The perception of interrogativity by Japanese speakers of Dutch as a second language

Abstract

There are several linguistic tools for marking a specific message as a question: syntax (word order), prosody (question intonation) and lexis (question words or particles). When learning a second language, differences in question marking between first and second language may in principle be a problem for the correct perception and production of interrogativity in the second language. In Japanese there is no difference in word order between yes/no questions and statements: a statement is turned into a yes/no question by adding the sentence-final question particle ka. Given that second-language learners may transfer elements of their mother tongue to the second language, we predict that Japanese speakers of Dutch may have problems with interpreting Dutch questions that are marked only by inverted word order.