Acquisition of L3 writing proficiency in Hungarian Japanese learners

Abstract

The present study investigates writing proficiency in Hungarian Japanese learners to examine how language closeness between the mother tongue and any language acquired later in life might affect the learning quality of the second language. Writing proficiency is measured at two levels: syntactic complexity based on dependency distance, and lexical complexity using moving-average morphological richness (MAMR) and moving-average mean size of paradigm (MAMSP) measures. Study findings suggests that in terms of essay writing (writing style: simple), both MAMR and MAMSP of Japanese written by Hungarians are extremely close to native Japanese writing. Regarding email writing, which requires both honorific and humble forms of language, both lexical and syntactic complexity of Hungarian Japanese learners are characterised by slightly reduced richness than those of native Japanese persons, but remain very close. These outcomes based on a lexical and syntactic examination of Hungarian Japanese learners indicate that the mother tongue (L1) affects the quality of later language acquisitions.