Contrastive analysis of English and Japanese demonstratives from the perspective of L1 and L2 acquisition

Abstract

The English demonstratives this and that and the Japanese ko, so and a seem fairly easy to acquire as lexical items for L2 learners. However, as Niimura & Hayashi's (1994) study reveals, even advanced learners have problems with the use of demonstratives in discourse reference as well as spatial-temporal deixis. This paper uses the data from the above mentioned study to examine English and Japanese demonstratives in reference to traditional grammatical explanations and more recent alternative models. The latter better explains the L1 data. L2 learners would benefit from knowing the differences and similarities between the two languages: psychological, rather than mere physical, proximity is a determining factor in both language systems, but in English, focus, or the degree of attention on the referent, is the critical determinant whereas in Japanese the overriding factor is whether or not the referent is in the domain of the speaker's direct experience. This difference could be in line with the distinction between “person-focus” and “situation-focus” languages (Hinds 1986).