Japanese speakers' second language Chinese wh-questions: a lexical morphological feature deficit account

Boping Yuan (1)

1 CAM - University of Cambridge [UK]

In this article, an empirical study of how Chinese -questions are mentally represented in Japanese speakers' grammars of Chinese as a second language (L2) is reported. Both Chinese and Japanese are generally considered languages in which a -word is allowed to remain in its base-generated position, and both languages use question particles to mark questions. It is assumed that C in -questions is essentially ambiguous and unvalued and that unvalued C must be valued. In Chinese, the -particle values C with [+Q, +wh] features, which licenses the -word . As a result, no -movement is necessary and Subjacency becomes irrelevant. Japanese also employs question particles, such as or . However, they are `defective' in the sense that they can only value the ambiguous C as [+Q] and they are unable to specify the question as to whether it is [+yes/no] or [+wh]. To value C as a head with [+wh], a -operator in a -word inside the sentence has to raise overtly to C. The results of an acceptability judgement task show that although the Japanese speakers respond in a broadly target-like way, the lexical morphological feature [+wh] of the particle in their L2 Chinese lexicons is permanently deficient, which leads to variability in their intuitions about Chinese -questions. A lexical morphological feature deficit account for the results is proposed, and it is suggested that the lexical morphology—syntax interface can be a source of variability in L2 acquisition.

Mots clés: L2 Chinese; wh-questions; wh-in-situ; wh-movement; Japanese; interface properties in L2; variability in L2

Boping Yuan. Japanese speakers' second language Chinese wh-questions: a lexical morphological feature deficit account. Second Language Research, 2007, 23 (3), pp.329-357. ⟨10.1177/0267658307077644⟩. ⟨hal-00570731⟩