Abstract
This chapter explores what the outcome of a generative SLA study of null subjects can contribute to the field of instructed SLA and strives to serve as a bridge between generative syntactic analyses and potential classroom practices. The study focuses on null subjects in L2 Japanese at the levels of elementary to pre-advanced proficiencies. Adopting Hasegawa’s (Sci Approach Lang 7:1–34. Center for Language Sciences, Kanda University of International Studies, 2008; Agreement at the CP level: clause types and the ‘person’ restriction on the subject. In: MIT Working Papers in Linguistics: The Proceedings of the Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics, vol. 5, pp 131–152, 2009) analysis, null subjects in Japanese main clauses have two types: first-/second-person subjects licensed by agreement in the domain of modality and third-person subjects identified in context. This dichotomy is also manifested in the experimental findings, which are (1) the elementary learners had more difficulty identifying the referents of null first- or second-person subjects than those of null third-person subjects and (2) learners at all levels demonstrated underuse of null subjects especially in first-/second-person contexts. Based on these results, the chapter argues that null subjects can clearly be a target of focus on form instruction, but not of focus on formS or focus on meaning, and elaborates on how the results obtained in the experiment should be interpreted within the methodology of focus on form.
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Notes
- 1.
See Hawkins (2001: Chapter 5) for an overview of some previous GenSLA research on null subjects. Additional research on null subjects in L2 Japanese is found in Kanno (1997) and Yamada (2009) (among others). L2 acquisition of null subjects has also been widely discussed in reference to an important proposal in GenSLA, the interface hypothesis (Sorace and Filiaci 2006; among others), which predicts increased difficulty in the L2 acquisition of phenomena that require integration of syntax with discourse/pragmatic factors. The empirical study reported in this chapter investigates precisely such a phenomenon, but in order to focus on pedagogical issues, I do not discuss implications for SLA theory here.
- 2.
“Topic” is used in the technical sense applied in syntactic theory, here. Full explanation of this term is not necessary for the purpose of this chapter. For details, see Huang (1984).
- 3.
More recent studies on null subjects include Frascareli (2007), Neeleman and Szendroi (2007), Holmberg et al. (2009), and Cole (2009, 2010). Among those, Cole (2009, 2010) provides extensive typological descriptions of null subjects, which would enable us to consider how an L2 learner’s L1 may affect his/her acquisitional development of null subjects. However, Cole’s analysis still predicts that the referent of a null subject in Japanese can be recoverable from context only, contra what is proposed below.
- 4.
Throughout the chapter, [e] stands for a null subject or object (“e” = “empty”). Other abbreviations used in the examples are ACC = accusative, C = complementizer (quotation marker), COP = copula, NOM = nominative, Q = question, SF = sentence-final particle, TOP = topic, and VOL = volition.
- 5.
The ranking in Walker et al. (1994) is (grammatical or zero) topic > empathy > subject > object > others.
- 6.
Note that in Japanese, the use of overt pronouns such as kare “he” or kanojo “she” is not common. These forms were invented to translate male or female pronouns in western languages in the Meiji Era after 1868 (Martin 1976). Therefore, referential NPs, rather than overt pronouns, are used more frequently, and I follow this convention in the written task in the experiment.
- 7.
It should be noted, however, that some predicates require either a 2nd or 3rd person subject (e.g., V-soo-da “I heard that someone V” as mentioned above). The present study excludes such constructions and only “subject-neutral” sentences in which a referent of the 3rd person null subject is chosen from outside the sentence are examined.
- 8.
An example of a test item with a null 3rd person object is as follows:
A:
Sensei-wa
( )
yoku
homemasu
ne.
teacher-top
often
praise
sf
“The teacher often praises (C), right?”
B:
Soo
desu
ne. C-san-wa
benkyoo-ga yoku dekimasu
kara
ne.
so
cop
sf Mr.C-top
study-nom well can.do
because
sf
“Yes. It’s because Mr. C is very good at studies, isn’t it?”
- 9.
For completeness, rates of standard identification of null objects are included, although these are not the focus of this chapter. The somewhat low percentages for objects are mainly due to the results for 1st person object sentences with a giving verb. The average percentages for these sentences were the lowest throughout the three groups: 80.77 (High), 42.31 (Mid), and 38.89 (Low). If the results for 1st person objects are excluded, the average percentages for remaining null object sentences are 98.08 (High), 86.54 (Mid), and 77.78 (Low).
- 10.
1st person objects are separated from 2nd/3rd person objects in the ANOVA because the former can be identified within the sentence whereas the latter are identified by context. Details of the ANOVA results are as follows: type x group: F3.02, 48.39 = 5.73, p = .002, partial eta2 = .264, observed power = .933; type: F1.51, 48.39 = 5.73, p = .000, partial eta2 = .324, observed power = .994; group: F2, 32 = 15.32, p = .002, partial eta2 = .264, observed power = .933.
- 11.
Here, 1st person objects are put together with 2nd and 3rd person objects to form one group. This is due to the assumption that realization of null 1st person objects involves not only discourse effects but also identifiability within the context, which is not the case for 1st/2nd person subjects (see Table 3.1). Details of the ANOVA results are as follows: type x group: F2.14, 34.18 = 2.98, p = .061, partial eta2 = .157, observed power = .558; group: F2, 32 = 2.37, p = .110, partial eta2 = .129, observed power = .444; type: F1.07, 34.18 = 11.77, p = .001, partial eta2 = .269, observed power = .927.
- 12.
One may wonder if there is any effect of L1 transfer involved in the results of the experiment; however, calculating the standard/deviant answers by NNSs with two types of L1, null subject languages (i.e., Italian, Russian, Catalan, Chinese, Korean, and Polish) versus non-null subject languages (i.e. English, Dutch, French and German), no obvious correlation was found. Although it is true that overall, the former group did better than the latter, this is likely to be due to the fact that the latter group had more participants in the Low group while the former has only one in the Low group. This suggests that L2 learners’ understanding and performance concerning null subjects are more related to individuals’ proficiency levels than their L1, and hence, the role of L1 transfer on the phenomena under investigation will not be considered further in this chapter.
- 13.
It should be noted, however, that Kawaguchi (1999) examined more complicated structures such as relative clauses and subordinate clauses involving null subjects but not the main clauses that we looked at in the present study.
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Acknowledgement
A preliminary version of this chapter was presented at the colloquium entitled “Half a century on: What relevance does generative SLA have for language teaching?” at the American Association for Applied Linguistics 2011 Conference, Chicago, USA. I am grateful to the participants at the colloquium and an anonymous reviewer for the present chapter. Many thanks are also due for their valuable comments and suggestions from Heather Marsden, Barbara Pizziconi, and Melinda Whong. This research was partially supported by British Academy Overseas Conference Grant, SOAS Faculty of Languages and Cultures Strategic Funding in 2011, and the Japan Foundation Japanese Studies Fellowship Program (2012–2013).
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Kizu, M. (2013). L2 Acquisition of Null Subjects in Japanese: A New Generative Perspective and Its Pedagogical Implications. In: Whong, M., Gil, KH., Marsden, H. (eds) Universal Grammar and the Second Language Classroom. Educational Linguistics, vol 16. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6362-3_3
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