The second research question addresses the issue regarding the influence of the meaning effect (i.e., same vs. different meanings) on our Chinese learners of Japanese. The overall results and general discussion of the findings are presented in the following.
In this section, our revised hierarchy of difficulty is also used to analyze the meaning effect. Meanings are of two types: same and different. The same meaning can be classified as the Correspondence type because the meanings of kanji characters and Chinese characters are corresponding to each other and Chinese learners can transfer meanings into their L2. As for the different meaning, the characters can be found in both languages (in traditional forms and
in simplified forms), but Japanese speakers have different interpretations for these characters.
Thus, the different meaning is classified as the Retranslated type.
Our claim that the same meaning correspondence is at the easiest level and that the different meaning is at the more difficult level can be supported by the results of the present study.
Table 4-8 Participants’ Overall Performances on the Same and Different Meanings of Japanese Kanji Characters
Meaning M SD F
p-value
same 0.96 0.05 364.521b .000***
different 0.74 0.18
As shown in Table 4-8, one-way ANOVA indicated that there was a significant difference between the same and the different meanings of Japanese kanji characters (F (1, 92) = 364.521b, p < .001). The results also showed that all the groups performed better on the same meaning (M = 0.96) than on the different meaning (M = 0.74).
Table 4-9 The p-values for the within-group Differences between Same and Different Meanings of Japanese Kanji Characters
B I A N
F
137.575 99.402 63.575 4.389P
.000*** .000*** .000*** .042*As can be seen in Table 4-9, according to the result of one-way ANOVA, a significant difference between the same meaning and the different meaning was found in Group B (F (1, 46) = 137.575, p < .001), Group I (F (1, 46) = 99.402, p < .001), Group A (F (1, 46) = 63.575, p < .001) and the native baseline group (F (1, 46) = 4.389, p < .05).
In general, the same meaning correspondence was significantly easier than the different meaning for our participants to acquire. Our revised hierarchy of difficulty can explain the result that the same meaning which is classified as the Correspondence type was
easier to interpret than the different meaning which is classified as the Retranslated type.
Hence, the participants’ performances were indeed influenced by the meaning of kanji characters. In the previous literature, Leong and Tamaoka (1998) mentioned that the kanji characters were semantic-related in nature. When readers were asked to translate kanji characters into English, the reaction time was faster than kana-only (including hiragana and katakana) scripts. Kess and Miyamoto (1999) argued the importance of the kanji characters in that these characters could be served to distinguish meanings of a statement. Tamaoka and Hatsuzuka (1998) also found that when the two characters in a two-kanji character were opposite in meaning, the opposite concepts competed at a semantic level. The results also supported the semantic equivalence hypothesis (Ijaz, 1986, p.437). When our participants found the semantic similarity, the similarity could get transferred into their L2 and help them perform better on the same meaning. Furthermore, Chinese characters and Japanese characters are closely related since Japanese kanji characters are originated from Chinese. If these closely related characters are cognates, it is highly likely that L2 learners have potential vocabulary (Ringbom, 2007, p.11). Since the vocabulary in the L2 has its counterpart in the learners’ L1, learners need not to spend much effort in learning words with same meanings.
In addition, the mean scores of our participants for the same meaning and the different meaning of kanji characters for each group are presented in Figure 4-2.
Figure 4-2 Overall Performances of Each Group on the Same and the Different Meanings of Japanese Kanji Characters
As can be seen in Figure 4-2, each group performed better on the same meaning than on the different meaning (B: M= 0.93 > 0.55, I: M= 0.96 > 0.69, A: M= 0.96 > 0.77, native baseline: M = 0.97 > 0.94). A regular increase of mean scores was also found for the same meaning and different meaning from Group B to Group A though Group I and Group A performed alike on the same meaning.
In Table 4-10, the between-group differences between the same meaning and the different meaning for each group are presented. Table 4-11 further shows the results of the Scheffé post hoc analysis.
Table 4-10 The p-values for the Same and Different Meanings of Japanese Kanji Characters
same meaning different meaning
F
2.28 50.719P
.085 .000***B I A N
same-M 0.93 0.96 0.96 0.97
same-SD 0.08 0.05 0.04 0.04
different-M 0.55 0.68 0.77 0.94
different-SD 0.14 0.13 0.11 0.04
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
Table 4-11 The Resutls of Scheffé Post Hoc Analysis (Comparison within Two Types of
Std. Error Sig. 95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound Upper Bound
*. The mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level.
As can be seen in Table 4-11, the results for kanji characters with the same meaning showed that all the groups did not yield a significant difference. However, the different meaning showed a different result. Group I performed significantly better than Group B (p < .01), Group A also performed significantly better than Group B (p < .001), but Group I and Group A did not showed a significant result. The native baseline group significantly
outperformed all the experimental groups (p < .001).
Thus, the results indicated that our participants’ performance on Japanese kanji characters with the same and different meanings positively correlated with our participants’
L2 proficiency. That is, the higher proficiency levels the participants were at, the better they performed. Besides, it was found that the performances of Groups B to A were very close to those of the native baseline group, indicating that all the proficiency groups found it easier to interpret and achieve near native-like proficiency while the interpreting kanji characters with the same meaning. However, Group A performed well on Japanese kanji characters with different meanings in that the mean score was the highest, but they did not perform as well as native baseline group.
In addition, as motivated by some previous researches (Leong & Tamaoka, 1998; Kess
& Miyamoto, 1999; Mori, 2003) which investigated the process of the one-kanji characters and two-kanji characters, the difference between these two types of kanji characters was also discussed in the current study. According to the results of one-way ANOVA, it was found that there was no significant difference between one-kanji characters and two-kanji characters (F (1, 92) = 0.348b, p > .001). The overall results of the participants’
performances are shown in Table 4-12.
Table 4-12 Participants’ Overall Performances on the Two Types of Japanese Kanji Characters
Kanji Types
M SD Fp-value
One-kanji 0.83 0.11 0.348b .557
Two-kanji 0.82 0.14
From the participants’ performance in each group in Table 4-13, the results also showed that one-kanji characters and two-kanji characters did not yield significant differences.
Table 4-13 The p-values for the within-group Differences among Two Types of Japanese
Kanji Characters
B I A N
F
0.764 0.061 0.000 0.887P
.387 .806 1.000 .351Hence, the results of the participants’ overall performances and the within-group comparison showed that one-kanji characters and two-kanji characters did not influence our participants’ meaning inference of kanji characters. Chinese learners of Japanese differ from alphabetic background learners in that Chinese learners are familiar with characters. For alphabetic learners, they may need to spend much effort on considering the functional properties of kanji characters or analyzing the internal structures of kanji characters (Kess &
Miyamoto, 1999; Toyoda, 2009) in order to infer meanings. Chinese learners could view