Studies on second language acquisition have expanded in quantity as researchers developed different theories of the second language acquisition, such as Contrastive Hypothesis or Identity Hypothesis (Klein, 1946), and also discussed in various languages.
Many studies focused on the acquisition of English (e.g.
Ionin, Zubizarreta, & Maldonado, 2008)
or other European languages (Kanno, 1999). However, acquiring Japanese as a second language has become popular since the last two decades (Iwasaki, 2004). To date, studies on the acquisition of Japanese increase and they focus on different linguistic areas, including phonology and syntax. For example, in L2 phonology, Toda (2003) investigated the development of syllable timing system of Japanese by English speakers. In L2 syntax, Hirakawa (2001) examined English-speaking learners’ acquisition of Japanese unaccusative verbs. The aspects of semantics are also included in Hirakawa’s discussion, such as telicity and change of state. In a more specific area of Japanese, kanji is one of the interesting topics for many researchers (Epp, 1969; Hirose, 1998; Klingborg, 2012). There were studies conducted on the phonological, semantic and neurolinguistics aspects of kanji (Morita &Matsuda, 2000; Nagahara, Amagase, & Hatta, 2006; Saito, Yamazaki, & Matsuda, 2002).
However, most of them investigated kanji acquisition by English-speaking learners or other European-language learners. Few studies have been conducted on the acquisition of kanji by Chinese learners of Japanese.
It has been generally known that Japanese is unique in that it has four writing systems, including hiragana, katakana, kanji and romazi (Kess & Miyamoto, 1999). The Japanese reading system is based on the kana (hiragana and katakana). In the Japanese phonetic system, its smallest phonetic element is an open syllable and it usually contains a vowel or one or two consonants with a vowel, such as あ /a/, す /su/, and つ /tsu/ (Ohata, 2004).
As for the Japanese basic grammatical structure, it is an SOV language. Tae (2012) provided a general view of Japanese grammar that nouns usually accompany with particles. は /wa/
in せんせいは introduces the noun せんせい ‘teacher’ as a topic in the sentence. If the noun is followed by が /ga/, が functions as a subject marker in syntax. Besides, if the noun is the direct object of a verb, it would be followed by を /wo/ as in ご飯をたべます
‘to eat dinner’. Its declarative sentence usually ends with V-ます/masu/ in formal speech to make the sentence sound more polite. A Japanese interrogative sentence ends with か, which is also a question marker in its polite form. In addition to Japanese general grammar structure, kanji, as a part of the Japanese written system, is written in the form of Chinese characters. Nouns, stems of adjectives, and verbs are three types of words in Japanese that are almost written in kanji form. The reason why Japanese speakers use kanji is that it is useful to help them distinguish meanings when the pronunciations of the words are same1.
In fact, Japanese kanji and Chinese characters are in common in terms of form and meaning since both languages are logograms. Languages with logographic system do not
1 In terms of history, Japanese kanji characters were borrowed from Chinese in different periods. From the perspective of form, they developed their own kanji but also preserved some Chinese-originated characters.
Thus, we can find form correspondences or meaning correspondences between Japanese kanji and Chinese characters. Readings are related as well because they also preserved Chinese reading as on-reading. Moreover, according to Moro Miya’s “Hanzi Riben” (漢字日本, 2014), one of the reasons that Chinese and Japanese have these differences in form and meaning is because Japanese speakers misinterpreted the meanings of those borrowed Chinese characters.
have one-to-one correspondence between sounds and symbols. A combination of two or more phonemes can correspond to one or more logographs (e.g.ち /chi/ for 地 or 血). The forms of these logographs are very similar to or exactly the same as Chinese characters. Kanji characters are also meaning-related. When we form a two-kanji character, each kanji character is assigned a meaning before two characters are combined (Vee, 2006).
Usually, Japanese kanji characters accompany kana words. The meanings of those kana words can be derived from the meanings of their kanji elements, as can be seen in (1).
(1) a. 熱い /atsu-i/ ‘hot’
b. 綺麗 /kirei/ ‘beautiful; clean’
c. 案外 /angai/ ‘surprisingly’
In (1a) - (1c), the forms and meanings of characters 熱/ 綺麗/ 案外 in Japanese are the same forms as the forms of Chinese characters. Chinese learners may assume that these kanji characters and Chinese characters share the same meaning. In (1a), learners might think that 熱 means ‘hot’ since it is the meaning in Chinese. It is true that Japanese 熱 and Chinese 熱 are same in meaning. However, (1b) and (1c) are different cases. In (1b), Chinese learners of Japanese might think that 綺麗 in Japanese means ‘beautiful’ only but it also means
‘clean’ in Japanese, which is not a possible meaning for 綺麗 in Chinese. As for (1c), the meaning of 案外 in Japanese is very different from the meaning of Chinese words. In Chinese we may translate 案外 as ‘(something/event) out of a case’. However, Japanese 案 外 means ‘surprisingly’. Chinese learners of Japanese are highly likely to struggle in this kind of kanji characters because the forms are same as Chinese characters but their meanings are different. The adoption of first language knowledge in L2 acquisition is L1 transfer (Ellis, 1997). Since L1 transfer may occur when Chinese students learn Japanese kanji, in this thesis I would like to see how L1 transfer would influence Chinese learners of Japanese.
Furthermore, proficiency is a concern in this study as well. In some studies, it has been indicated that proficiency might affect second language acquisition (e.g. Fernández Dobao,
2002; Toyoda, 2009). According to Tremblay (2011), a standardized assessment of proficiency is important and it should not be optional in second language research. Therefore, studying kanji acquisition, proficiency can be an influential factor. For example, learners at the basic level may struggle with the meaning of kanji characters which have the same form in Chinese but are different in meaning. While they become intermediate or advanced learners, their interpretation of kanji may be different.
Therefore, the current study aims to examine the L1 transfer effect and proficiency effect on Chinese learners’ acquisition of kanji. As the forms and meanings of the Japanese