Chapter 20. On the nature of operators in the grammar of L1 Chinese learners of L2 Japanese

Abstract

Under the current generative framework (Chomsky, 1993, 1995), this paper examined the acquisition of wh-questions and conditional sentences in the L2 Japanese grammar of L1 Chinese learners, focusing on whether properties of wh-phrases divergent across languages can be acquired in L2. We used an acceptability judgement task and conducted the experiment online. Theoretically, the study investigated the acquisition of operator-variable chains in their grammar. The results showed that their L2 Japanese grammar is a mixture of L1 Chinese and L2 Japanese. This apparent inconsistency most likely results from the way that operators are fully construed with all the necessary features in place: Chinese operators are formed in the lexicon, while Japanese ones are construed in core syntax (Saito, 2017, 2021). The current finding is taken as support for the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2008, 2009), which states that L2 learners reassemble L1 features in order to construct L2 grammar.