 Use and Acquisition of Totally Deceptive Cognates………………….163 3.4.4 Use and Acquisition of Partially Deceptive Cognates……………….. 168 3.5 Summary of Results and Conclusion………………………………………. 185 4. THE ROLES OF TRANSFER IN CBLs’ USE AND ACQUISITION OF PARTIALLY DECEPTIVE COGNATES (STUDY B)…………………………. 190 4.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………… 190 4.2 Research Question and Hypotheses……………………………………….. 192 4.3 Methodology……………………………………………………………….. 193 4.3.1 Participants……………………………………………………………195 4.3.2 Instruments…………………………………………………………… 196 4.3.2.1 Oral Production Test………………………………………..... 196 4.3.2.2 Translation Test……………………………………...………. 197 4.4 Results and Discussion……………………………………………………... 199 4.4.1 CBLs’ Use and Acquisition of Partially Deceptive Cognates in the Oral Production Test…………………………………………. 201 4.4.1.1 Production of (J<C) in Shared Meaning…………...………… 202 4.4.1.2 Production of the Semantic Range that is not Covered by a Cognate in L2……………....……... 209 4.4.1.3 Production of (J>C) in Shared Meaning…………...………… 218 4.4.1.4 Production of (J>C) in Unshared Meaning…………..……… 223 4.4.2 CBLs’ Use and Acquisition of Partially Deceptive Cognates in the Translation Test………………………………………………. 231 4.4.2.1 Comprehension of (J<C) in Shared Meaning…………..…… 232 4.4.2.2 Comprehension of the Non-Cognate L2 Word whose Meaning is Covered by a Cognate in L1…...……….. 238 4.4.2.3 Comprehension of (J>C) in Shared Meaning..……………… 241 vi 4.4.2.4 Comprehension of (J>C) in Unshared Meaning…...………… 246 4.5 Summary of Results and Conclusion…………………………………..…... 252 5. TRANSFERABILITY OF CHINESE POLYSEMOUS VERBS “(KAI)” & “ (KAN)” AND ACQUISITION OF JAPANESE CORRESPONDING WORDS BY CBLs (STUDY C)………………………………………………………………… 258 5.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………….... 258 5.2 Research Question and Hypotheses………………………………………... 263 5.3 Survery on the Prototypicality of Chinese Polysemy (Investigation 1)……. 264 5.3.1 Instrument and Procedures…………………………………………… 264 5.3.2 Participants…………………………………………………………… 266 5.3.3 Results………………………………………………………………... 267 5.4 Acceptability Judgement Test on Transferability of Chinese Polysemy (Investigation 2) ……………………………………………………..…….. 269 5.4.1 Instrument and Procedures…………………………………………… 269 5.4.2 Participants…………………………………………………………… 271 5.4.3 Results………………………………………………………………... 271 5.5 Oral Production Test on Transferability of Chinese Polysemy (Investigation 3)…………………………………………………………….. 276 5.5.1 Instrument and Procedures…………………………………………… 276 5.5.2 Participants…………………………………………………………… 277 5.5.3 Results………………………………………………………………... 277 5.6 Discussion…………………………………………………………………... 282 5.6.1 Transferability of Chinese Polysemous Verb “(kai)” and Acquisition of its Corresponding Words in Japanese…….....……….. 284 5.6.2 Transferability of Chinese Polysemous Verb “(kan)” and Acquisition of its Corresponding Words in Japanese…………...…… 291 5.7 Summary of Results and Conclusion………………………………………. 294 6. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………… 299 6.1 Summary of Findings…………………………………………………….... 299 6.2 Contributions to the Field…………………………………………………... 304 6.3 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Studies……………………………. 306 6.4 Pedagogical Implications………………………………………………….... 308 vii REFERENCES………………………………………………………...…………….. 313 APPENDIX………………………………………………………………………….