Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-s22k5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-26T03:34:24.176Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

ACQUIRING LINGUISTIC CUES TO IDENTIFY AGENT

Evidence from Children Learning Japanese as a Second Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 1998

Patricia L. Rounds  and
Ruth Kanagy
Patricia L. Rounds
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
Ruth Kanagy
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study investigates children's changing sensitivity to processing cues for identifying agent (word order, case marking, and animacy) as a function of proficiency in a second language. English-speaking learners of Japanese need to appropriately adjust cue strengths in moving from a rigid SVO language to one in which SOV word order is a good general processing strategy, but case marking must ultimately be relied on if it conflicts with this order. English-speaking children in grades K–7 in an immersion school were asked to identify the agent for a set of audiotaped sentences in English and Japanese. The children in this study learned to use SOV word order, lexical semantics, and canonical case marking, but they do not provide evidence of appropriately exploiting noncanonical case marking. We suggest that these results might be accounted for by the context in which input is processed in immersion school classrooms.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , December 1998 , pp. 509 - 542
Copyright
© 1998 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)