This book is a collection of eight articles by leading scholars investigating of the acquisition of English by native speakers of Japanese. It deals with a wide range of topics from the acquisiton of VP structures to functional categories and presents new empirical data. The studies all contribute to our understanding of these topics, and they are of current interest to researchers working on Second Language Acquisition.

Autorentext

Shigenori Wakabayashi is Professor at the Gunmar Prefectural Women's University, Gunmar Japan.

Klappentext

Language acquisition is a human endeavor par excellence. As children, all human beings learn to understand and speak at least one language: their mother tongue. It is a process that seems to take place without any obvious effort. Second language learning, particularly among adults, causes more difficulty. The purpose of this series is to compile a collection of high-quality monographs on language acquisition. The series serves the needs of everyone who wants to know more about the problem of language acquisition in general and/or about language acquisition in specific contexts.

Inhalt

VP structures

Shunji Inagaki Japanese learners' acquisition of English motion verbs with goal PPs Makiko Hirakawa Unaccusatives versus passives in L2 English

Functional categories

Koji Suda and Shigenori Wakabayashi The acquisition of the nominative and accusative cases in English by Japanese learners at an early stage Tomohiko Shirahata The acquisition of a second language C-system by Japanese learners of English Hiromasa Ohba Pied-piping and stranding in oblique relative clauses in Japanese EFL learners' interlanguage grammars Chieko Kuribara Is an interlanguage a "possible grammar"?: How Japanese speakers learn CP structures in English

New empirical data

Shigenori Wakabayashi and Izumi Okawara Japanese learners' errors on long distance wh-questions Yuichi Tomita, Kazuhiko Fukuda, and Natsuko Tatsuta N400 in the brain potential responses of second language learners: What ERPs suggest