Plenary Speaker

Interpretation of null arguments in acquisition of East Asian languages:
Towards the development of L3 acquisition models 

Within third language acquisition research in the UG-based framework, few studies have investigated the acquisition of East Asian languages, compared to European languages (but see Clements & Domínguez, 2018). In this talk, I will address this disparity by examining the interpretation of null arguments among learners of Japanese. It has been demonstrated that Japanese null arguments are not instances of pro but rather cases of argument ellipsis (AE) (Oku 1998, Saito 2007, Takahashi 2020, Sakamoto 2020, among others). I will present cross-linguistic perspectives on AE and make predictions about how learners interpret Japanese null arguments on the basis of the cross linguistic differences. Currently, however, there are very few studies on L3 acquisition of AE (but see Miyamoto and Yamada 2017, Yamada and Miyamoto 2018 for European languages). We will, therefore, start by reviewing relevant findings from studies of null argument interpretation in L2 acquisition. It will come to light that learners whose L1 exhibits agreement either fail to allow interpretations related to AE altogether in their L2 Japanese grammar or allow such interpretations but do so using a different mechanism from that of native Japanese speakers. I will then sketch a new L3 joint research project I am involved in investigating interpretation of null arguments in Japanese and Chinese. A key property that may impact L3 grammar is the feature [+Def] in subject position because the feature is available in Chinese but not in Japanese (Takahashi 2020). Some of our pilot data obtained in multilingual situations will be presented together with control group data for comparison. I will discuss which L3 acquisition models the results support and which models they challenge. At the end of the talk, possible future research directions will be proposed building on the findings in our L3 research project.