Grammar of Japanese mimetics used by English and Korean learners of L2 Japanese in KY Corpus interviews

Abstract

This chapter examines whether and how the absence/presence of a grammatically similar mimetics inventory in second language (L2) learners’ first language (L1) influences their use of Japanese mimetics, focusing on the grammatical properties of mimetics. Two languages that diverge greatly with respect to the repertoires and grammatical properties of mimetics are English and Korean. L1 English speakers with higher proficiency used more mimetics in more varied syntactic contexts, and Superior-level speakers used the largest number of mimetics in the widest range of syntactic contexts. A comparison between L1 English and Korean learners of L2 Japanese will help us to understand the role of L1 in L2 acquisition of Japanese mimetics. Even if lexicalized Korean mimetic words contain language-specific sound symbolism that is different from what is considered to be universal sound symbolism to a large extent, Korean speakers share sound-symbolic associations with speakers of English and Japanese when comprehending or producing mimetic words.

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