81006708

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The Use and Misuse of the Aspect Form : teiru by Learners of Japanese as a Second Language

Learner Corpus Studies in Asia and the World

2

289-304

神戸大学国際コミュニケーションセンター

2014-05-31

2014-06-25

The Japanese aspect form -teiru is considered to be prone to misuse by learners of Japanese because of the variety of aspect meanings it may represent. The study reported here examines the use and misuse of -teiru by learners of Japanese from China, Korea, Ukraine, Poland, Slovenia, Great Britain, France, and Germany, comparing it to native speaker usage patterns. The findings reveal a tendency among learners to underuse-teiru. This underuse reflects, firstly, the misuse of -teiru with -ru, and, secondly. difficulty with the acquisition of aspect meanings corresponding to Punctual and Development verb classes. The learners most severely affected were those from Ukraine, Poland, Slovenia, and Germany. The paper suggests that the peculiarity of the aspect system in these languages causes the learners' difficulty with -teiru. It is concluded that relating aspect to verb semantic classes will assist the acquisition of aspect acquisition by learners of Japanese. Moreover, suggestions are made on how to remedy the misuse of -teiru and -ru. AB well as clarifying which verbs are incompatible with -teiru, it is essential to make a clear distinction between the Habitual aspect expressed by each form.

紀要論文