Input, triggering and poverty of the stimulus in the second language acquisition of Japanese passives

Masahiro Hara (1)

1 Truman State University

This article adopts an input perspective in examining a poverty-of-the stimulus (POS) learning situation in second language acquisition (SLA). Analysis of grammaticality judgement data from 81 English-speaking and 85 Chinese-speaking learners of Japanese isolates triggering input that informed English learners of subtle semantic properties of the direct passive underdetermined by second language (L2) input. The study shows a sufficient correlation in the case of English learners between acquisition of the direct passive's triggering properties (available through input) and acquisition of its POS properties (unavailable through input). Importantly, those properties are direct consequences of affectivity, an underlying semantic property of the direct passive. That correlation does not obtain in the case of Chinese learners due to a positive first language (L1) effect. Additional corroborating evidence comes from acquisition of another Japanese passive, the , for which no correlation was found between its non-triggering and non-POS properties for either English or Chinese learners as those properties are available through input. The article proposes that English learners' computation of a target-like conceptual representation of the triggering input leads to the restructuring of their lexical—conceptual representation of the direct passive.

Mots clés: second language acquisition; poverty of the stimulus in L2; triggering input in L2; L2 lexical conceptual structure; Japanese passives

Masahiro Hara. Input, triggering and poverty of the stimulus in the second language acquisition of Japanese passives. Second Language Research, 2007, 23 (4), pp.419-458. ⟨10.1177/0267658307080331⟩. ⟨hal-00570734⟩