계승일본어에 있어서의 연체수식절 습득에 대하여

Abstract

This study investigated the acquisition of Japanese noun-modifying clauses by Korean-Japanese bilingual children who attended Korean elementary school. The acquisition of noun-modifying clauses as a heritage language was analyzed by comparing with the data of L1 children and adult learners of Japanese (L2 learners) in order to clarify the characteristics of Japanese as a heritage language. The oral interview data from 62 speakers of Japanese was utilized and analyzed in terms of their ages and proficiency levels. It is investigated whether center-embedded clauses are difficult to be produced. While L2 learners show a tendency that center-embedded clauses are not used at all at the lowest proficiency of Japanese, no such tendency is observed in a heritage language. However, it is indicated that for Korean-Japanese bilingual children, proficiency levels have an influence on the acquisition of center-embedded clauses. Second, I examine what kind of modified nouns are used, focusing on their animacy. Korean-Japanese bilingual children use animate nouns more than L1 children do, and show the same tendency as L1 and adult Japanese speakers do. However, the use of animate nouns increases as the children advance to higher levels of Japanese, which shows that proficiency of Japanese has an influence on the acquisition of animate nouns. In addition, the use of modified nouns such asもの・ところ is analyzed. The result shows that children of lowest grades and lowest proficiency of Japanese have a tendency to use modified nouns such asもの・ところ.