On the acquisition of giving and receiving verbs in Japanese by English-speaking learners

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-84)This thesis investigates how English-speaking learners of Japanese acquire Japanese giving and receiving verbs. We examine the factors which influence the acquisition of these verbs through the observation of errors that learners have made. We studies the errors made by 25 English-speaking learners of Japanese at a U.S. university who were learning Japanese as a foreign language in an intennediate class. This thesis analyzes the errors observed in terms of developmental orders, the speaker's point of view, and deixis. The results of this study revealed the following findings: (1) giving verbs ageru, yaru and sashiageru, as both main and auxiliaries, are easiest for Englishspeaking learners of Japanese as previous studies have shown; (2) learners have difficulty distinguishing differences among giving verbs in the kureru category and receiving verbs in the morau category; (3) the speaker's point of view plays an important role in acquiring Japanese giving/receiving verbs; and (4) the features of"directional deixis" and "social deixis" of Japanese giving/receiving verbs do not cause great difficulty for learners