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This article explores what kind of second language (L2) input influences Japanese learners' acquisition of adjective ordering restrictions (AOR) in English where Japanese exhibits no AOR. In Study I, an explicit instruction (EI) group (n = 13) and a natural exposure (NE) group (n = 12) responded to a preference task. In Study II, an input flood (IF) group (n = 15) and a NE group (n = 16) were involved in the same task. The EI group received 90-minute EI across three weeks while the IF group received positive evidence with multiple adjectives over 15 weeks. The NE groups participated in three or five-week intensive study-abroad programs in North America. Results from the two studies showed that many of the participants failed to make correct choices at the pre-test indicating difficulty with AOR and that only the EI group improved in their performance at the post-tests. We claim that positive evidence alone does not guarantee L2 acquisition of AOR.

This article reports on the development and use of the Developmental Sentence Scoring for Japanese (DSSJ), a new morpho-syntactical measure for Japanese constructed after the model of Lee's English Developmental Sentence Scoring model. Using this measure, the authors calculated DSSJ scores for 84 children divided into six age groups between 2;8 and 5;2 on the basis of 100-sentence samples collected from free-play child--adult conversations. The analysis showed a high correlation of the DSSJ overall score with the Mean Length of Utterance. The analysis of the DSSJ sub-area scores revealed large variations between these sub-area scores for children with similar overall DSSJ scores. When investigating the high-scoring children (over 1 SD over group average), most children scored high in three to five sub-areas, but the combination of scores for these sub-areas varied from child to child. It is concluded that DSSJ is a valuable tool especially for language acquisition research. The overall DSSJ score reliably reflects the overall morpho-syntactic development of Japanese children, and the sub-area scores provide specific information on individual acquisition patterns.

Investigated the acquisition of Japanese unaccusative verbs by English-speaking learners, specifically whether second language learners are sensitive to syntactic and semantic properties associated with the "takusan" construction as a syntactic test and the "-teiru" construction as a semantic test. Results show learners generally know the properties investigated. (Author/VWL)

Reports on an experimental study that was conducted to examine how native speakers of Japanese acquire syntactic properties of English reflexive pronouns. In particular, the effects of two parameters of Universal Grammar, the Governing Category Parameter, and the Proper Antecedent Parameter were studied. (AUTHOR/GLR)