關於第三語言習得的形態句法轉移的語言類型與心理類型的相對權重

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(1)國立台灣師範大學英語學系碩士論文 Master Thesis Graduate Institute of English National Taiwan Normal University. The Relative Weight of Linguistic Typology and Psychotypology in Morphosyntactic Transfer in L3 Acquisition. 指導教授劉宇挺博士 Advisor: Dr. Yeu-ting Liu. 研究生：山口廣輝 Student: Hiroki Yamaguchi. 中華民國一百零四年十二月 December 2015.

(2) Abstract Research in third language acquisition (TLA) is relatively a new field. The pioneering TLA research has found out that typological distance is a factor that determines the source of transfer (Rothman, 2010, 2011). However, the previous research did not specify which kind of ‘typological distance’ plays a role in determining the source of transfer at the L3 initial state. Some researchers have directed their research focus to typology as objective linguistic similarities whilst others have expanded their research scope to learners’ perception on typology, so-called psychotypology (Kellerman, 1983). Despite pointing out the two sorts of ‘typological distance’ playing a role, their relative weight has yet to be unveiled. Hence, the present study aims to examine the relative weight of a linguistic typological distance and psychotypological distance when the beginning L3 learners process morphosyntactic knowledge in the target language. The data were obtained from the two experimental groups. The first experimental group is composed of 33 Taiwanese individuals who have acquired advanced L2 Korean. The second experimental group includes 30 Korean individuals with advanced L2 Chinese. The two experimental groups were assigned to take a(n) (1) oral translation task (OT), (2) grammaticality judgment task (GJT), and (3) survey of their psychotypological distance. Additionally, 30 native speakers of Japanese were recruited, serving as a control group for the data analysis of GJT. The results show that both groups relied more on a linguistically-typologically-closer language (i.e., Korean) than a psychotypologically-closer language (i.e., Chinese) irrespective of productive/receptive skills or complexity of sentences. Also, L3 beginning learners were not able to process the target L3 Japanese as automatically as native Japanese speakers. Based on the findings, pedagogical implications are discussed.. i.

(3) keywords: third language acquisition, linguistic typology, psychotypology, morphosyntactic transfer, L3 initial state, oral translation, GJT, Korean, Chinese, Japanese. ii.

(4) Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to express my utmost gratitude toward my advisor, Dr. Liu Yeu-ting. He not only provided insightful advice to improve this thesis but also provided me with tireless support whenever I encountered difficulties. Without his dedicated support, I could not have completed this work. Furthermore, I appreciate his support not only as an advisor of the thesis, but also a mentor of my life. What I learned through the process of writing up the thesis is not only the way to conduct academic work, but also something that is applicable to my real life. Had I not met Dr. Liu, I could have not discovered this. I will never forget my experience I had with him at NTNU. In conducting data collection, I thank the assistants of National Cheng-Chi University and Chinese Cultural University, who helped identify and notify participants of the experiment and allowed me to conduct the experiment for this thesis. As well as the assistants of the universities, I must also express my appreciation of Xie Jia-Hsuan and Kuo Yi-Ju, students of Korean Department at National Cheng-Chi University. They were dedicated to recruiting Taiwanese students with advanced Korean proficiency. Their dedicated support significantly shortened the entire process of the data collection. Without their assistance, I could not have found the ideal number of Taiwanese participants for this thesis. Special thanks also goes to Kim Sara, who took charge of recruiting Korean students with advanced Chinese as L2. I will never forget her efforts to invite over ten Korean friends to participate in the experiment in just a couple of days. I would also like to thank Uchida Naoki, Moriya Kotaro, and Miyagi Mao, who volunteered to invite their Japanese friends to participate in my study. They helped solve my problem of not being able to find sufficient number of Japanese participants.. iii.

(5) Especially, Uchida’s daily duty as a representative of Japanese Students’ Association at National Taiwan University saved my data collection time significantly. For creating experimental materials and correcting my Chinese and Korean, I would like to thank Liu Zi-An, Hung Chi-Chieh, and Lee Myungku. They helped me examine and revise Chinese/Korean materials and instructions included in the study. Hung Chi-Chieh provided extra help in recording his voice for the oral translation task. Lee Myungku helped examine and revise Korean materials used in the study. Finally, I would like to appreciate all the participants of the study and all the faculty members of English Department, National Taiwan Normal University. I also appreciate my family for supporting and cheering me up in Japan. I cannot express my appreciation enough for all the individuals who were involved in this thesis. If one of them had been missing, my study could not have been completed.. iv.

(6) 謝辞本論文執筆にあたり、大変有意義なアドバイス、熱意のこもったご指導・ご鞭撻をいただいた劉宇挺先生に厚く御礼を申し上げます。執筆中に問題に直面した際はいつも時間を割いてお話を聞いてくださいました。先生のサポート無しでは、本論文を完成させることはできませんでした。また、論文のことだけでなく、人生相談にも乗っていただいたことも決して忘れません。台湾師範大学で過ごした時間は、私にとって間違いなく人生の分岐点であり、貴重な時間を過ごした思い出の深い場所です。データ収集においては、国立政治大学と中国文化大学のご好意による実験告知、教室の貸し出しにご協力いただいたことに対して誠に感謝申し上げます。また、各大学学部のアシスタントの方々の心優しいサポートだけでなく、国立政治大学韓国語学科の学生である謝佳軒さんと郭倚如さんがボランティアとして、台湾人の同級生や後輩、そして韓国人留学生への告知を快く引き受けてくださいました。彼女らの助けがなければ、1 ヶ月という短期間で必要な人数を集めることは決してできませんでした。この場をお借りして深く御礼を申し上げます。また、台湾師範大学留学生のキム・サラさんも、韓国人留学生に実験の告知をボランティアでしてくださりました。わずか数日で 10 人以上の被験者を集めてくださったことは決して忘れません。厚く御礼を申し上げます。日本人被験者に関しては、内田直毅さん、守谷幸太郎さん、宮城真央さんにご協力いただきました。特に、日頃から台湾大学日本人会の会長を務められている. v.

(7) 内田さんのお力添えにより、短期間で必要人数の半分まで集めることができました。心より感謝の意を示したいと思います。本実験で使用したあらゆる中国語と韓国語の原稿に関しては、劉子安さん、洪智傑さん、イ・ミョングさんにネイティブチェックをしていただきました。また、通訳テストで使用した音声は洪智傑さんが録音してくださいました。日々のお仕事でお忙しいにも関わらず、お力になっていただいたことを心より感謝申し上げます。最後に、今回実験に参加してくださった被験者の方々、在学中にお世話になった台湾師範大学英語系の先生方にもこの場で御礼を申し上げます。また、日本から精神的に支援してくれた家族にも感謝の気持ちでいっぱいです。このように大勢の方に助けていただいたことに対して、言葉では表せないほど感謝の気持ちで溢れております。このうちの 1 人でも欠けていたら、本論文を完成するには至りませんでした。再度になりますが、本論文執筆に関わってくださった全ての方々に感謝の意を示したいと思います。. vi.

(8) Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................ i Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ iii 謝辞 .................................................................................................................................. v List of Tables ................................................................................................................... x List of Figures .............................................................................................................. xiii List of abbreviations ..................................................................................................... xv List of Terminology .................................................................................................... xvii Chapter One: Introduction ............................................................................................ 1 1.1 Motivation and Background ................................................................................................ 1 1.2 Problem and Purpose........................................................................................................... 2 1.3 Implementation the Present Study....................................................................................... 3 1.4 Organization of the Thesis .................................................................................................. 3. Chapter Two: Literature Review .................................................................................. 5 2.1 The role of linguistic typological distance at the L3 initial state ........................................ 5 2.2 The role of psychotypological distance at the L3 initial state ............................................. 7 2.3 The Relative weight of linguistic typology and psychotypology ...................................... 10 2.4 Morphosyntactic structures of Korean, Chinese, and Japanese ........................................ 10 2.5 Research Questions ........................................................................................................... 13 2.6 Summary of Chapter Two ................................................................................................. 14. Chapter Three: Research Design ................................................................................ 16 3.1 Participants ........................................................................................................................ 16 3.2 Materials............................................................................................................................ 18. vii.

(9) 3.2.1 Oral translation task (OT) .......................................................................................... 18 3.2.2 Grammaticality judgment task (GJT) ......................................................................... 21 3.2.3 Survey of psychotypological distance ........................................................................ 24 3.3 Design ............................................................................................................................... 25 3.3.1 Oral translation task (OT) and scoring ....................................................................... 25 3.3.2 Grammaticality judgment task (GJT) and scoring ..................................................... 28 3.3.3 Survey of psychotypological distance and scoring .................................................... 30 3.4 Procedure........................................................................................................................... 31 3.5 Summary of Chapter Three ............................................................................................... 32. Chapter Four: Results and Discussion ....................................................................... 33 4.1 Results of OT .................................................................................................................... 33 4.1.1 Scores of OT (Translation of Korean into Japanese) ................................................. 34 4.1.2 Scores of OT (Translation of Chinese into Japanese) ................................................ 44 4.1.3 Result of between-subjects effects of the two types of OT ........................................ 53 4.2 Results of GJT ................................................................................................................... 54 4.2.1 Scores of GJT ............................................................................................................. 55 4.2.2 RT of GJT................................................................................................................... 69 4.3 Results of survey concerning psychotypological distance ................................................ 90 4.4 Discussion ......................................................................................................................... 92 4.4.1 The relative weight of linguistic typological distance and psychotypological distance in productive skills .............................................................................................................. 93. viii.

(10) 4.4.2 The relative weight of linguistic typological distance and psychotypological distance in receptive skills................................................................................................................. 95 4.4.3 The role which the previously-acquired languages played on automatic processing at the L3 initial state ................................................................................................................ 96 4.4.4 Other issue on TLA .................................................................................................... 98 4.5 Summary of Chapter Four ................................................................................................. 99. Chapter Five Conclusion ........................................................................................... 101 5.1 Summary of Major Findings & Limitation ..................................................................... 101 5.2 Pedagogical Implications ................................................................................................ 103. References.................................................................................................................... 107 Appendix A. Script of OT ........................................................................................ 114. Appendix B Sentences used in GJT ....................................................................... 117 Appendix C. Word list for OT................................................................................. 120. Appendix D. Screen shot of the survey for psychotypological distance .............. 121. ix.

(11) List of Tables Table 1 Summary of participants’ information ........................................................... 17 Table 2 Sentence structures appeared in the oral translation task ............................. 19 Table 3 Order of sentence complexity ......................................................................... 21 Table 4 Sentence structures involved in GJT .............................................................. 23 Table 5 Scoring table for the participants’ performance during OT .......................... 26 Table 6 Between-subjects effects of OT (Korean into Japanese): 3-word sentences .. 36 Table 7. Within-subjects effects of OT (Korean into Japanese): 3-word sentences ..... 36. Table 8 Between-subjects effects of OT (Korean into Japanese): 4-word sentences .. 39 Table 9. Within-subjects effects of OT (Korean into Japanese): 4-word sentences ..... 39. Table 10. Between-subjects effects of OT (Korean into Japanese): 5-word sentences 41. Table 11. Within-subjects effects of OT (Korean into Japanese): 5-word sentences ... 41. Table 12 Between-subjects effects of OT (Korean into Japanese): 6-word sentences 43 Table 13. Within-subjects effects of OT (Korean into Japanese): 6-word sentences ... 43. Table 14 Summary of p values of between- and within- subjects in OT (Korean into Japanese) ........................................................................................................................ 44 Table 15 Between-subjects effects of OT (Chinese into Japanese): 3-word sentences 46 Table 16. Within-subjects effects of OT (Chinese into Japanese): 3-word sentences .. 46. Table 17 Between-subjects effects of OT (Chinese into Japanese): 4-word sentences 48 Table 18. Within-subjects effects of OT (Chinese into Japanese): 4-word sentences .. 48. Table 19 Between-subjects effects of OT (Chinese into Japanese): 5-word sentences 50 Table 20. Within-subjects effects of OT (Chinese into Japanese): 5-word sentences .. 50. Table 21 Between-subjects effects of OT (Chinese into Japanese): 6-word sentences 52 Table 22. Within-subjects effects of OT (Chinese into Japanese): 6-word sentences . 52. x.

(12) Table 23 Summary of p values in OT (Chinese into Japanese) ................................... 53 Table 24 Summary of results of the between-subjects effects of the two types of OT . 54 Table 25 Between-subjects effects of GJT: 3-word sentences ..................................... 56 Table 26. Within-subjects effects of GJT: 3-word sentences ........................................ 57. Table 27 Tukey HSD comparison analysis of GJT: 3-word sentences....................... 58 Table 28 Between-subjects effects of GJT: 4-word sentences ..................................... 60 Table 29. Within-subjects effects of GJT: 4-word sentences ........................................ 60. Table 30. Within-subjects effects of GJT: 4-word sentences ........................................ 61. Table 31 Between-subjects effects of GJT: 5-word sentences ..................................... 63 Table 32. Within-subjects effects of GJT: 5-word sentences ........................................ 63. Table 33 Tukey HSD analysis of GJT: 5-word sentences ........................................... 64 Table 34 Between-subjects effects of GJT: 6-word sentences ..................................... 66 Table 35. Within-subjects effects of GJT: 6-word sentences ........................................ 66. Table 36 Post hoc analysis of GJT: 6-word sentences ................................................ 67 Table 37 Summary of p values in GJT (between- and within-subjects) ...................... 68 Table 38 Summary of p values in GJT (Tukey HSD analysis)..................................... 68 Table 39 Result of RT with ANOVA: 3-word sentences (Korean word order) ........... 72 Table 40 Tukey HSD analysis of RT: 3-word sentences (Korean word order) ........... 72 Table 41 Result of RT with ANOVA: 4-word sentences (Korean word order) ........... 74 Table 42 Tukey HSD analysis of RT: 4-word sentences (Korean word order) ........... 74 Table 43 Result of RT with ANOVA: 5-word sentences (Korean word order) ........... 76 Table 44 Tukey HSD analysis of RT: 5-word sentences (Korean word order) ........... 76 Table 45. Result of RT with ANOVA: 6-word sentences (Korean word order) ........... 78. Table 46 Tukey HSD analysis of RT: 6-word sentences (Korean word order) ........... 78. xi.

(13) Table 47 Summary of RT of GJT (ANOVA for Korean word order) ........................... 79 Table 48 Summary of RT of GJT (Tukey HSD analysis for Korean word order) ....... 80 Table 49 Result of RT with ANOVA: 3-word sentences (Chinese word order)........... 82 Table 50 Tukey HSD analysis of RT: 3-word sentences (Chinese word order) .......... 82 Table 51 Result of RT with ANOVA: 4-word sentences (Chinese word order)........... 84 Table 52 Tukey HSD analysis of RT: 4-word sentences (Chinese word order) .......... 84 Table 53 Result of RT with ANOVA: 5-word sentences (Chinese word order)........... 86 Table 54 Tukeu HSD analysis of RT: 5-word sentences (Chinese word order) .......... 86 Table 55 Result of RT with ANOVA: 6-word sentences (Chinese word order)........... 88 Table 56 Tukey HSD analysis of RT: 6-word sentences (Chinese word order) .......... 88 Table 57 Summary of RT of GJT (ANOVA for Chinese word order) .......................... 89 Table 58 Summary of RT of GJT (Tukey HSD analysis for Chinese word order) ...... 90 Table 59 Mean values of the survey of psychotypological distance ............................ 91. xii.

(14) List of Figures Figure 1. Typological similarity among Korean, Chinese, and Japanese ...................... 16 Figure 2. Sample questions of GJT ................................................................................. 22 Figure 3. Sample questions of survey to measure psychotypological distance I ............ 25 Figure 4. Sample questions of survey to measure psychotypological distance II........... 31 Figure 5. The mean scores of OT (Korean into Japanese): 3-word sentences ............... 35 Figure 6. The mean scores of OT (Korean into Japanese): 4-word sentences ............... 37 Figure 7. The mean scores of OT (Korean into Japanese): 5-word sentences ............... 40 Figure 8. The mean scores of OT (Korean into Japanese): 6-word sentences ............... 42 Figure 9. The mean scores of OT (Chinese into Japanese): 3-word sentences .............. 45 Figure 10. The mean scores of OT (Chinese into Japanese): 4-word sentences ............ 47 Figure 11. The mean scores of OT (Chinese into Japanese): 5-word sentences ............ 49 Figure 12. The mean scores of OT (Chinese into Japanese): 6-word sentences ............ 51 Figure 13. The mean scores of GJT: 3-word sentences .................................................. 56 Figure 14. The mean scores of GJT: 4-word sentences .................................................. 59 Figure 15. The mean scores of GJT: 5-word sentences .................................................. 62 Figure 16. The mean scores of GJT: 6-word sentences .................................................. 65 Figure 17. Means of RT: 3-word sentences (Korean word order) ................................. 71 Figure 18. Means of RT: 4-word sentences (Korean word order) ................................ 73 Figure 19. Means of RT: 5-word sentences (Korean word order) ................................. 75 Figure 20. Means of RT: 6-word sentences (Korean word order) ................................. 77 Figure 21. Means of RT: 3-word sentences (Chinese word order) ................................ 81 Figure 22. Means of RT: 4-word sentences (Chinese word order) ................................ 83 Figure 23. Means of RT: 5-word sentences (Chinese word order) ................................ 85. xiii.

(15) Figure 24. Means of RT: 6-word sentences (Chinese word order) ................................ 87. xiv.

(16) List of abbreviations acc. Accusative in a main clause. acc'. Accusative in a subordinate clause. CH. Chinese. dat. Dative in a main clause. dat'. Dative in a subordinate clause. DO. Direct object in a main clause. DO’. Direct object in a subordinate clause. GJT. Grammaticality judgment task. HSK. Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (漢語水平考試). IO. Indirect object in a main clause. IO’. Indirect object in a subordinate clause. JLPT. Japanese Language Proficiency Test. JP. Japanese. KR. Korean. L1. First language. L2. Second language. L3. Third language. ms. Millisecond. nom. Nominative in a main clause. nom’. Nominative in a subordinate clause. OT. Oral translation task. perf. Perfective. xv.

(17) quot. Quotational particle. RT. Response time. S. Subject in a main clause. S’. Subject in a subordinate clause. SLA. Second Language Acquisition. TLA. Third Language Acquisition. TOCFL. Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language (華語文能力測驗). TOPIK. Test of Proficiency in Korean. V. Verb in a main clause. V’. Verb in a subordinate clause. xvi.

(18) List of Terminology Canonical sentence: The canonical order of the sentence is the most usual order of the main sentence elements, Subject (S), Verb (V) and Object (O), in a language, for example VSO in Arabic or SVO in English (Koda, 2005).. Complex sentence: Complex sentence is a sentence which includes one independent clause and at least one dependent clause (Crystal, 2004).. Grammaticality judgment task: In grammaticality judgement task, a set of grammatical or ungrammatical phrases or sentences is presented to participants and they are asked to judge whether or not they are grammatical. It is basically used to measure learners’ implicit knowledge, and therefore, learners are asked to reply on intuition in making judgments without metalinguistic contemplation (Jiang, 2012).. Initial state: Initial state refers to the state that beginning learners begin to learn a new language.. Linguistic typological distance: A synonym of ‘typological distance.’ This thesis particularly uses this term to show clear contrast with learners’ perception on typological distance (i.e., psychotypological distance). xvii.

(19) Linguistic typology: A synonym of typology. Linguistic typology is typology in a linguistic sense.. Logograph: Logograph refers to a written symbol which represents a word (or morpheme) in a language such as Chinese hanzi or Japnaese kanji (Crystal, 2004).. L2 status: L2 status refers to a particular reliance on a prior L2 knowledge rather than L1 (Hammarberg, 2009).. Main clause Main clause is a clause that can stand alone as a complete sentence (Aarts, Chalker, & Weiner, 2014).. Morphosyntax: Morphosyntax refers to the combined morphology and syntax (sentence structure) of a language. In contact-induced change, one language’s syntax may influence another language’s morphology, or vice versa, so it is often useful to consider these two grammatical subsystems as a unified set of structures (Thomason, 2001).. xviii.

(20) Orthography: Orthography is a way of writing a language. This thesis specifically points to a form of spelling.. Percept: Psychometric percept refers to a mental impression of something perceived by the sense (Banich & Compton, 2011).. Psychotypology: Psychotypology refers to learners’ perception on similarities or differences between languages rather than actual structural features of languages. The term was coined by Kellerman (1983).. Recency: Recency refers to the extent to which the language has been used lately (Hammarberg, 2009).. Source of transfer: Source of transfer refers to a previously-acquired language(s) which learners utilize in the process of acquiring a linguistic knowledge of a target language.. Subordinate clause Subordinate clause is a clause that is dependent on, or forms part of, another clause, phrase, or sentence element (Aarts, Chalker, & Weiner, 2014).. xix.

(21) Typological distance: The degree of diversity between two languages in their structural categories and in their ways of expressing those categories. Typological distance is not something that can be precisely measured, in part because categories may match in some aspects but not in others. But it is nevertheless a useful linguistic predictor of kinds of interference (Thomason, 2001).. Typology: Typology is a subfield of linguistics that focuses on the distribution of structural linguistic features in languages of the world. It is typological investigation that provides evidence for such statements as these: only a very few languages of the world lack nasal consonants; suffixes are more numerous than prefixes cross-linguistically; and SOV word order is more common crosslinguistically than VSO word order (Thomason, 2001).. Transfer: Transfer refers to application of linguistic knowledge that learners have already acquired.. xx.

(22) Chapter One: Introduction. 1.1 Motivation and Background In the past, TLA was investigated within the framework of SLA (see Leung, 2005, 2006; Murphy, 2005). Recently, however, researchers have begun to examine TLA in its own right and in a domain separate from SLA. In this increasingly more rigorous research interest, an active research agenda concerns ‘sources of transfer’. TLA differs from SLA in that it encompasses two possible sources of transfer: first language (L1) and second language (L2). Third language (L3) learners can draw on already-acquired linguistic knowledge from L1 (Jin, 2009; Leung, 2005, 2006), L2 (Bardel & Falk, 2007; Falk & Bardel, 2010), or from both L1 and L2 (Flynn et al., 2004; Rothman, 2011). In determining the major source of transfer, researchers have identified ‘typological distance’ as an essential factor (Cenoz, 2003; Foote, 2009; Montrul et al., 2011; Rothman, 2010, 2011; Williams & Hammarberg, 1998). Previous studies which support this claim are mainly based on empirical evidence obtained from L3 learners whose L1 and L2 vary from each other in terms of typological distance. Research generally has found that knowledge of a previously acquired language, regardless of order of acquisition, is more likely to be transferred to a target language when the two languages are typologically close (Montrul et al., 2011; Rothman, 2010, 2011). Despite this finding, it should be noted that TLA researchers define and operationalize the term ‘typological distance’ in a different light. Some regard it as a ‘linguistic typology,’ in which the distance between two languages is purely a linguistic phenomenon (e.g., Montrul et al., 2011; Rothman, 2010, 2011). This distance can be determined through objective linguistic analysis. Instead of appealing. 1.

(23) to the linguistic approach, others consider cross-linguistic distance as a psychometric percept subjectively perceived by L3 learners, or ‘psychotypological distance’ (e.g., Kellerman, 1983; Kresić & Gulan, 2012; Letica et al., 2007).1 Studies have empirically established that both linguistic typological and psychotypological distance between L1 and L2 play an important role in molding the initial knowledge system of L3 learners.. 1.2 Problem and Purpose What remains unresolved concerns the relative weight of linguistic typology and psychotypology in determining the source of transfer in the context of TLA. This lack of knowledge could be attributed to the fact that little research operationalized the role of psyochotypology in the TLA context. In fact, regardless of actual linguistic typological distance, psychotypology exerts a differential effect on the source(s) of transfer (e.g., Letica et al., 2007). It is possible that L3 beginning learners may misjudge a typologically-distant language as being typologically-close and/or misjudge an orthographically-similar language as being typologically-close (c.f., Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008; Sánchez, 2011). In other words, there is the possibility that in the ongoing tug-of-war between the two forces, i.e., linguistic typological distance and psychotypological distance, one may override the other in determining the source of transfer. Since scant research attention has been devoted to exploring the relative weight of linguistic typology and psychotypology in shaping a beginning L3 knowledge system, more research on this issue is warranted. To bridge the gap, the present study aims to explore the relative weight of linguistic typological distance and psychotypological distance in determining the source of morphosyntactic transfer at the L3 initial state.. 2.

(24) 1.3 Implementation the Present Study The relative weight of a linguistically-typologically-similar language and a psychotypologically-similar language can be examined by learners who have acquired Mandarin Chinese and Korean, with Japanese being the target language. The main reason is that Korean and Japanese are linguistically-typologically-close while Mandarin Chinese and Japanese are psychotypologically-close (Cui, 2006; Yamato et al., 2013). In terms of the relationship between Korean and Japanese, they have, in large part, morphosyntactic features in common (Yamato et al., 2013). Specifically, both Korean and Japanese are SOV languages, sharing many (morpho)syntactic structures. Due to many (morpho)syntactic similarities, morphosyntactic transfer can be observed with high frequency between Korean and Japanese accordingly as a number of studies have demonstrated. In the same vein, morphosyntactic transfer can be observed between Mandarin Chinese and Japanese. For example, Lincoln (2004, 2009) demonstrated that Japanese learners of Mandarin Chinese misplaced verbs, model verbs, adverbs, complements, and prepositional phrases in the Japanese word order. Considering the two above-mentioned factors promoting morphosyntactic transfer, the relative weight of transfer from a typologically-close language and a psychotypologically-close language can be implemented by observing performance of L3 learners of Japanese who have acquired advanced Korean and Chinese.. 1.4 Organization of the Thesis The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One begins with Introduction ranging brief introduction of theoretical background of the acquisition of L3 morphosyntax. Chapter Two covers literature review regarding the role of linguistics. 3.

(25) typology and psychotypology in the acquisition of L3 morphosyntax. Chapter Three introduces research design. Chapter Four reports results of experiments and extends the discussion and argument about how linguistic typology and psychotypology play a role in the acquisition of L3 morphosyntactic knowledge. Finally, Chapter Five ends with conclusion including limitation and pedagogical implications.. 4.

(26) Chapter Two: Literature Review. Recent TLA studies attempt to reveal what factor(s) guide(s) learners who are high proficiency in L2 to facilitate their L3 acquisition at the initial state. The first two subsections encompass previous TLA research focusing on the role of linguistic typological distance and that of psychotypological distance. The rest of the subsections consist of the identification of the research gap, research questions, and description on linguistic features of the languages adopted in the present study. The concluding subsection concerns the summary of Chapter Two.. 2.1 The role of linguistic typological distance at the L3 initial state Unlike SLA, TLA research on morphosyntactic transfer from the generative linguistic approach is a relatively new field. The pioneering study on L3 morphosyntactic transfer was conducted by Flynn et al. (2004). The study has demonstrated that, unlike the transferability issues in the SLA context 1 , L1 is not necessarily the privileged source of transfer in the TLA context. To illustrate this concept, Flynn et al. (2004) investigated how learners of L1 Kazakh and L2 Russian utilized their prior linguistic knowledge to acquire restrictive relative clauses of L3 English. The result showed that L2 can influence the development of the target morphosyntactic structures, and concluded that both of the previously-acquired languages can be drawn on in the acquisition of the subsequent language. Thus, Flynn. 1. SLA principles regarding transferability issues insist that L2 learners draw on L1 linguistic knowledge to process and acquire L2 to varying degrees. The principle includes full transfer (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996), partial transfer (Eubank, 1993/1994, 1996), and no transfer (Kellerman, 1995).. 5.

(27) et al. have provided a new insight on the transferability issue on TLA. However, their study has not shed light on prominent factor(s) that shapes initial acquisition of L3. Recent generative TLA research has provided empirical evidence to support the significant role of typological distance in determining the major source of morphosyntactic transfer. In this line of research, in order to verify the role of typological distance, the commonly-adopted design involves the comparison of L3 learners who have a typologically-related L1 and an unrelated L2 with those who have a typologically-unrelated L1 and a related L2. The typological distance in this line of study is mostly operationalized in terms of linguistic typological, rather than psychotypological approach. Researchers have confirmed the crucial role of linguistic typological distance by observing the occurrence of transfer from the languages regardless of order of acquisition. For example, Rothman (2011) tested two groups of low to intermediate proficient adult learners: (1) L3 learners of Brazilian Portuguese who have acquired L1 English and L2 Spanish and (2) L3 learners of Spanish who have acquired L1 Italian and L2 English. They adopted the target morphosyntactic structures which are common in Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian but uncommon in English. Rothman’s study empirically showed that L2 Spanish was transferred to L3 Brazilian Portuguese in the first group and L1 Italian to L3 Spanish in the second group. According to Rothman, the disparate source of transfer in the two groups—one resulting from L1 and another from L2—was due mainly to the linguistic typological distance between the L3 and one of the two early acquired languages. This result also demonstrated that order of acquisition is not a major issue in determining the source of transfer. Rothman’s (2011) findings adhered to in Montrul et al.’s (2011) study. Montrul et al. conducted an experiment with language pairings and a target morphosyntactic structure different from Rothman’s research (2011), but obtained. 6.

(28) results similar to the ones in Rothman (2011). The study shows that L3 adult learners generally draw on a linguistically typologically-closer language, irrespective of the order of acquisition, to facilitate their learning of L3. As discussed by Rothman (2011) and Montrul et al. (2011), the aforementioned studies collectively show that typological distance is a determining factor that motivates transfer to L3. However, the abovementioned research did not clearly define typological distance. In empirically identifying the factor that determines the source of transfer, some research concluded that ‘linguistic typology’ is a deterministic factor whilst others maintained that ‘psychotypology’ plays a significant role in determining the source of transfer. For the further exploration on the role that typological distance plays at the L3 initial state, more systematic and extensive research is required.. 2.2 The role of psychotypological distance at the L3 initial state Research on the role of psychotypology in morphosyntactic transfer is still in its infancy. Although prior TLA studies on morphosyntactic transfer conclude that linguistic typology or psychotypology plays a role in L3 transfer (e.g., Montrul et al., 2011; Rothman, 2010, 2011), these studies have placed less attention on exploring the role of psychotypology. One reason would be that researchers tacitly assume that L3 learners’ psychotypological distance between their prior languages and a target language overlaps with linguistic typological distance in most cases (Rast, 2010). In order to gain more insight on psychotypology, more attention needs to be dedicated to it. To shed more light on the role of psychotypology, several studies have attempted to illustrate cases where a previously-acquired language is perceived as typologicallyclose to a target language but it is typologically distant in a linguistic sense.. 7.

(29) In an attempt to provide empirical evidence on the role of psychotypological distance, researchers measured the participants’ ‘holistic impression’ of the typological distance between prior languages and a target language (De Angelis, 2005; Kresić & Gulan, 2012; Letica and Mardešić, 2007; Rothman & Cabrelli Amaro, 2010). Letica and Mardešić (2007) is a case in point. Their study includes participants whose L1 Croatian and L2 English were both linguistically-typologically distant from L3 Italian, albeit to different extents. They asked the participants’ holistic impression of the typological distance between the target language and each of the two prior languages (L1 and L2) to measure the psychotypological distance perceived by the participants. The result showed that half of the participants perceived their L1 as being typologically-closer to their L3, while the other half perceived their L2 as being typologically-closer to their L3. The study found that transfer from L2 to L3 was observed among those who perceived their L2 as being typologically-closer to their L3. Regarding transfer from L1 to L3, the same number of occurrences of transfer from L1 to L3 was found among those who perceived their L1 as being typologicallycloser to their L3. The study displays that learners’ perceived typological distance, rather than linguistic typological distance, plays a role in determining the source of transfer. Another study showing psychotypology as a significant factor of determining the source of L3 morphosyntactic transfer was conducted by Ó Laoire and Singleton (2009). These researchers investigated the role of psychotypology as a significant factor that determines the source of morphosyntactic transfer by examining L1 English-L2 Irish speakers with German as the target language. In a linguistic sense, German is typologically closer to English because both German and English belong to the Germanic language family. However, in terms of morphosyntactic structures, Irish speakers are likely to perceive Irish as closer to German than English to German. 8.

(30) despite the fact that Irish is a Celtic language rather than a Germanic language. In other words, Irish is psychotypologically-closer to German, while English is linguistically-typologically closer to German. The result found that the Irish morphosyntactic structure facilitated the acquisition of the target German morphosyntactic structure. Ó Laoire and Singleton (2009) conclude that psychotypological similarity guides L3 learners to draw on morphosyntactic knowledge from a psychotypogically-closer language rather than a linguisticallytypologically-closer. one.. The. above. findings. collectively. suggest. that. psychotypological distance is not necessarily identical to linguistic typological distance, and that psychotypological distance alone plays a prominent role in determining the source of transfer. It is important to note, however, that little TLA research has sufficiently been conducted in various combinations of languages with varying morphosyntactic features to examine the role of psychotypology. In particular, existing studies are mainly conducted in the European context, and only alphabetic languages are involved in these studies (e.g., Montrul et al., 2011; Rothman, 2010, 2011). As Forsyth (2014) claims, adopting only alphabetic languages does not allow us to systematically investigate the role of psychotypology. It is possible that holistic impressions of typological distance, or psychotypological distance, may play a more prominent role in shaping beginning TLA when the formal features of the L3 learners’ languages involve different writing systems. However, this is a manipulation not seen in existing TLA studies. For further investigation of the role of psychotypology in beginning L3 morphosyntactic transfer, formal features of the L3 learners’ languages need to be taken into consideration.. 9.

(31) 2.3 The Relative weight of linguistic typology and psychotypology Despite the fact that both linguistic typological and psychotypological distance are regarded by TLA researchers as crucial determinants of the source of morphosyntactic transfer, little is known about the relative weight of the two different types of typological distance2. To address the above inquiry, one needs to examine two groups of L3 learners whose early acquired language, either L1 or L2, differs from each other: one being a linguistically-typologically-close, and another being a psychotypologically-close. The present study attempts to verify the relative weight of linguistic typology and psychotypology in determining the source of L3 morphosyntactic transfer. To do so, the empirical treatment with the language pairing of Korean, Chinese, and Japanese needs to be carried out. Korean is known as typologically-close to Japanese whilst Mandarin Chinese is often perceived as similar to Japanese despite the fact that they are not close to each other typologically.. 2.4 Morphosyntactic structures of Korean, Chinese, and Japanese This subsection briefly introduces four types of morphosyntactic features of Korean, Chinese and Japanese relevant to the study (See Shin et al., 2009 for Korean; Xu, 2004 for Chinese). The four types of sentence structures adopted in the study include (1) a sentence consisting of a subject, an object, and a verb, (2) a doubleobject sentence, (3) a sentence with a quotational verb which is followed by a subordinate clause consisting of a subject, an object, and a verb, and (4) a sentence. 2. To my knowledge, the only study implicating the relative weight of a linguistically-typologically close language and a psychotypologically close language with the Asian languages in the domain of morphosyntactic transfer was done by Bai (2011). The study targeted Chinese monolinguals, Mongolian monolinguals, and Chinese/Mongolian bilinguals. Based on the results of the experiment, the researcher implied the possibility of a dominancy of a linguistic typological distance over psychotypological distance.. 10.

(32) with a quotational verb which is followed by a double-object sentence. Regarding the most basic sentence structure with a subject, an object, and a verb as indicated in (1), Japanese sentences and Korean sentences take SOV word order while Chinese takes SVO word order. Structurally, the degree of closeness between Korean and Japanese is high while Chinese and Japanese is not.. (1). a. Japanese: Hayashi-san-wa Hayashi-Mr-nom b. Korean: Hayashi-sshi-neun Hayashi-Mr-nom. chiketto-o. kaimasu.. ticket-acc. buy-present. pyo-leul. sa-yo.. ticket-acc. buy-present. c. Chinese: Hayashi-xiansheng yao mai Hayashi-Mr. piao.. aux buy a ticket. ‘Mr. Hayashi buys a ticket.’. In terms of Japanese sentences consisting of double-object, the canonical word order of both Japanese and Korean are the same (i.e., S IO DO V) while Chinese takes the S V DO IO word order as in (2).. (2). a. Japanese: Watashi-wa Tanaka-san-ni. tegami-o. kakimashita. write-past. I-nom. Tanaka-Mr.-dat. letter-acc. b. Korean: Jeo-neun. Tanaka-sshi-eke. pyeonji-leul sseoss-eoyo.. Tanaka-Mr.-dat. letter-acc. I-nom c. Chinese: Wo xie-le. xin. write-past. gei Tanaka-xiansheng.. I write-perf letter dat Tanaka-Mr. ‘I wrote Mr. Tanaka a letter.’. 11.

(33) The structural closeness between Korean and Japanese and the distance between Chinese and Japanese can be found in sentences with a quotational verb. (3) displays quotational sentences with a subject, an object, and a verb being required in a subordinate clause. Even in this sentence structure, Korean word is identical to Japanese one (i.e., S S’ O’ V’ V) while Chinese word order (S V S’ V’ O’) is far from a Japanese one.. (3). a. Japanese: Yamada-san-wa Yamada-Mr.-nom. Hayashi-san-ga. hon-o. Hayashi-Mr.-nom' book-acc'. kau to buy quot. iimashita. say-past b. Korean: Yamada-sshi-neun Yamada-Mr.-nom. Hayashi-sshi-ka. chaek-eul. sanda-ko. Hayashi-Mr.-nom' book-acc'. buy-quot. malhess-eoyo. say-past c. Chinese: Yamada-xianshen shuo Hayashi-xiansheng yao mai shu. Yamada-Mr.. say Hayashi-Mr.. aux buy book. ‘Mr. Yamada said that Mr. Hayashi would buy a book.’. Finally, sentences with a quotational verb in a main clause and a double-object in a subordinate clause are shown in (4). Even in this sentence structure, Japanese and Korean word order is exactly the same word order while Chinese word order is different from Japanese and Korean as in (4).. 12.

(34) (4). a. Japanese: Watashi-wa Tanaka-san-ga I-nom. Hayashi-san-ni. Tanaka-Mr.-nom' Hayashi-Mr.-dat'. kaesu-to. omoimasu.. return-quot. think-present. b. Korean: Jo-neun. Tanaka-sshi-ga. I-nom. USB-acc’. Hayashi-sshi-eke USB-leul. Tanaka-Mr.-nom' Hayashi-Mr.-dat' USB-acc’. dorryeojunda-ko. saengkakhaeyo.. return-quot. think-present. c. Chinese: Wo juede Tanaka-xiansheng I think. USB-o. Tanaka-Mr.. yao huan. USB gei. aux return USB dat'. Hayashi-xiansheng. Hayashi-Mr. ‘I think that Mr. Tanaka will return USB to Mr. Hayashi.’. In summary, this subsection illustrated the morphosyntactic features of Korean, Japanese and Chinese, ranging from sentences with low degree of complexity to the ones with high degree of complexity. Irrespective of the degree of complexity of sentences, Korean and Japanese are likely to have morphosyntactic similarities while Chinese and Japanese do not share structural similarities.. 2.5 Research Questions A series of previous studies demonstrated the role of typology that plays in L3 acquisition. However, these studies did not clearly point out whether the term typology indicates the one in a linguistic sense or the one that learners’ mind perceives. 13.

(35) regardless of actual typological distance. Therefore, the studies did not reveal the relative role of linguistic typology and psyochotypology. To bridge the gap, the following research questions are proposed.. 1. To what extent does linguistic typological distance (i.e., Korean) determine the source of transfer in beginning L3 (i.e., Japanese) acquisition? 2. To what extent does psychotypological distance (i.e., Chinese) determine the source of transfer in beginning L3 acquisition?. 2.6 Summary of Chapter Two To examine morphosyntactic transfer to L3 from the perspective of typological distance as an influential factor, earlier TLA researchers claimed that linguistic typological distance determines the source of transfer when processing L3 at the initial state, irrespective of order of acquisition. Subsequently, researchers placed their research focus on psychotypological distance. Studies from the aspect of psychotypology showed that learners’ perception on typological distance determined the source of transfer and promoted transfer to L3. Despite the fact that there are two concepts of typological distance, however, little attention has been paid to the relative weight of linguistic typological distance and psychotypological distance. To shed more light on the role of them, the present study examined the relative weight of linguistic typological and psychotypological distance play. To implement the research, Korean-Chinese bilinguals (i.e., a linguistically-typologically close language and a psychotypologically close language respectively) who are learning Japanese as L3 were recruited. To provide more detailed morphosyntactic structures of Korean,. 14.

(36) Chinese, and Japanese, Chapter Two covered morphosyntactic representation of Korean, Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese.. 15.

(37) Chapter Three: Research Design. To operationalize the relative weight of linguistic-typological distance and psychotypological distance in the process of acquiring L3, the present study recruited learners of either advanced L2 Korean or advanced L2 Mandarin Chinese who are the elementary level of Japanese as L3. The rationale for recruiting these participants is that Korean and Japanese are linguistically-typologically close whilst Mandarin Chinese and Japanese are psychotypologically-close as shown in Figure 1.. Figure 1. Typological similarity among Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. 3.1 Participants A total of 93 participants were recruited for this research. Of the 93 participants, 33 participants were Taiwanese learners (i.e., L1 Mandarin Chinese) of L2 Korean, and 30 participants were Korean learners of L2 Mandarin Chinese, both of which were experimental groups. The participants of both groups were the beginning level of L3 Japanese while their L2 proficiency was advanced. To meet this. 16.

(38) criterion, Taiwanese people who have passed 5th or 6th grade of the Korean Proficiency Test (TOPIK), which are stipulated as the advanced level, were recruited for the L1 Chinese-L2 Korean group. For the L1 Korean-L2 Chinese group, college students from South Korea who have passed the advanced level of the Chinese Proficiency Test (either TOCFL or HSK) were recruited. To ensure that all the participants of the two experimental groups are beginning learners of Japanese, those who have never passed JLPT of N5 level were invited to the experiment. They can at least recognize Japanese phonetics, or hiragana, but have little experience of studying Japanese grammar. In addition to the two experimental groups, 30 Japanese native speakers were invited, serving as a control group. Information of the participants involved in this study is summarized in Table 1.. Table 1 Summary of participants’ information Experimental group 1. Experimental group 2. Control group. 33. 30. 30. Linguistic. L1 Chinese-L2. L1 Korean-L2. L1 native. background. Korean (advanced). Chinese (advanced). Japanese. Number of participants. 17.

(39) 3.2 Materials The study included three materials including (1) oral translation task (OT), (2) grammaticality judgment task (GJT), and (3) survey of measuring psychotypological distance. The following subsections described the contents of each material in details.. 3.2.1 Oral translation task (OT) OT was comprised of two sessions: (1) translation from participants’ L1 into Japanese; (2) translation from participants’ L2 into Japanese. A total of 40 sentences were presented, with 20 sentences being presented in each session (see Appendix A for the whole script). Each question item was recorded in advance at 15-second intervals between sentences. The question items were played automatically during the task. Before the participants were given audio stimuli, they were asked to practice the words that would appear in OT with the support of the word list (see Appendix C). While performing OT, the participants were allowed to look at the word list at hand. The use of the word list was allowed because their cognitive burden from retrieval of lexical items will be reduced, and consequently, they can spend more of their cognitive attention on word order. OT included four canonical sentence structures with varying complexity of sentence as shown in Table 2. The first two sentence structures were simple canonical sentences. They were selected from N5 level in JLPT. The last two sentence structures were complex canonical sentence structures, which are categorized in N4 level in JLPT. These four types of sentence structures with varying difficulty were adopted to examine the degree to which the L3 learners are able to process the target structures at the L3 initial state.. 18.

(40) Table 2 Sentence structures appeared in the oral translation task Sentence structure. Example. 1. KR. S O V (5). 저는 차를 마시요.. CH. S V O (5). 我喝茶. ‘I drink tea.’. 2. KR. S IO DO V (5). 할머니는저에게 편지를 썼어요.. CH. S V DO IO (5). 奶奶寫了信給我. ‘My grandmother wrote me a letter.’. 3. KR. S [S’ O’ V’] V (5). 어머니는 사과를 산다고 말했어요.. CH. S V [S’ V’ O’] (5). 媽媽說她要買蘋果. ‘My mom said that she would buy apples.’. 4. KR. S [S’ IO’ DO’ V’] V (5). CH. S V [S’ V’ DO’ IO’] (5). 아버지는 선생님이 형에게 짐을 보낸다고 말했어요. 爸爸說老師要寄包裹給哥哥. ‘My dad said the teacher would send a parcel to my older brother.’. Note. S = subject; V = verb; I = indirect object; O = direct object; S’ = subject in a quotational clause; V = verb in a quotational clause; O’ = direct object in a quotational clause; I’ = indirect object in a quotational clause. * Number in ( ) indicates the number of sentences presented in the oral translation task. In terms of level of difficulty in the four target sentence structure, the SOV/SVO sentence (hereafter 3-word sentence) is the easiest to acquire in this study. The acquisition of the SOV/SVO sentence structure is followed by that of the doubleobject sentence (hereafter 4-word sentence) as researchers have agreed (e.g., Osgood & Zehler, 1981). Then, the acquisition of simple sentence is followed by that of. 19.

(41) complex sentence (Bowerman, 1979; Mervis & Crisafi, 1982). In terms of level of difficulty between the third sentence structure (hereafter 5-word sentence) and the fourth sentence structure (hereafter 6-word sentence) in Table 2, the 6-word sentence requires more cognitive burden than the 5-word sentence. The reason is as follows: a subordinate clause in the 6-word sentence requires a double-object while the one in the 5-word sentence requires a SOV/SVO sentence. As mentioned above, the doubleobject sentence requires more cognitive burden than the SOV/SVO sentence. This is applicable to a complex sentence leading a subordinate clause. Therefore, it can be assumed that the acquisition of the 5-word sentence precedes that of the 6-word sentence. The order of acquisition of the sentence structures were summarized in Table 3.. 20.

(42) Table 3 Order of sentence complexity Order of sentence complexity. Sentence structure. 1. SOV/SVO (3-word sentence). 2. Double-object sentence (4-word sentence) Quotational sentence with a SOV/SVO sentence in a. 3 subordinate clause (5-word sentence) Quotational sentence with a double-object sentence in a 4 subordinate clause (6-word sentence). 3.2.2 Grammaticality judgment task (GJT) GJT was conducted with a laptop computer. With the use of the software, Readlab, grammatical and ungrammatical Japanese sentences were automatically presented on the computer screen. In this task, the Japanese sentences were generally composed of the same sentence structures used in OT, but one difference between OT and GJT was that verbs in a plain form were adopted in GJT. This is because the pilot study found that even beginning learners of Japanese could easily judge grammaticality of sentences by simply identifying a position of a verb without processing a whole sentence. In fact, beginning learners could effortlessly discern a verb from other part of speech by finding a word ending with masu. In addition to using a plain form for verbs, a marker of a direct object (i.e., -o) was omitted when it was put at the end of a sentence. This is because a pilot study suggested that the. 21.

(43) participants could easily judge a sentence ending with a direct object with an accusative marker -o being attached as ungrammatical. Even beginners of Japanese know that this never happens in Japanese language. However, to facilitate the decoding for the participants, the following process was implemented. First, each sentence was presented only visually. No auditory stimuli were given. Second, sentences were composed of words which include kanji3. Embedding kanji in every single lexical item helped reduce the cognitive burden when decoding its meaning due to familiarity with logographic writing system for learners/users of Mandarin Chinese (Chikamatsu, 1996). Japanese kanji adopted in the task was the N4 or N5 level in JLPT4 and its meaning was the same as hanzi in Mandarin Chinese. Sample questions were given in Figure 2.. <Grammatical sentence> 田中さんは本を読んだ。 (1) Grammatical (2) Ungrammatical (3) Not sure <Ungrammatical sentence> 林さんは買った電話。 (1) Grammatical (2) Ungrammatical (3) Not sure. Figure 2. Sample questions of GJT. 3. Kanji is one of the Japanese writing systems which originated from logographic Chinese characters. JLPT stands for Japanese Language Proficiency Test. This is a widely-used proficiency test for learners of Japanese as a second or foreign language all over the world. N4/N5 is elementary/beginning level, respectively. 4. 22.

(44) In terms of sentence structures in GJT, the example sentences were indicated in Table 4 (see Appendix B for the full list of sentences used in GJT).. Table 4 Sentence structures involved in GJT Pattern. Examples 林さんはご飯を食べた。. 1. SOV (5) SVO (5). 食べたご飯。. *林さんは. 2. SIOV (5). 田中さんは. 林さんに. 友達を. 紹介した。. SVOI (5). *田中さんは. 紹介した. 友達を. 林さん。. 3. S[S’O’V’]V (5) SV[S’V’O’] (5) 4. S[S’I’O’V’]V (5) SV[S’V’O’ I’] (5). 木村さんは田中さんが *木村さんは言った私は林さんが *私は思う. 肉を. 買ったと言った。. 田中さんが. 買った肉。. 田中さんに. 手紙を書いた. と思う。. 林さんが. 書いた田中さんに手紙。. Note. S = subject; V = verb; I = indirect object; O = direct object; S’ = subject in a quotational clause; V = verb in a quotational clause; O’ = direct object in a quotational clause; I’ = indirect object in a quotational clause. *Sentences with a * mark means that the sentence is ungrammatical * Number in ( ) indicates the number of sentences appeared in GJT. These four types of sentence structures were selected for the same reason stated in OT. To reiterate, the study aims to measure the degree to which the L3 learners are able to process the target L3 sentence structures at the initial state. In doing so, the learners were presented the sentences with varying complexity. To be more specific, the SOV/SVO sentence is the easiest to acquire in this study. The. 23.

(45) acquisition of the SOV/SVO sentence structure is followed by that of the doubleobject sentence as researchers have agreed (e.g., Osgood & Zehler, 1981). Then, the acquisition of simple sentence is followed by that of complex sentence (Bowerman, 1979; Mervis & Crisafi, 1982). In terms of level of difficulty between 5-word sentence and the 6-word sentence, the 6-word sentence requires more cognitive burden than the 5-word sentence. The reason is as follows: a subordinate clause in the 6-word sentence requires a double-object while the one in the 5-wrod sentence requires a SOV/SVO sentence. As mentioned above, the double-object sentence requires more cognitive burden than the SOV/SVO sentence. This is applicable to a complex sentence leading a subordinate clause. Therefore, it can be assumed that the acquisition of the 5-word sentence precedes that of the 6-word sentence (see Table 3).. 3.2.3 Survey of psychotypological distance A Likert scale was used to measure psychotypological distance between the previously-acquired languages and the target language, ranging from one to seven, one indicating “I strongly disagree.” and seven indicating “I strongly agree.” The survey was designed based on the similarity assessment used in the previous studies (Forsyth, 2014; Kresić & Gulan, 2012). Questions were presented on the computer screen in the multiple-choice form in Mandarin Chinese (see Appendix D). By clicking a number, the participants chose an answer that best describes their opinion. Sample questions are shown in Figure 3.. 24.

(46) A. 整體地說, 你覺得韓文像日文 1-----------------2-----------------3-----------------4-----------------5-----------------6-----------------7 完全不同意完全同意 B. 整體地說, 你覺得中文像日文 1-----------------2-----------------3-----------------4-----------------5-----------------6-----------------7 完全不同意完全同意. Figure 3. Sample questions of survey to measure psychotypological distance I. 3.3 Design This section presented the design of (1) OT, (2) GJT, and (3) Survey for measuring psychotypological distance. It also demonstrates scoring method of each task.. 3.3.1 Oral translation task (OT) and scoring OT was adopted to examine how the participants utilized the two alreadyacquired languages during oral production at the L3 initial state. In this task, the participants were given single sentences either in Korean and Chinese auditorily and translated into Japanese orally. The participants were allowed to listen to each sentence only once. The task included a total of 40 sentences, 20 sentences being given in Korean and 20 sentences being given in Mandarin Chinese. In other words, all the participants were required to translate both L1 into Japanese and L2 into Japanese. In each sentence, 15 seconds were given to translate. Participants’ answers. 25.

(47) were recorded and coded for scoring. Table 5 summarized all the sentence structures that the participants uttered during OT and how they were scored.. Table 5 Scoring table for the participants’ performance during OT Number of words. 3 words. 4 words. 5 words. 6 words. Sentence structure. Points Korean word order. Chinese word order. SOV. 1. 0. SVO. 0. 1. S IO DO V. 2. 0. S V DO IO. 0. 2. S V IO DO. 1. 1. S S' O' V' V. 2. 0. S V S' V' O'. 0. 2. S V S' O' V'. 1. 1. S S' IO' DO' V' V. 3. 0. S V S' V' DO' IO'. 0. 3. S V S' V' IO' DO'. 1. 2. S S' DO' IO' V' V. 2. 1. Note. In OT, all the learners’ utterances that were scored belong to one of the sentence structures shown above except cases where the ones that the learners failed to produce or missed uttering a word.. In scoring the participants’ performance, the occurrence of transfer was counted based on the two criteria: (1) position of a verb in a main clause and a. 26.

(48) subordinate clause, and (2) the order of direct object and indirect object in a main clause and a subordinate clause. As for the former, if a verb was put after a subject, it was seen as the Chinese word order while if it was placed at the very end of a sentence, it is regarded as the Korean word order. Regarding the latter, if a sentence included the IO-DO order, it was counted as the Korean word order while the order of the objects was DO-IO, it was seen as the Chinese word order. In terms of sentences consisting of three words, each sentence was composed of either SOV or SVO. If a learner’s Japanese utterance took the SOV word order, one point was added to Korean word order. If he/she spoke a Japanese sentence in the SVO word order, one point was added to Chinese word order. Similarly, sentences consisting of four words aimed for (1) a position of a verb and (2) the order of a direct object and an indirect object in the S IO DO V/S V DO IO sentence structure. If a learner’s utterance was S IO DO V, two points were added to Korean word order because a verb was put at the end of a sentence and an indirect object preceded a direct object. If a learner’s speech took S V DO IO, two points were added to Chinese word order because a verb came immediately after a subject while it took the DO-IO order. In the case of S V IO DO, one point was added to Korean word order and so is to Chinese word order. One point was given to a Korean word order because it took the IO-DO order, and one point was added to Chinese sentences structure because a verb was put right after a subject. Turing to sentences consisting of five words, the scoring was conducted in the two criteria: a position of a verb in a main clause and the one in a subordinate clause symbolled as V and V’ respectively. If a learner’s speech took the S S’ O’ V’ V order, two points were added to Korean sentence structure while the utterance of S V S’ V’ O’ added two points to Chinese word order. If a learner said S V S’ O’ V’, one point. 27.

(49) was given to Korean word order and Chinese word order each because a main verb was put after a main subject while a verb in a subordinate clause was put after a subordinate subject. Finally, sentences consisting of six words had three criteria to score: (1) a position of a verb in a main clause, (2) a position of a verb in a subordinate clause, and (3) the order of an IO and a DO in a subordinate clause. Three points were given to Korean word order if a learner spoke S S’ I’ O’ V’ V while three points to Chinese word order if he/she said S V S’ V’ O’ I’. If a learner said S V S’ I’ O’ V’, two points were given to Korean word order due to a position of a verb in a subordinate clause and the order of an IO and a DO, and one point for Chinese word order due to a position of a main verb. In addition, points were not deducted for errors irrelevant to word order such as selecting a wrong lexical item, missing case markers, or mispronunciation of a word. These errors were disregarded because the purpose of OT is to assess the learners’ performance on morphosyntactic transfer. Since word order was the main focus of the present study, the score was not deducted regarding errors unrelated to word order.. 3.3.2 Grammaticality judgment task (GJT) and scoring GJT was conducted to assess (1) the participants’ receptive ability, and (2) the degree to which the processing of L3 morphosyntax is automatized. To measure the participants’ receptive skills from the two aspects, RTs and scores of transfer were assessed. The participants were given a total of 60 sentences. These sentences consisted of 20 grammatical sentences, 20 ungrammatical sentences in the Chinese word order, and 20 fillers. Fillers consisted of ungrammatical sentences due to wrong. 28.

(50) word order which is not the same as Chinese word order (e.g., V S O, V O S, V S IO DO). The participants were presented Japanese sentences and asked to judge whether they were grammatical or ungrammatical as soon as they saw them. To answer the question, the participants hit a if they thought that a sentence was grammatical. If they thought that a sentence was ungrammatical, they hit u. Some demonstrations and a practice session were given to the participants to familiarize themselves with the operation of GJT before moving to the real session. Regarding scoring, the following steps were taken. First of all, the number of transfer from Korean was counted. To do so, the number of the Japanese sentences in the Korean word order judged as grammatical was counted. Secondly, the number of transfer from Chinese was identified by counting the number of the Japanese sentences in the Chinese word order chosen as grammatical. Although these sentences are ungrammatical in Japanese, if the participants accept them as grammatical, this exhibits that Chinese morphosyntactic knowledge was utilized when processing Japanese, and therefore, is seen as morphosyntactic transfer from Chinese. Finally, the number of Korean and Chinese transfer was compared to identify the degree of the role that Korean and Chinese played in GJT. Referring to the measurement of the degree to which the processing of L3 morphosyntax is automatized, RTs of the two experimental groups and those of the native Japanese were compared. To do so, the data analysis of RT was conducted in the following ways. First of all, RT data points with incorrect answers were removed as well as those with fillers. After removing the RT data points with incorrect answers and fillers, outliers were dealt with. To be more specific, RT data points over 1500ms were removed as a cutoff. The rationale for this is based on Iseki’s experimental study (2003). Using a similar design of the yes/no judgment to the software used in the. 29.

(51) present study, he tested native Japanese speakers’ online inferences through Japanese sentences with a close length to the present study. He assumed that there is a higher chance that spending more than 1500ms is so long that learners can afford to process a sentence with explicit knowledge. This means that learners do not process a sentence in a target language automatically. Another reason the present study refers the cutoff point to Iseki (2003) is that he is the developer of the Readlab, the software used for GJT in the present study. For these two reasons, 1500ms was set up as the cutoff point in this thesis. Likewise, RT data points which were faster than 100ms were removed. As claimed by researchers, psychological process requires at least 100ms (Ratcliff, 1993; Whelan, 2008). According to the researchers, RTs that are faster than 100ms indicate that learners accidentally pressed a button without processing a target language. For this reason, RT data points that are below 100ms were removed as outliers. Finally, RTs that are 2.5 standard deviations from the mean of the same participants were excluded. This was done because previous studies examining how foreign learners of Japanese process word order adopted this standard of a cutoff (e.g., Iseki, 2003; Koizumi et al., 2006).. 3.3.3 Survey of psychotypological distance and scoring Psychotypological distance was measured on a seven-scale Likert scale. The participants were given question items on the computer screen. Based on the question items, the participants chose one answer that best reflects their opinions. This task aimed to measure (1) the participants’ holistic impression on typological distance and (2) the participants’ recognition of morphosyntactic similarity between their prior languages and the target language. The reason for inquiring about these two categories is that the previous studies have not reached consensus on the definition of. 30.

(52) ‘psychotypology’ (Rothman & Cabrelli Amaro, 2010). In fact, some researchers claim that psychotypology is a holistic impression (Rothman 2011), while others maintain that psychotypology is determined based on characteristics of specific linguistic domain(s) (De Angelis, 2005; Ringbom, 2002). In the present study, the survey encompasses the questions that inquire both definitions of psychotypology. Additionally, in the question items inquiring the participants’ recognition of (mopho)syntactic similarity between the existing languages and the target language, the survey inquired the participants about how they recognize similarities and whether they actually make use of their knowledge during the two experimental tasks. Sample question items are shown in Figure 4.. C. 你覺得中文的語順像日文 1-----------------2-----------------3-----------------4-----------------5-----------------6-----------------7 完全不同意完全同意 D. 在實驗中,考慮日文語順的時候, 你依靠中文的知識嗎? 1-----------------2-----------------3-----------------4-----------------5-----------------6-----------------7 完全不同意完全同意. Figure 4. Sample questions of survey to measure psychotypological distance II. 3.4 Procedure The study was conducted in the following order: (1) OT, (2) GJT (3) survey on psychotypological distance. Before the participants worked on the experimental tasks, the participants were asked to fill out the questionnaire on their linguistic. 31.