Acquiring Japanese as a second language (JSL) in a naturalistic context: A longitudinal study of a young child from a Processability Theory (PT) perspective

In recent times Processability Theory (PT) (Pienemann, 1998) has extensively supported findings from studies of a range of languages acquired as an L2, including Japanese (Di Biase & Kawaguchi 2002). Following the acquisition criteria proposed by Pienemann (1998), the current study analyses the points of emergence of verbal morpho-syntactic structures by a seven year old Australian boy who was acquiring Japanese as a second language (JSL) naturalistically. A comparison of the findings of the current study with those of the study by Di Biase and Kawaguchi (2002) shows that both child and adult learners went through a similar developmental sequence of acquisition of verbal morpho-syntax, namely category procedure, phrasal procedure and S-procedure as hypothesised by Pienemann (1998).