Noriko Iwasaki

Incremental Sentence Production: Observations from Elicited Speech Errors in Japanese

This chapter proposes that in Japanese sentence production, a secondary processing procedure that utilizes frequent correspondences between thematic roles and case particles may be at work in the absence of yet-to-be retrieved verb lemma, enabling incremental sentence production processes. Speech error data (slips of the tongue) among native speakers of Japanese are provided to demonstrate that Japanese speakers are likely to be using the common correspondence between Patient role NPs and the accusative particle o (and between Location and dative/locative particle ni). In experimentally elicited data, errors of o are observed when the Patient role is expressed in subject NPs in sentences such as passive sentences and intransitive sentences that require Patient as the subject and errors of ni are observed when Location is expressed as the sentence-initial NP followed by verbs of activities, which require the particle de for the location of activities. Such case particle selection based on the mapping between the thematic role of the NP and the case particle enables Japanese speakers to produce sentences fluently (and accurately, most of the time) since they do not always need to wait until the verb selection is finalized to produce sentences.

Naming action in Japanese: Effects of semantic similarity and grammatical class

This study investigated whether the semantic similarity and grammatical class of distracter words affects the naming of pictured actions (verbs) in Japanese. Three experiments used the picture-word interference paradigm with participants naming picturable actions while ignoring distracters. In all three experiments, we manipulated the semantic similarity between distracters and targets (similar vs. dissimilar verbs) and the grammatical class of semantically dissimilar distracters (verbs, verbal nouns, and also nouns in Experiment 3) in addition to task demands (single word naming vs. phrase/sentence generation). While Experiment 1 used visually presented distracters, Experiment 2 and 3 used auditory distracter words to rule out possible confounding factors of orthography (kanji vs. hiragana). We found the same results for all three experiments: robust semantic interference in the absence of any effects of grammatical class. We discuss the lack of grammatical class effects in terms of structural characteristics of the Japanese language.

Concurrent speech disturbs word generation: Semantic, associative, and grammatical processes in picture naming: A pictureword interference study

In pictureword interference (PWI), a picture of an object to be named is presented with a distracter word. Most PWI studies showed semantic interference between a target picture and distracter word (noun). Recently, Vigliocco et al. (2005) studied grammatical effect in naming a picture of action. They found that generation of an inflected form of an Italian verb was disturbed by a distracter in the same grammatical class. In experiment 1 of the present study, naming an object with an auditorily presented noun or verb distracter in Japanese was investigated, and grammatical class but not semantic effect was found, which is incongruent with previous findings. Analyzing the distracters revealed that familiarity of the verbs was lower than that of nouns, and half of nouns classified as semantically close were associative (e.g., garage versus car). In experiment 2, familiarity was matched across distracters, and association effect was examined separately. To see time course of interference, stimulus onset asyn...

Transitivity in Japanese Sentence Production: Speech Errors of the Dative NI and the Accusative O.

Abstract This study examines native Japanese speakers’ speech errors of the case particles, the dative ni and the accusative o, occurring in object NPs of two-place predicates. The speech error data demonstrate that the semantic basis of ni and o errors in native Japanese speakers’ utterances is closely related to transitivity (as discussed by Hopper and Thompson 1980). Japanese speakers tend to use the accusative o for the object NPs (even when the dative ni is required by the verb) if the meanings of the events and actions that the speakers wish to talk about are relatively high in transitivity and ni if the events are relatively low in transitivity and if they involve some kind of directionality. The findings suggest that Japanese speakers utilize dynamic online semantic mapping when selecting case particles in speech and that such mapping may facilitate online sentence production when the verb selection (the retrieval of the target verb) is not finalized.

Grammar for Reading Japanese as a Second Language: Variation of Stance Expressions Using to omou in Different Written Registers

Reading activities in the foreign language classroom are often employed to promote or reinforce learners’ grammatical and lexical knowledge, rather than reinforcing the learners’ ability to read. This may be partially because of an underlying misconception that the same basic grammar is used in both spoken and written language. In this chapter, problems associated with such practices are first discussed, followed by a presentation of a small-scale corpus-based study uncovering the writer’s grammatical choices in expressing stance using to omou ‘think that’ (e.g. plain versus desu/masu; spontaneous to omowareru; sentence-final particles) in different registers (newspapers, magazines, books, Yahoo! online blogs, and Yahoo! Q&A). It is hoped that the findings will assist Japanese language educators to help L2 readers to consider the role of grammar in reading not just to ‘comprehend’ the text, but also to learn about the writer’s identity, persona and attitudes.