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In:Topics in Theoretical Asian Linguistics: Studies in honor of John B. Whitman
Edited by Kunio Nishiyama, Hideki Kishimoto and Edith Aldridge
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 250] 2018
► pp. 229–251

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Chapter 11
An experimental study of children’s comprehension of lexical and productive causatives in Japanese

 | Ochanomizu University
 | Kyushu Sangyo University
 | Ochanomizu University
 | Ochanomizu University
 | Ochanomizu University
Published online: 12 December 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.250.12yam
This article experimentally investigates children’s comprehension of causative constructions in Japanese and compares the acquisition of lexical and productive causatives in Japanese. The results of our experiments show that children correctly comprehend direct causative meanings of lexical causative verbs quite early, but that they often misinterpret indirect causative meanings of productive causatives, which suggests that the acquisition of indirect causative meanings of productive causatives is delayed. We suggest the delay of the acquisition of productive causatives is due to children’s misplacement of the causative morpheme sase in the structure of productive causatives, which is compatible with the analysis of children’s natural speech data in Murasugi and Hashimoto (2004) and Murasugi, Hashimoto and Fuji (2007).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous acquisition studies of causatives in Japanese
    • 2.1 Murasugi & Hashimoto 2004 and Murasugi, Hashimoto & Fuji 2007
    • 2.2 Okabe (2008)
  • 3.Experiments
    • 3.1Experiment 1
      • 3.1.1Method
      • 3.1.2Results of Experiment 1
    • 3.2Experiment 2
      • 3.2.1Picture selection task
        • 3.2.1.1Method
        • 3.2.1.2Results of the picture selection task
      • 3.2.2Truth value judgment task
        • 3.2.2.1Method
        • 3.2.2.2Results of the truth value judgment task
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • References
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