In Mineharu Nakayama (Ed.), Handbook of Japanese Psycholinguistics (pp.
283-332). Berlin, Germany: DeGruyter Mouton.

Chapter 18 Processing of the Japanese language by native
Chinese speakers
Katsuo Tamaoka
1. Introduction
A great number of native Chinese speakers have been learning Japanese as a foreign
language. According to the Japan Foundation (Kokusai Kōryū Kikin) (2011), thenumbers of Japanese learners in 2009 were: 2,362 at elementary schools, 59,526 atsecondary schools, and 529,508 at higher education institutions in mainland China, and2,440 at elementary schools, 77,139 at secondary schools, and 119,898 at higher
education institutions in Taiwan. Out of 128,161 foreign nationals who studied Japanesein Japan in 2011, the largest population enrolled in Japan’s 1,832 higher education
institutions were Chinese speakers (63,249 from mainland China and 4,134 from
Taiwan) according to the Agency for Cultural Affairs in Japan (Bunka-chō) (2011).
Approximately half (52.58%) of the total learners studying Japanese in Japan were
estimated to be native Chinese speakers. As the number of learners increases, various
issues have been identified in their processing of Japanese. However, many studies
regarding these issues have been published in journals in Japan, the majority of which
are in Japanese. Given the nature of this handbook, I will introduce a variety ofJapanese publications to English-speaking audiences, including the latest studies on
lexical pitch accent, lexical access, and sentence processing by Chinese speaking
learners of Japanese. While doing so, I will clarify the ultimate goals and issues ofcurrent second language processing research. The organization of this chapter is asfollows: Section 2 discusses studies on lexical pitch accents and Section 3 provides asummary of studies on processing kanji compounds. Morpho-syntactic processing will
be discussed in Section 4 and finally, the summary of this chapter and future challenges
will be provided in Section 5.

2. Activation of lexical pitch accents
Tones in Mandarin Chinese (considered standard Chinese) spoken in Beijing areassigned to each syllable corresponding to a Chinese character. In contrast, Japanesepitch accents are fixed to each one of the moras in a word. Japanese pitch accent islinguistically said to be an attribute of lexical items (e.g., Sugito 1982, 1989; Taylor

12011a, 2011b). In this sense, Japanese pitch accents are assumed to be lexically storedwith phonological representations at the word level, and are then possibly activated
together with the pronunciation of a word (e.g., Cutler and Otake 1999; Sekiguchi 2006).
Then, if this is true for native Japanese speakers, the question arises whether native
Chinese speakers learning Japanese activate pitch accents when processing Japaneselexical items.

2.1 Perception of Japanese pitch accent by native Japanese speakers
The number of possible pitch accents in Japanese is the number of moras plus one(i.e., N + 1) (Sugito 1982). For instance, any word constructed of 3 moras has four
different pitch accent patterns, and likewise, words of 4 moras have five. Regardless ofthe number of pitch accents possible, all words in the Tokyo-standard Japanese (i.e.,hyōjun-go meaning ‘the standard language’) are classified into the following four
patterns (Saito 2006; Vance 2008).

ra

i
ge
tu
-ga
next month-NOM

zi

mu
si
tu
office-NOM

-ga

se

n
se
i
teacher-NOM-ga(1) atama-taka-gata
Initial-mora high pitch pattern(2)a naka-taka-gata(2)b naka-taka-gata
Middle-mora high pitch pattern Middle-mora high pitch pattern

i

to

mo
o
to
-ga
(younger) sister-NOM

mo

da
ti
friend-NOM-ga(4) hei-ban-gata(3) o-daka-gataEnding-mora high pitch pattern Flat-patternFigure 1. Four Japanese pitch patterns exemplified by 4-mora words with nominative
case particle -ga

2

As shown in Figure 1, the first pattern is called atama-taka-gata, an example being
the 4-mora-word HLLL+L (H here refers to high pitch and L refers to low pitch)/raigetu-ga/ NP(‘next month’)-NOM with the nominative case particle –ga. In thispattern, the first mora has a high pitch which drops on the second mora, and then levels
out on the rest of moras. In fact, atama means ‘initial’, taka ‘high’, and gata ‘pattern’, sothat the compound word literally means ‘the initial-mora high pitch pattern’. The second
pattern is called naka-taka-gata, meaning ‘the middle-mora high pitch pattern’. In thispattern, the pitch rises from low to high, drops on the following mora, and levels out on
the rest of moras. A 4-mora-word example of this pattern includes two different patterns
asin

LHLL+L/zimusitu-ga/

NP(‘office’)-NOM

and

LHHL+L/sensei-ga/

NP(‘teacher’)-NOM, depicted in Figure 1, since there are two middle moras in 4-mora
words. The third pattern is called o-daka-gata, meaning ‘the ending-mora high pitch
pattern’. In this pattern, pitch rises from low on the first mora to high on the second mora,then levels out on the rest of the moras. The fourth pattern, called hei-ban-gata meaning‘flat-pattern’, has the same pitch pattern as the third in isolated words. The third andfourth patterns can only be distinguished by means of the pitch of the following particle(Vance 2008). By adding the nominative case particle -ga to a noun, the third pattern ofimooto-ga, NP(‘sister’)-NOM is pronounced as LHHH+L whereas the fourth or flat
pattern of a CV+CV+CV+CV-patterned word (where C and V refer to a consonant and avowel, respectively), tomodati-ga, NP(‘friend’)-NOM is pronounced as LHHH+H. In
this manner, the pitch of the following particle changes the accent pattern.
There are some non-accented dialects sprinkled throughout Japan, in prefectures suchas Miyagi, Yamagata and Fukushima. Otake and Cutler (1999) reported that Japanesepitch accents were used to distinguish the appropriate lexical items by not only speakersof the Tokyo standard dialect but also by non-accented dialect speakers. According to thisfinding, native Japanese speakers can fundamentally perceive pitch accent regardless ofwhether they are from an accented or non-accented dialect region. Yet, Otake (2002)
further conducted a comparative experiment, showing that accented dialect speakers weremore sensitive to pitch accents than non-accented dialect speakers. Although bothspeakers of accented and non-accented dialects would likely be sensitive to the Tokyo
standard accent, speakers of accented dialects perceive pitch patterns more accurately
than those from non-accented dialects. Overall, as indicated by the findings from native
speakers until now, Japanese pitch accents seem to be activated during word processing.

3

Nevertheless, regional differences in pitch accent are abundant (e.g., Hattori 1951;
Hirayama 1957, 1968; Kindaichi 1974; Kubozono and Ota 1998; Sugito 1982, 2006,2012). Accents in the Osaka region often show pitch reversal compared to theTokyo-standard accents, such as 4-mora CV+CV+φV+CV-structured (φ refers to an
empty consonant) boosi-ga ‘a hat’ NP(‘hat’)-NOM, which is LHHH in Tokyo versus
HLLL in Osaka. A study on perception of the Tokyo-standard accent by speakers ofdifferent dialect backgrounds was conducted by Ayusawa (1998). This study used thepitch accent test developed by Nishinuma (1994), which has 72 items consisting of 3 to
5-mora words such as megane ‘glasses’, katakana ‘katakana script’, and otokonoko ‘boy’.
With no statistical analyses conducted on these data, Ayusawa (1998) commented that amajority of native Japanese speakers are likely to correctly perceive the Tokyo-standard
accent (Ayusawa 1998: 70-71). However, this inference is misleading. Even by merely
glancing at the figures of the graphs shown in Ayusawa (1998: 72), it is quite obvious thatparticipants in the Tokyo-standard areas show significantly higher accuracies thanparticipants in other dialect areas on various types of words.
Furthermore, we can gather the following conclusions from Ayusawa (1998) bysimply looking at the accuracy rates. Thirty participants from Ibaraki and Fukushima
prefectures showed a lesser degree of accuracy on perception for the first (mora) accented
items for 3-mora words, the first and the second (mora) accented words for 4-mora words,
and the second and the third (mora) accented words for 5-mora accented words incomparison to 30 participants from Tokyo. Likewise, 30 participants from the Osaka andKobe areas showed an even less accurate trend for perception of first mora accented items
for 3-mora words, the first and second mora accented words for 4-mora words, and thefirst, second, and third mora accented words for 5-mora accented words. In contrast, it isinteresting that participants from the Chugoku area showed higher accuracy across allconditions, similar to those from Tokyo. It is still an unanswered question as to whether
Japanese native speakers obligatorily activate pitch accents along with lexical items due
to dialectic variations.

2.2 Influence of Japanese language proficiency on pitch accent acquisition
Even though pitch accents show diverse differences across the regions of Japan,
Tokyo-standard accents are taught intensively at a majority of Chinese universities.
Widely-used Japanese textbooks for native Chinese speakers at universities in China (e.g.,4Hong 2010; Pan 2011; Zhang 2011; Zhao 2012; Zhou and Chen 2009, 2010, 2011a,
2011b) describe the position of a word’s pitch accent when introducing Japanese
vocabulary. For example, in the three-mora CV+CV+φV-structured adjective warui
meaning ‘bad’, a high pitch accent is indicated as being placed on the second mora ru,
denoting a LHL pattern. Since Japanese accents are thoroughly instructed when Chinese
students learn Japanese words, Chinese learners of Japanese quite possibly memorize
pitch accents as they learn new words, activating these accents when processing Japaneselexical items.
Lee, Murashima and Shirai (2006) conducted a longitudinal study on three Chinese
learners of Japanese, Jane, Mary, and Ann. These three native Cantonese speakers wereborn and raised in Hong Kong, and were all 18 years old at the start of the research. They
tested these learners’ production of pitch accents at three times, December 1999, February
2001, and February 2002. They showed that these three Chinese learners of Japanese did
not display any changes in production accuracies for Japanese pitch accent over three
testing periods as in Table 1.
Table 1. Three Chinese Speaking Learners of JapaneseDecember 1999

February 2001

February 2002

Jane

67.6%

54.3%

70.6%

Mary

70.6%

62.9%

74.3%

Ann

74.3%

77.1%

70.6%

It was also reported that the three Chinese learners of Japanese varied in their overall
Japanese language proficiency at the conclusion of two years of study. Nevertheless,there were no differences in production accuracy of Japanese pitch accents among them.
Thus, they concluded that these learners showed no improvement in the production ofJapanese word accents during the two years. If this finding is taken as indicated, Chinese
learners of Japanese would not activate standard pitch accents when processing Japanesewords.
Lee, Murashima and Shirai (2006), however, used only three participants forinvestigating pitch accent production. Although it is not a production study, Pan (2003)
conducted a study on perception of Japanese pitch accent with a larger group of native
Chinese speakers. This study measured accuracy of accent perception on two-mora words.
5

The task was conducted with three groups of native Chinese speakers studying at auniversity in Taiwan: 36 Japanese learners majoring in Japanese language, 30 not
majoring in Japanese, and 21 native Chinese speakers with no Japanese learning
experience. Accuracies of two-mora words clearly differed among the three groups, as in
Table 2.
Table 2. Accuracies of two-mora words by group
Two mora words

Flat

Early high pitch

Late high pitch

Japanese majors

95.36%

98.61%

95.84%

91.32%

Non-Japanese majors

74.86%

76.25%

80.00%

68.33%No Japanese learning

48.22%

42.86%

60.12%

41.67%

Pan also reported accuracies based on the three different accent patterns, namely, the flat
(heiban), the early high pitch (atama-taka-gata), and the later high pitch (o-daka-gata)patterns for two mora words, as in Table 2 above. The students specializing in Japanese
showed very high perception accuracies whereas the non-majors showed a significant
difference in ascending order from the highest in the early high pitch pattern, the flat
pattern, and the later high pitch pattern. Since Japanese majors were expected to have ahigher Japanese proficiency than those who were non-majors, Pan demonstrated thatJapanese language proficiency contributes to higher accuracy on pitch accent perception,
unlike Lee et al.’s (2006) case study. Chinese speaking Japanese majors are likely toefficiently acquire the ability to accurately perceive the Tokyo standard pitch accents.
If Japanese pitch accent is an attribute of lexical items (e.g., Sugito 1982, 1989;
Taylor 2011a, 2011b), and if accent is activated during word processing (e.g., Cutler andOtake 1999; Otake 2002; Otake and Cutler 1999), accent should be stored as lexical
knowledge in the mental lexicon and utilized for word processing. As we discussed
above, Chinese speaking learners of Japanese in Lee et al. (2006) did not show any
improvement in pitch accent production over two years of Japanese study and those inPan’s (2003) study demonstrated a notable difference in perception accuracy between
Japanese majors and non-Japanese majors. The differences in these studies may comefrom the difference between production and perception studies. To clarify the findings, itis necessary to conduct more production and perception studies on Japanese pitch accent
with participants whose Japanese language proficiency levels, especially, lexical6

knowledge, are controlled. With the appropriate control, one can truly observe whether
accuracy of pitch accent improves as Japanese proficiency increases.

2.3 Dialectal variation in Japan influencing pitch accent acquisition
As noted earlier, pitch accent patterns vary regionally across Japan (e.g., Hattori
1951; Hirayama 1957, 1968; Kindaichi 1974; Kubozono and Ota 1998; Sugito 1982,
2006, 2012). However, we do not know exactly how dialect difference affects accent
production and perception by Chinese learners of Japanese. In an attempt to address thisquestion, Yang (2011) conducted an interesting study on native Chinese speakers who
had been studying Japanese in the Kansai region, in which accent differs greatly fromthe Tokyo-standard pattern. Yang (2011) compared 30 native Chinese speakers studying
Japanese in Taiwan with 30 native Chinese speakers learning Japanese in the Kansai
region. The study reported that Chinese learners of Japanese studying in Taiwan
performed significantly better in both production and perception of the Tokyo-standard
pitch accent than those studying in Kansai. This difference in accent performance may
be created by a dialect accent specific to the Kansai region. However, before reaching
the conclusion of dialect influence, two factors must be pointed out in Yang’s study,
which possibly resulted in lower accuracy. First, the Japanese proficiency of the native
Chinese speakers studying in Taiwan and in the Kansai region should have been
controlled because Pan (2003) showed an effect of Japanese language proficiency onperception ability. Second, native Chinese speakers studying in areas where theTokyo-standard accent is spoken should have been contrasted with those in the Kansai
area in order to directly examine a potential disadvantage of learners studying in
non-standard dialect areas.
Japanese regional accents do display great diversity. Yang showed a lesser degree of
accuracy among Chinese speakers studying in the Kansai region in comparison to thosestudying in Taiwan. If native Chinese speakers were taught Japanese in theTokyo-standard accent at a university or in a Japanese language school in Taiwan, they
may be able to gradually memorize a single type of pitch accent. In contrast, Chinese
speakers studying in the Kansai region have to face conflicting input from theenvironment, of which accent patterns differ from the Tokyo-standard accent. In all
likelihood, these learners study new words with the Tokyo-standard accent within their
Japanese classrooms. However, once they set foot outside of the classroom, they are7

immersed in a different accent environment. Chinese-speaking learners have toconstantly face conflicting accentual input in their daily lives. Thus, it is hypothesizedthat a certain dialect environment whose accent greatly differs from the Tokyo-standard
type would interfere with the acquisition of the Tokyo-standard accent. How dialect
accents interfere with the Tokyo-standard accent is an important pedagogical issue toinvestigate. An ideal way to investigate the dialect interference is to have two groups ofChinese-speaking learners of Japanese sampled from the Kansai and Kanto areas andmatched by Japanese language proficiency, then tested for accuracy of production andperception in the Tokyo-standard pitch accent. Moreover, since pitch accent may not be
a very reliable cue for lexical access during spoken word recognition, the usefulness ofpitch accents could be measured by the magnitude of contribution to listening
comprehension.

2.4 Dialect diversity of Chinese influencing Japanese pitch accent
Dialect diversity also exists in Chinese tone accents. Tone accents in the Beijing
dialect, which is considered standard Chinese (i.e., Mandarin Chinese), are put on eachsyllable, whereas tones in the Shanghai dialect are realized at the word level (Hayata
1999; Xu and Tang 1988; You 2004). Iwata (2001) suggests that tones in the Shanghai
dialect resemble Japanese pitch accents in that both accents are realized at the wordlevel. If this is true, Chinese learners of Japanese from the Shanghai dialect should show
an advantage in acquisition of Japanese pitch accents over those of the Beijing dialect.
The influence of different Chinese dialects on the acquisition of Japanese pitchaccent was investigated by Liu (2010), who tested 18 Beijing dialect participants and 21
Shanghaidialect

participants.

Liu

conducteda

production

study

of

verb-plus-verb-structured (V+V) compound verbs (e.g., tumi+ageru ‘pile’ andtori+kaesu ‘take back’). Japanese has an abundance of compound verbs produced by
combining two native Japanese (yamato kotoba) verbs. When two verbs are combined, acompound verb changes the position of its pitch accent. For example, the verb tori
‘take’ has a HL accent (atama-taka-gata). Another verb kaesu ‘return’ has an HLL
pattern, which is also categorized as atama-taka-gata. When these two verbs are
combined, the result is the compound verb torikaesu ‘take back’. In the compounding
process, the accent of the first verb toru is altered to the flat accent of HH, becoming a
LHHLL accent, or the flat accent LHHHH (Liu 2010: 17). Due to the complexity of this8

accent variation, Japanese compound verbs are expected to be difficult to acquire fornative Chinese speakers. Liu (2010), therefore, hypothesized that native Chinese
speakers of the Shanghai dialect would perform better in perceiving and producing thecorrect pitch accents of compound verbs than those of the Beijing dialect.
The results (see Liu 2010: 18, Table 3) were rather intricate. The speakers of the
Shanghai dialect produced the pitch accents of compound verbs more accurately thanthose of the Beijing dialect when the compound verbs were accented on the penultimate
mora (or denoted as -2 accent) or the flat accent (or 0 accent). However, with compoundverbs accented on the third mora (or -3 accent) or the flat accent (or 0 accent), the result
was reversed in such a way that speakers of the Beijing dialect performed better thanthose of the Shanghai dialect. Therefore, it cannot be simply assumed that Chinese
learners of Japanese whose accents are realized at the word level (i.e., the Shanghai
dialect) perform better at producing pitch accents than those with tone accents at thesyllable level (i.e., the Beijing dialect).
Before making any further comments, three basic methodological problems in Liu’s
study (2010) should be pointed out. First, the Japanese ability of native Chinese
speakers of the Beijing and the Shanghai dialects was controlled as having learned
Japanese for two years. As commonly observed, two years of learning does notguarantee equal levels of attainment of Japanese language ability. A preferred alternative
would be to conduct a Japanese vocabulary test to balance the two groups based on
lexical knowledge. Second, Liu (2010) asked five native Japanese speakers of the Tokyo
dialect to evaluate the accuracy of pitch accents produced by Chinese learners ofJapanese. However, there is no report of consistency and reliability of these evaluators’
judgments. It is hard to imagine that all five evaluators scored the participants in thesame way. Third, pitch accent accuracy was scored from 1 (disagree), 2 (slightly
disagree), 3 (slightly agree) and 4 (agree). Liu (2010) assigned ‘correct’ for 2-4 scores
and assigned ‘wrong’ for a 1 score. This correct/incorrect judgment would have skewed
ratings toward the higher possibility for a ‘correct’ judgment. If Liu (2010) had used acorrect-or-wrong dichotomous scale for analysis, the five evaluators could have madejudgments on the basis of either ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’.
China is diverse in its regional dialects and accents. When Chinese speakers fromdifferent dialects meet, it is frequently observed that they cannot understand one
another’s speech. The diversity in Chinese dialects may possibly influence acquisition9

of Japanese pitch accent (if we assume some kind of L1 transfer). As Liu (2010)
reported, Chinese speakers of the Beijing dialect differed in production accuracy ofJapanese pitch accent from those of the Shanghai dialect. Although I value regard Liu’s
study highly for its having dealt with the unique perspective of Chinese dialects, it had
some methodological issues that concern us as pointed out earlier. Therefore, a similar
comparative study should be conducted in the future. It should be noted, however, thattone accent in the Chinese language fundamentally differs from Japanese pitch accent,so that results suggesting that Chinese dialectal differences cross-linguistically influence
Japanese pitch accent should be carefully interpreted.

2.5 Cross-linguistic studies on Japanese pitch accent
An investigation of cross-linguistic differences in the acquisition of Japanese pitchaccent conducted by Ayusawa (1998) indicated a strong effect of first language on
perception of Japanese pitch accent. An interesting trend in Japanese pitch accent
production was reported among native Korean speakers learning Japanese (Fukuoka
2008). When Japanese words contain a voiced plosive sound in word initial position,
Korean speakers are likely to put a low pitch on the initial mora. In contrary, when
Japanese words contain a voiceless plosive sound in word initial position, Korean
speakers are likely to put a high pitch on the initial mora. This trend in laryngeal
contrast is observed in the Korean language (Kim and Duanmu 2004). Thus, thistendency could be the result of influence adapted from the learners’ mother tongue of
Korean (L1 transfer).
Nevertheless, Taylor (2012) points out that it is very difficult to determine whether
the accent trend is caused by a learner’s mother tongue. She shows examples of sometrends across multiple languages based on the examination of previous studies on pitchaccent (e.g., Andreev 2002; Lee, Murashima and Shirai 2006; Nakato 2001; Toda 1999;
Sukegawa 1999): i) A tendency to overuse pitch accent on the penultimate mora of aword, which is observed not only among English speaking learners of Japanese but also
Korean, Chinese, and Bulgarian speaking learners, and ii) a tendency to place pitchaccent on heavy syllables, which is reported among Korean, Portuguese, and Bulgarian
speaking learners. In a cross-language comparison study, needless to say, an importantcondition would be to control the levels of Japanese language proficiency, as somespeakers such as Chinese and Korean speaking learners are likely to reach a high level

10

of Japanese language proficiency within a few years, and these languages have uniquelinguistic differences which could aid in the investigation of native language effects on
not only Japanese pitch accent but also other features in units of lexical processing suchas syllable-timed vs. mora-timed languages.

2.6 Contribution of pitch accent in distinguishing homophones
One of the important basic functions of pitch accent is to differentiate homophonicwords and identify the proper homophone in a sequence of utterances. A homophone isa word that shares the same pronunciation with another word while differing in meaning.
For example, ame meaning ‘candy’ is produced with a LH pitch, while the segmentally
identical word ame produced with a HL pitch becomes ‘rain’. To accomplish
homophonic distinction, Chinese learners of Japanese must memorize the concept of theword with the proper pitch accent. In other words, they must activate the pronunciationof the word ame with both its pitch accents of LH for ‘candy’ and HL for ‘rain’ toidentify the intended meaning.
Mathematical linguists have calculated the possibility of distinction among Japanesehomophones, and have suggested that Japanese pitch accent is not necessarily crucial foraccessing lexical meaning when distinguishing homophonic words. According to
Shibata and Shibata (1990), 13.57% of the homophones in Japanese are distinguishedby pitch accent, while in Chinese tone accent distinguishes 71.00% of homophones.
Given this difference, they claimed that tone in Chinese is used for distinguishinghomophones while pitch in Japanese is not. Shibata and Shibata (1990) propose only aminor role for Japanese pitch accent in homophone distinction.
Furthermore, Kitahara (2006) investigated the distribution of homophonic pairs
distinguished by pitch accent (i.e., accentual oppositions) in Japanese, using the lexical
database of Amano and Kondo (1999, 2000).1 Using Amano and Kondo’s (2000)
frequency index, Kitahara (2006) also pointed out that homophonic minimal pairs
include those which greatly differ in frequency such as /hito/ for ‘human’, counted
121,162 times and /hito/ as ‘use of an expense’, counted only twice. Therefore, once
these frequency-divergent homophone pairs, which native Japanese speakers areunlikely to know, or at least will not contrast by pitch accent, were excluded, the pitch
distinguishability rate of accentual oppositions will drop to less than 10 percent.
To check whether native Chinese speakers really distinguish homophones by pitch11

accent in Japanese, it is possible to run the following test. A sentence with thecorrectly-accented target word based on the Tokyo-standard accent should be presented
as in (5a), where the underlined word is the target word.
(5)a.

Kodomo ni
childmainitiame o

DAT everyday candy ACC

katte ageteiru.
buy give‘Everyday [I] buy candy for children.’b.

Kodomo ni
childmainitiame o

DAT everyday rain ACC

katte ageteiru.
buy give‘#Everyday [I] buy rain for children.’In the same sentence, the LH-accented target word ame ‘candy’ is replaced, as in (5b)by changing ame to HL. Of course, we do not give ‘rain’ to children, so the word ‘rain’
is incorrectly matched with the semantic context of the sentence. A set of homophonepairs can be used to investigate whether native Chinese speakers really activate pitchaccent when accessing the concept of a lexical item.

3. Processing of Japanese kanji and their compound words
The writing system of the modern Japanese language consists of the kanji and kanascripts (for detail, see Hadamitzky and Spahn 1981; Kess and Miyamoto 1999; Miller
1967; Tamaoka 1991). Kanji are logographic morphological units, adapted from thescript of the Chinese language. In contemporary Japanese, kanji represent not only
lexical items originating from Chinese (kango) but also Japanese (wago), which werecreated by Japanese speakers. Kanji-compound words are extremely common in
Japanese. Token frequencies of kanji-compound words encompass 41.3% of all
Japanese vocabulary, as reported by Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyujo (1964). Moredramatically, kanji compounds make up approximately 70% of the entries in a typicalJapanese dictionary (Yokosawa and Umeda 1988). A kana symbol is a phonogram
which fundamentally represents a single mora on a one-to-one basis. The kana script
further consists of two orthographies, hiragana and katakana. The hiragana script iscursive in shape (あ for /a/) and used for grammatical morphemes as well as for somecontent words. The katakana script is angular in shape (ア for /a/), and usually used forwriting loanwords from alphabetic languages, as well as the names of animals and12plants. The hiragana and katakana scripts describe Japanese sounds on the basis of
mora-to-kana correspondence. The three scripts—kanji, hiragana, and katakana—are
simultaneously used in modern written Japanese texts.
A great number of Japanese kanji have visually similar shapes as the Chinesecharacters from which they were originally derived. Among a selection of 4,600
Japanese kanji-compound words, Chen (2002) counted 54.5% in mainland China and55.1% in Taiwan that are written with the same characters and imply the same meaning
as their Chinese counterparts. Additionally, 14.9% of these words in mainland China
and 13.3% in Taiwan have the same characters and similar meanings, and only 4.1% in
mainland China and 3.5% in Taiwan share the same characters but different meanings.
In total, 73.5% of the kanji compounds used in mainland China and 71.9% in Taiwan
share the same characters in both Chinese and Japanese. Moreover, Hishinuma (1983,1984) further comments that, if the slight differences in orthographic shapes between
Chinese and Japanese are ignored, it can be assumed that native Chinese speakers know
98.1% of the commonly-used Japanese kanji prior to learning the Japanese language.
This great similarity of kanji morphemic units explains the commonly-observed
tendency of native Chinese speakers to depend heavily on kanji meanings to understandwritten Japanese texts.

3.1 Advantage of kanji orthographic similarity in lexical processing
In studies on English as a second language (ESL), knowledge of 98% of the words
in a written text is required to achieve accurate understanding of the text (Hu and Nation
2000; Nation 2001; Stahl and Nagy 2006). In Japanese, Komori, Mikuni and Kondo(2004) indicated that knowledge of 96% of the words in a written text is necessary forcomprehension. This figure implies that the threshold for an appropriate level of reading
comprehension would entail that less than 4% of the vocabulary in a given text be
unknown. Since many Japanese words are shared with Chinese as indicated by the
numbers presented above, native Chinese speakers are expected to have a great
advantage in reading comprehension. Then, how much of an advantage do native
Chinese speakers have in the processing of kanji-compound words? First, let’s comparethem with native English speakers who have no kanji knowledge. Tamaoka (1997)
measures the difference in processing efficiency (i.e., speed and accuracy) of lexicaldecisions for Japanese kanji-compound words by 10 native Chinese and 17 native

13

English speakers studying Japanese from two to three years at the same university in
Canada under the same curriculum.2 A great difference between the two groups wasfound as in Table 3.
Table 3. Mean response times and accuracy rates by group
Reading times (milliseconds)

Accuracy

Chinese speaking learners

982 ms71.3%

English speaking learners

1,808 ms

63.7%

Native Chinese speakers performed 826 milliseconds faster and 7.6% more accurately
than native English speakers. Interestingly, the Chinese group processed two-kanji
compound words with both few and many strokes equally well, whereas the English
group were slower in processing compounds with many strokes than those with fewer
strokes.
A script advantage for learners of Japanese with different script backgrounds was
also investigated by Tamaoka (2000). He examined the effects of L1 scripts when native
Chinese and English speakers phonologically processed the same Japanese words
presented in three different scripts of kanji, hiragana and romaji (alphabetictranscription of Japanese). Fifteen native Chinese speakers and 13 native English
speakers learning Japanese participated in the study; all studied Japanese for two to
three years under the same curriculum at a university in Australia. The Chinese students
all came from China as international students. A summary of the results are in Table 4.
Table 4. Mean naming times and accuracy rates by group
Naming times (milliseconds)

Accuracy

Kanji Hiragana Romaji

Kanji Hiragana Romaji

Chinese group

1,027 ms 1,098 ms

1,295 ms

89.52% 99.05%

89.52%English group

1,635 ms 1,009 ms

783 ms

53.85% 94.51%

95.60%

Average naming latencies (the time from visual presentation of a word to initializationof its pronunciation) of 21 Japanese words presented in kanji (e.g., 会話, /kaiwa/‘conversation’) were faster with a higher accuracy for the Chinese group than the14English group. A clear advantage for Chinese speakers was demonstrated by thedifference in overall performance of 608 ms and 33.77%. In striking contrast to the caseof kanji, the same words presented in hiragana (e.g., かいわ) yielded nearly identicalprocessing performance in both language groups. Furthermore, the same words inromaji (e.g., kaiwa) displayed an opposite trend. The L1 script (i.e., the familiarity ofthe script) exhibited strong effects on phonological processing of L2 Japanese words,
facilitating the processing of kanji compounds for the Chinese group and romaji for the
English group. As Djojomihardjo, Koda and Moates (1994) indicated in L2 English
learners, script consistency between L1 and L2 strongly facilitates the speed of L2
lexical and text processing.
Yamato and Tamaoka (2009) conducted a lexical decision task with 21 Chinese
speaking learners of Japanese with higher lexical knowledge and 18 with lower lexical
knowledge based on a vocabulary test (for details of the test, see Miyaoka, Tamaoka andSakai 2011). Both proficiency groups had been learning Japanese in Japan. This study
was analyzed as a 2 (participants’ lexical knowledge; higher and lower lexical groups) ×
2 (kanji-compound words; high- and low-frequency) design. A summary of the results
are stated in table 5.
Table 5. Mean response times and accuracy rates of kanji-compound words by group
High- frequency
Response times

Low-frequency

Accuracy

Response times

Accuracy

Higher lexical knowledge

754 ms98.1%

937 ms90.7%

Lower lexical knowledge

760 ms97.2%

976 ms78.3%

Both groups of higher and lower Japanese lexical knowledge processed high-frequency
kanji-compound words and low-frequency ones at almost the same speed. Of interest
were the results of the processing accuracy measure. Although both groups with higher
and lower Japanese lexical knowledge processed high-frequency kanji-compound words
at high accuracy, the group with lower Japanese lexical knowledge showed lower
accuracy than the group with higher lexical knowledge. They found that the response
times between the higher and lower lexical groups showed no difference whereas thehigher lexical group performed more accurately on low frequency words than the lower
lexical group. Regardless of Japanese word frequency and lexical knowledge, all native
15

Chinese speakers seemed to be able to process Japanese kanji compounds quickly using
their first language knowledge of Chinese characters. However, kanji compounds usedin Japanese lexical items occasionally differ from their semantic usages in Chinese,
which would predictably result in lower accuracy. These Japanese words tend to be low
frequency words among native Chinese speakers who have not acquired the large
Japanese vocabulary.
Their finding can be explained in the framework of lexical processing as follows.
Native Chinese speakers quickly reach orthographic activation of a two-kanji compound
word based on their (L1) character knowledge, which further activates its concept. Then,they have to determine whether this compound word really exists in the Japaneselexicon. At this stage, their Japanese knowledge of concepts begins to influence theirlexical decision. If they do not have sufficient lexical knowledge of Japanese two-kanji
compounds, they have no way to correctly determine the existence of the target word.
Therefore, while fast speed for lexical processing was accomplished by quick
activations of orthographically interconnected representations of the two languages, thedifference in accuracy was created by conceptual lexical knowledge of the Chinese
speakers. This can be supported by the case of native English speakers who displayed
slower response times and lower accuracy for lexical decisions on two-kanji compoundwords (Tamaoka 1997), because the English speakers have no kanji orthographic
knowledge in their first language. The English speaking learners’ slow processing ofJapanese words must be caused by a slower bottom-up processing which involves
orthographic analysis of kanji elements, activation of each kanji, combining two kanji,
and finally activating its lexical concept.

3.2 Advantages and disadvantages of kanji orthographic similarity in text
understanding
The importance of lexical knowledge for text understanding is well-documented
not only in English as a second language (ESL) but also in Japanese as a second/third
language (JSL). Text understanding refers to the skills necessary to comprehend a text
which is presented visually for reading and aurally for listening. An advantage of native
Chinese speakers’ knowledge of Japanese kanji in text understanding was found in tests
conducted by Matsunaga (1999) at a university in southern California. She tested 12
Chinese students (one had insufficient English ability, and was excluded from the16

analysis) and 28 students with non-kanji backgrounds including three Spanish speakers,
two Korean speakers, and one Thai speaker. A summary of the results are stated inTable 6, where the maximum comprehension scores were 100 points.
Table 6. Mean comprehension scores and reading times by group and passage typeNarrative passages
Comprehension reading times
Chinese speakers (n=11)

Descriptive passages
Comprehension reading times

89.00

234.00 sec

85.47

129.27 sec

Non-kanji background (n=28) 79.09

333.53 sec

61.05

258.32 secStudents with a kanji background showed significantly higher comprehension scoresand faster oral reading speed for narrative passages than students with a non-kanji
background. Likewise, students with a kanji background showed significantly higher
comprehension scores and faster oral reading speed for descriptive passages than thosewith a non-kanji background. As such, a clear tendency towards an advantage for
Chinese students (i.e., kanji background) was observed among the learners at auniversity in an English speaking country. Matsunaga (1999), however, used English
translations to check participants’ understanding of the Japanese text, so that English
ability must have influenced their performance.
Advantages in kanji processing by native Chinese speakers were also shown in theon-line processing of Japanese text comprehension by Yamato and Tamaoka (2013). In
their study, 20 matched pairs of native Chinese and Korean speakers were selected sothat they were equal in both lexical and grammar skills. This sampling method is called
pair-matched sampling. In this method, each pair of native Korean and Chinese
speakers learning Japanese at a university in their own country from two to three years
was made by matching scores on two tests, a Japanese vocabulary test (maximum 48
points) and a grammar test (maximum 36 points). Participants were selected so that the
average scores matched exactly between the two groups (see Table 7): The vocabulary
test was exactly matched at the same average between 20 native Chinese speakers and20 native Korean speakers. The grammar test scores also displayed nearly the same
average between native Chinese speakers and native Korean speakers. This approachguarantees a direct comparison of the two different linguistic groups.
Using the fixed-window self-paced reading technique, the selected native Chinese
17and Korean groups were asked to read two texts, one with many kanji words, and one
with many katakana words. In the fixed window self-paced reading, each phrase ispresented to a participant one at a time in the center of a computer monitor. When aparticipant presses the space bar, the next phrase is displayed in the same position on thescreen, and this process continues until the whole story of the text has been displayed.
The time between each press of the space bar is considered to be the time required forreading each phrase. Some weaknesses of this method should be noted, however, in thatparticipants performing self-paced reading cannot re-read a text once they press thespace bar. In addition, participants may be able to read a phrase faster than the time ittakes to press the space bar.
Table 7. Mean test scores and reading times for kanji and katakana words by group
Vocabulary (SD)

Grammar (SD)

Kanji

Katakana

Chinese speakers (n=20)

37.90 (4.90) 32.40 (2.93)

1,227 ms

2,104 ms

Korean speakers (n=20)

37.90 (5.60) 32.90 (2.81)

1,741 ms

1,716 ms

Due to the great similarity of Japanese kanji and Chinese characters, native Chinese
speakers processed visually-presented kanji compound words in a text much faster thannative Korean speakers. For example, gyoosei too kara ‘from such areas asadministration’, which consisted of three kanji (‘such areas as administration’) and two
hiragana (‘from’) and was embedded in the text, was processed with a difference of 514
ms between the two groups (see Table 7 above). In contrast, native Korean speakers
processed katakana-presented alphabetic loanwords faster than native Chinese speakers.
The phrase konbiniensu sutoaa de ‘at the convenience store’ written with 10 katakana(‘the convenience store’) and one hiragana (‘at’) was processed 388 milliseconds fasterby Korean learners than by Chinese learners. The similarity of phonetic symbols (thesymbol-to-sound conversion) between Japanese kana and Korean Hangeul scripts may
have helped native Korean speakers process alphabetic loanwords quicker than native
Chinese speakers. In other words, Koreans can quickly convert kana-to-sound since
they frequently experience this similar conversion process in their Hangeul script. The
script similarity between L1 Japanese and L2 Chinese/Korean created a diverging
pattern of differences in lexical processing speed of Japanese—Chinese were superior atprocessing kanji compound words, while Koreans were better at alphabetic loanwords,
18

even embedded in a text.
Sharing a majority of Japanese kanji with Chinese characters is not always
beneficial (Tamaoka 1997, 2000). Due to the great resemblance of kanji, native Chinese
speakers heavily rely on orthography to process two-kanji compound words inaccessing their meanings. They are, in turn, likely to pay little attention to thephonological aspect of kanji compound words to understand a spoken text, as observedby the misunderstanding and dropping of information in listening comprehension (e.g.,Hong 2004; Ishida 1986; Komori 2005; Yin 2002). Due to strong ties between
orthography and concepts (or semantics) in kanji and their compounds, it may be thecase that native Chinese speakers learning Japanese only establish weak connections
from orthography to phonology.
A cross-linguistic comparison of reading and listening comprehension by native
Chinese and Korean speakers learning Japanese was conducted by Komori (2005).
Chinese showed a large discrepancy of 12.75% between 66.09% in reading
comprehension and 53.30% in listening comprehension whereas Korean showed only asmall difference of 3.61% between 75.09% in reading comprehension and 78.70% inlistening comprehension.
This study, however, contains two essential methodological problems. First, reading
and listening comprehension tests were not conducted on the same Chinese and Koreangroups. The reading comprehension test was conducted with 22 native Chinese speakers
and 39 native Korean speakers learning Japanese at a private university in Tokyo.
However, the listening comprehension test was conducted with 9 native Chinese
speaking and 15 native Korean speaking participants recruited from students at the same
university. These two groups were fundamentally different, so that Komori has to makean unproved assumption that two paired-groups of Koreans and Chinese are equivalentin Japanese proficiency. Second, texts used for reading comprehension differed fromthose for listening comprehension. The level of lexical difficulty in the texts used by the
researcher was controlled according to lexical levels on the former Japanese Proficiency
Test (Japan Foundation and Japan Educational Exchange and Services 2002). However,
it is not ideal to use different texts to compare results of reading and listening
comprehension. It would be desirable to see a similar study conducted on the samegroup, especially native Chinese speakers, by counterbalancing texts for reading andlistening comprehension. Putting these issues aside, the study roughly depicted a19cross-linguistic difference in reading and listening comprehension between native
Chinese and Korean speakers learning Japanese. See also Sawasaki (2006).

3.3 Effects of kanji orthographic similarity between Japanese and Chinese
Chinese characters used in mainland China have undergone simplification. Soon
after the foundation of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949, themovement to implement simplified Chinese characters got underway. A draft of thesimplified Chinese character list was announced in 1955, and the first newspaper using
simplified Chinese characters was published the following year, in 1956. In 1964, theChinese government combined the simplified characters into the Total List of Character
Simplification or Jian Hua Zi Zhong Biao. This list was reformed a few times, and theChinese government has been collecting public comments for a modified list of
simplified characters since 2009 (see details, Endo, 1986). The series of simplifications
resulted in some orthographic differences between Chinese characters and Japanese
kanji.
Kayamoto (1995a) measured orthographic similarity or difference between Chinesecharacters and Japanese kanji on a scale of 0 to 4. Characters given a 0 are identical in
Chinese and Japanese, such as 常 and 道. One is given to a difference of only a dot ora line of a character (歩 and 海 for Japanese, and 步 and 海 for Chinese). Two
refers to a difference of a part in a character (話 and 許 for Japanese, and 话 and 许
for Chinese). Next, three indicates a large difference of a part or both sides of acharacter ( 練 and 動 for Japanese, and 练 and 动 for Chinese). Finally, four
represents a complete difference of the entire character (専 and 異 for Japanese, and专 and 异 for Chinese). A correlation between this 0-to-4 scale and subjective
character-difference judgments by native Chinese speakers was reported to be very high,
at 0.90 (p<.001), by Kayamoto (1995a). Thus, Kayamoto’s scaling seems to be reliable
to use as an index for orthographic similarity between Chinese and Japanese.
Using the 0-to-4 scale, Kayamoto (1996) investigated effects of the orthographic
similarity in processing of Japanese two-kanji compound words. Naming latency, which
was defined as the latency from the onset of visual-presentation of a stimulus item to theoffset of the first amplitude in its pronunciation, indicated that Japanese kanji
compounds similar in both languages (M=597 ms) were named faster in Chinese sounds
than dissimilar ones (M=669 ms) by native Chinese speakers leaning Japanese at the20

advanced level. After the naming task, these participants reported that they pronounced
these Japanese kanji as if newly-simplified Chinese characters. Unlike Chinese
pronunciations, when they were asked to name the same kanji compounds in Japanese,no difference was observed between those similar in both languages (M=1,101 ms) andthose that are dissimilar (M=1,080 ms). As seen in the difference between processing as
Chinese and Japanese sounds, Japanese kanji orthographic units are strongly mapped
onto Chinese sounds, even though they are not exactly identical to Chinese characters.
On the contrary, these kanji are less tightly mapped onto Japanese sounds regardless oforthographic similarity.
A null effect of orthographic similarity on naming was confirmed by Kayamoto(2002). Orthographic similarity per se had no facilitation in the phonological processingof two-kanji compounds as in Table 8. On the other hand, semantic similarity was themain factor for naming of kanji compounds, with semantically-same kanji showing anaming latency that was 42 milliseconds faster than semantically-dissimilar kanji. Oncea semantic element is added to orthographic similarity, the difference in naming latencyof two-kanji compounds was amplified to 93 ms between orthographically- andsemantically-same kanji and orthographically- and semantically-dissimilar kanji. Thus,
with the addition of semantic similarity, orthographic similarity becomes a significant
factor, even for phonological processing of kanji.
Table 8. Mean naming latency for orthographically and semantically similar anddifferent compounds
Orthographic

Semantic

Orthographic & Semantic

Similar

850 ms

841 ms

826 ms

Dissimilar

873 ms

882 ms919 msTwo types of behavioral tasks, naming and lexical decision, provide us with aclearer picture of the kanji processing mechanism. Lexical decision tasks requireparticipants to judge whether a two-kanji compound exists as a real Japanese word. The
time from the onset of visual-presentation to the judgment, indicated by pressing a
YES/NO key, is measured as the reaction time. Resembling the results of the namingtask, Kayamoto (2002) showed no difference between orthographically-similar kanji
and orthographically-dissimilar kanji in a lexical decision task involving two-kanji

21compounds, as in Table 9. Again, semantic similarity was the major factor.
Semantically-same kanji were processed faster than semantically-dissimilar kanji.
Putting all the results of Kayamoto’s studies (1995a, 1996, 2002) together, theorthographic similarity between Chinese characters and Japanese kanji has little effecton both phonological and orthographic processing of two-kanji compounds.
Table 9. Mean response times for orthographically and semantically similar anddifferent compounds
Orthographic

Semantic

Similar

645 ms642 ms

Dissimilar

681 ms

685 msThe null effects of kanji orthographic similarity reported by Kayamoto (1995a, 1996,
2002), however, may create some confusion. Her 0-to-4 scale depicting orthographic
similarity is based on the measurement of a kanji unit, but the experiments wereconducted on the processing of lexical kanji-compound units. Taking an example from
Kayamoto (2002), an orthographically different item 階段 ‘stairs’ (阶段 in Chinese)contains only a single orthographic difference in the kanji 階 (阶 in Chinese) which iscompared against items that are orthographically identical in Japanese and Chinese suchas 印刷 ‘print’. It is quite possible that null orthographic effects could arise from thismanipulation method, in that an orthographic difference was controlled by contrasting
only a single kanji in a two kanji compound. On the contrary, semantic
difference/similarity was defined at the lexical level, which takes into account bothcharacters of the compound. It is easily assumed that, since the lexical decision andnaming tasks in Kayamoto (2002) involve in a combination of two kanji at the lexicallevel, similarity in lexical concepts naturally exerts a strong influence on lexical
processing, and that lexical-level processing overrides the effects of orthographic
similarity/difference at the kanji morphemic level.
Inhibitory effects of visual complexity by native speakers were found not only in
Chinese characters (Leong, 1986) but also in Japanese kanji with low frequency(Tamaoka and Kiyama, 2013). As shown in Figure 2, the 1,945 kanji in the former Listof Commonly-Used kanji (Jōyō kanji-hyō) have an average of 10.84 strokes with a 3.76
standard deviation (Tamaoka, Kirsner, Yanase, Miyaoka and Kawakami 2002). Using

22

both kanji correctness decision and kanji naming tasks, Tamaoka and Kiyama (2013)
found that visual complexity inhibited the processing of low-frequency kanji among
native Japanese speakers, whereas such consistency was not observed in the processingof high-frequency kanji. Kanji with medium complexity were processed faster thanhigh-frequency simple and complex kanji. This result echoes the rather common
conclusion that visually complex figures fundamentally require longer decoding times
than simple ones for kanji with low frequency while high-frequency kanji display adifferent pattern. These studies on visual complexity were conducted under amonolingual condition with native Chinese or Japanese speakers (Leong 1986; Tamaoka
and Kiyama 2013), so that effects of visual complexity and frequency on processing
Japanese kanji by native Chinese speakers learning Japanese should be further
re-examined in comparison with Chinese simplified characters used in mainland China
and traditional complex characters used in Taiwan.

220
200

Number of kanji

180

n=1,945 kanji
M=10.84 strokes
SD=3.76 strokes

160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
Number of strokes

Figure 2. Stroke distribution of the 1,945 kanji in the former list of commonly-usedkanji (Data taken from Tamaoka, Kirsner, Yanase, Miyaoka and Kawakami 2002)
Finally,

regardingtheorthographically-

andsemantically-samewords(frequently-referred as S-type words), native Chinese or Japanese speakers do not know
in which language context these words are used; they have no indication whether these23

words are Chinese or Japanese. Following this line of reasoning, Cai and Matsumi(2009) suggested that these words are shared in the mental lexicon of both languages.
This claim by Cai and Matsumi (2009) can be investigated by the following two
approaches. First, these words differ in word frequencies depending on the language,
therefore word frequency effects will manifest differently in the speed of lexical
processing between the two languages. In such a case, these words are separately stored
in a different orthographic lexicon in each language. Second, word production size, orthe number of compound words which can be produced by a single Japanese kanji or
Chinese character, will differ between the two languages. Therefore, these words will
behave differently depending upon the language in use. Unless these possibilities are
empirically confirmed, the notion of shared word representations in a single
orthographic lexicon cannot be held as a certainty.

3.4 Effects of kanji phonological similarity between Japanese and Chinese
Words originating from the Chinese language or created in Japan using Chinesecharacters often exhibit great similarity in phonology. For instance, the word ‘attention’is written with two identical characters as 注 and 意 in both Japanese and Chinese.
Pronunciations in both languages are very similar, spoken as /tyuu i/ in Japanese and/zhu4 yi4/ in Chinese. Like the 0-to-4 scale of orthographic similarity, Kayamoto(1995b) measured phonological similarity with a 1-to-7 point scale using subjective
judgments by 11 native Chinese speakers studying at Hiroshima University whose
Japanese learning experience ranged from 2 to 13 years. She used comparisons of paired
kanji-pronunciations of Japanese and Chinese, such as the Japanese kanji 想 with the
On-reading (a Chinese-originated sound) /soo/ in Japanese and /xiang3/ in Chinese.3 In
the actual measurement, each paired sound was presented as ソウ (/soo/) in katakana
for Japanese and ‘xiang’ (without indication of type 3 tone) in Pinyin for Chinese.
Native Chinese speakers were asked to subjectively or intuitively compare these sounds
visually presented in katakana and Pinyin. In total, 1,107 pairs were presented toparticipants. The average rating on the 1-to-7 phonological similarity scale was 2.38
points with a standard deviation of 1.32 points, indicating that the kanji phonologicalsimilarity was rather low in its range of distribution.
Kayamoto (2000) investigated effects of phonological similarity in naming a single
kanji, using a 2 ☓ 2 design of phonologically similar and dissimilar characters24between Japanese and Chinese, and Japanese On-readings and Kun-readings (Japaneseorigin sounds). She tested 12 native Japanese speakers, 12 native Chinese speakers withsuperior-level Japanese proficiency (or superior-level Chinese), and 12 native Chinese
speakers with advanced-level Japanese (advanced-level Chinese). Phonologicallysimilar kanji were /an/ for 案 in On-reading and /an4/ for Chinese, and /bi/ for 鼻 in
On-reading and /hana/ in Kun-reading, and /bi2/ in Chinese. Phonologically dissimilar
kanji were /kyoo/ for 京 in On-reading and /jing1/ in Chinese, and /tyoo/ for 鳥 in its
On-reading and /tori/ in the Kun-reading, and /niao3/ in Chinese. Both advanced andsuperior-level native Chinese speakers named On-readings faster than Kun-readings
while no difference was found among native Japanese speakers. Facilitation effects ofphonological similarity were observed only among advanced-level Chinese at 79
millisecond faster in On-readings of similar and dissimilar kanji, and 50 milliseconds
faster in Kun-readings of similar and dissimilar kanji, as in Table 10. Effects ofphonological similarity seem to disappear, as native Chinese speakers progress in their
Japanese proficiency.
Table 10. Mean naming latency and error rates for On- and Kun-readings
On reading (error rate)

Kun reading (error rate)

Similar

787 ms (10.3%)860 ms (17.3%)

Dissimilar

866 ms (12.2%)

910 ms (10.3%)

It should be noted, however, that phonological similarity measured by Kayamoto(1995b) is defined based on On-readings, not Kun-readings. Phonological similarity
does not refer to a similarity index for Kun-readings. Furthermore, kanji with
Kun-readings are always accompanied with On-readings in Kayamoto (2000). Since
multiple readings, including both On- and Kun-readings are activated when native
Japanese speakers encounter kanji (Verdonschot, La Heij, Tamaoka, Kiyama, You andSchiller 2013), native Chinese speakers must puzzle over which On-reading or
Kun-reading they should chose to pronounce. A delay in Kun-reading could be a resultof this selection process amongst multiple phonological activations of a single kanji
such as /zi/ in the On-reading and /mimi/ in the Kun-reading for 耳, or /seki/ in the
On-reading and /aka/ in the Kun-reading for 赤 . Therefore, Kayamoto (2000)’s
conclusion must be limited to only kanji with On-readings, but not to kanji with25

Kun-readings as such: Advanced-level Chinese had facilitation effects of phonologicalsimilarity on phonological processing of On-readings, and these disappear once theyreach a higher level of Japanese proficiency.
Kayamoto (2002) also investigated phonological similarity effects on naming
compound words constructed with two On-reading kanji (e.g., 感謝 /kansya/, 銀行/ginkoo/ and 無心 /musin/). Results indicated facilitation effects among native Chinese
speakers learning Japanese such that phonologically-similar two-kanji compounds(M=829 ms) were named faster than phonologically-dissimilar ones (M=893 ms), while
no difference was found in the lexical decision task. Unlike Kayamoto (2000),
Kayamoto (2002) used a naming task involving two-kanji compound words whichusually have only a single reading. Thus, it is safe to conclude that phonologicalsimilarity facilitates naming speed for two-kanji compound words with a combinationof On-readings.

3.5 Semantic similarities and differences in kanji compound words between
Japanese and Chinese
The Agency for Cultural Affairs in Japan (1978) provided a lexical typology ofJapanese kanji-compound words corresponding to Chinese words. The agency classified
kanji compounds into four types. (1) Same-type (S-type) refers to the same meaning
between Japanese and Chinese. Two-thirds of all kanji-compound words are classified
into this S-type, e.g., ondo 温度 ‘temperature’ and mirai 未来 ‘future’. Native
Chinese speakers indeed have a great advantage learning Japanese vocabulary of S-type.
(2) Overlapping-type (O-type) is defined as meanings partly overlapped between the
two languages. Words in O-type have intricate interactions between the two languages,e.g., binboo 貧 乏 ‘poverty’, and hakusi 白 紙‘white paper’ or ‘annul’. (3)Different-type (D-type) implies kanji-compound words semantically different from theirChinese meanings, e.g., tegami 手紙 ‘letter’ in Japanese but ‘toilet paper’ in Chinese,and monku 文句 ‘complain’ in Japanese but ‘sentence and phrase’ in Chinese. (4)Nothing-type (N-type) implies no corresponding words (‘nothing’) exist in Chinese, e.g.,
taikutu 退屈 ‘boredom’ and okubyoo 臆病 ‘timidity’. Previous studies (e.g., H. Chiu
2002, 2003; Y. Chiu 2006, 2007; Hayakawa 2010; Hayakawa and Tamaoka 2012)
conducted experiments on lexical processing by comparing S-type and N-type words(see details, Sections 3.5). The meanings of some N-type Japanese words are easier to26

guess from the knowledge of Chinese characters, but some are not. It is possible toclassify a fifth type of words or kanji combinations which only exist in Chinese, such as
公司 /gong1 si1/ ‘company’, but this category is unnecessary for the purpose ofcomparing Japanese and Chinese.
Komori and Tamaoka (2010) classified O-type compounds into three sub-categories
as shown in Figure 3 (i) those with meanings particular to Chinese, (ii) those withmeanings particular to Japanese, and (iii) those with meanings particular to both
Japanese and Chinese.

Meanings onlyin Chinese
Meanings onlyin ChineseSamemeanings(i) O-type Sub-1

Same
meanings

Same meanings

Meanings only inJapanese

Meanings onlyin Japanese(ii) O-type Sub-2(iii) O-type Sub-3

Figure 3. Sub-categories of overlapping-type (O-type) kanji compound words (Thefigure is from Komori and Tamaoka (2010: 166) with partial modification)
The first sub-category of (i) O-type Sub-1 is defined as kanji-compound words thatpartly share the same meaning(s) in both Japanese and Chinese, but for which Chinesecontains its own extended meanings. For example, 貧乏 /bin boo/ ‘poor’ in Japanese
can be used as in ‘poor life’ expressed as binboo-na seikatu 貧乏な生活 in Japanese,and pinfa shenghuo 贫乏生活 in Chinese. The meaning of this word is extended to use
with ‘experience’ as ‘poor experience’ pinfa jingyan 贫乏经验 in Chinese, but not inJapanese. Likewise, 贫乏 in Chinese can be used with ‘thinking’, ‘thought’, and ‘idea’
as in sixiang pinfa 思想贫乏 ‘poor in thought’. Because of these extended meanings in
Chinese, native Chinese speakers are likely to overextend the usage of this word to
produce incorrect Japanese expressions such as keiken-ga binboo-da 経験が貧乏だ27

‘(my/your) experience is poor’, and kangaekata-ga binboo-da 考 え 方 が 貧 乏 だ‘(my/your) way of thinking is poor’.
The second sub-category of (ii) O-type Sub-2 is defined as those words partly
sharing the same-meaning(s) in both Japanese and Chinese, but featuring extended
meanings in Japanese. The word 貴重 /ki tyoo/ meaning ‘valuable’ or ‘precious’, forexample, can be used as 貴重品 kityoo-hin ‘a valuable article’ in Japanese and as
guizhong-pin 贵重品 in Chinese. The word is used with ‘time’ as in kityoo-na zikan
貴重な時間 ‘valuable time’ and with ‘experience’ as in kityoo-na keiken 貴重な経験‘valuable experience’ in Japanese, but not in Chinese. Instead, 宝贵 /bao3 gui4/ is usedin Chinese as in baogui shijian 宝贵时间 ‘valuable time’, and as baogui jingyan 宝贵经验 ‘valuable experience’. Because of these differences in usages, it is difficult toacquire expressions containing O-type Sub-2 words like kityoo-na zikan-o saite 貴重な
時間を割いて ‘to spare valuable time’. Yet, if native Chinese speakers avoid using
these Japanese expressions which are not found in Chinese, they will not makemistakes.
The third sub-category of (iii) O-type Sub-3 is defined as those words which partly
share the same meaning(s) in both Japanese and Chinese, but which contain extended
meanings both in Japanese and Chinese. For example, 是非 pronounced /ze hi/ inJapanese and /shi4 fei1/ in Chinese has multiple meanings. In both Japanese andChinese, this word can be used with the meaning of ‘right or wrong’ as in the expressionzehi-no kubetsu-ga aimai-da 是非の区別があいまいだ ‘A distinction of right andwrong is unclear’ in Japanese, and bu fen shifei 不分是非 in Chinese. This word canalso be used differently in Japanese and Chinese. In Japanese, this word is used to mean‘please’ in zehi go-sanka kudasai 是非ご参加ください ‘Please participate in it’, butthere is no such usage in Chinese. Contrarily, this word is used to mean ‘a quarrel’ in
Chinese as in re shifei 惹是非 ‘Picking quarrels’, but has no such meaning inJapanese.
Komori and Tamaoka (2010) investigated how native Chinese speakers learning
Japanese process words of O-type Sub 1 and O-type Sub 2. Using their original Cloze
Test, they selected 22 Chinese with higher-level Japanese proficiency (M=71.45,
SD=3.88) and 22 Chinese with lower-level Japanese proficiency (M=44.68, SD=4.31)
from 64 participants studying in Japan. The Cloze Test required the participants to fill inthe missing words removed from a text. They obtained a very high Cronbach’s alpha28

reliability of 0.946 (n=64, M=58.09, SD=11.96). A priming experiment was thenconducted in which a priming word was presented for 280 milliseconds, and a target
word presented following a 120 millisecond interval. The interval between the prime
onset and the target onset times (i.e., stimulus-onset asynchrony, SOA) was 400
milliseconds. In Experiment 1 of the processing of O-type Sub-1 words, they conducted
the Chinese lexical decision task under the priming condition. The results showed thatprimed Chinese words of both shared meanings (e.g., 方位 ‘direction’) and themeanings particular to Chinese (e.g., 物品 ‘commodity’) significantly facilitated thelexical decision times of the target Chinese words (e.g., 东西) to the same degree
regardless of the level of Japanese proficiency. For the Japanese lexical decision task inExperiment 2, which required processing of O-type Sub-2 words among Chinese
speakers with high Japanese proficiency, primed Japanese words with shared meanings(e.g., 細心 ‘scrupulous’) facilitated the lexical decision times of the target Japanesewords (e.g., 注意), but words with meanings unique to Japanese did not (e.g., 警告‘warning’). By contrast, among Chinese with lower Japanese proficiency, neither
primed words of shared meaning nor those unique to Japanese facilitated processing of
the target Japanese words.
The results of priming effects in Experiment 1 (L1 Chinese condition) of Komori
and Tamaoka (2010) suggest that orthography and concepts were very strongly linked in
the Chinese mental lexicon. However, null priming effects found among native Chinese
speakers with lower Japanese proficiency in Experiment 2 (L2 Japanese condition)
indicate smaller and weaker connections from orthography to concepts in the Japanesemental lexicon. This contrasting finding further suggests that the size and strength oflexical connections in L2 Japanese between orthography and concepts are less robust
than those of the first language (Chinese). Yet, the fact that priming effects of the shared
meanings were apparent among those with higher Japanese proficiency indicates thatthe higher the proficiency level they reach in their second language, the stronger theconnections between lexical and conceptual representations become in their second
language. However, since null priming effects were found for words with theJapanese-particular meanings, it seems that the Japanese-unique meanings are difficult
for native Chinese speakers to acquire. As such, the difficulty with theJapanese-particular meanings and usages among O-type Sub 2 and Sub 3 words are
revealed in the priming study.

29

3.6 Differences in On- and Kun-readings in kanji phonological processing
Using the index of kanji On-reading ratios calculated by Kaiho and Nomura (1983),
Tamaoka and Taft (2010) reported that kanji with a 50 percent On-reading ratio
randomly embedded with kanji in an On-reading dominant environment were mostly
pronounced in On-readings; likewise, the same target kanji embedded with kanji in a
Kun-reading dominant environment were mostly pronounced in Kun-readings. Native
Japanese speakers easily shifted between On- and Kun-readings, depending on thephonological context. That is, separate On- and Kun-reading sub-lexica exist within thephonological lexicon.
If native Chinese speakers have a well-established sub-lexicon of On-readings
associated with characters and their compound words in L1 Chinese, they can produce
On-readings faster than Kun-readings. In fact, H. Chiu (2003) showed that kanji
compounds with On-readings were named faster than those with Kun-readings among
native Chinese speakers who had attained the first and second level of the JapaneseProficiency Test. Thus, native Chinese speakers are likely to associate phonology inChinese to On-readings more easily than to Kun-readings. A question arises whether
phonological suppression by inter-lexical interference for cognates (Hayakawa 2010;
Hayakawa and Tamaoka 2012) conflicts with the advantage of On-readings overKun-readings. Kun-readings are fundamentally used for non-cognates, and the numberof kanji compounds with Kun-readings (wago) is much smaller than those with
On-readings (kango). Because On-readings are associated with both cognates andnon-cognates, the advantage of On-readings and the phonological suppression for
cognates should be treated as a separate issue.

3.7 Lexical processing differences for cognates and non-cognates
The term cognate is often used in bilingual studies on languages spoken in Europe.
In linguistics, this term refers to words of a common etymological origin. A typicalexample of a cognate in Indo-European languages is the word night in English. Spellingor orthography of this word differs depending on the language, as in French nuit andGerman Nacht, and the Dutch nacht, with the same spelling as German. In
psycholinguistics, cognates are denoted as words similar in orthography, phonology, andsemantics. Thus, cognates described in linguistics do not totally overlap with those in30

psycholinguistics. When explaining studies on kanji processing in this section, I will
follow the psycholinguistic definition, ignoring the etymological connotation of theterm.
Bilingual studies on European languages have clearly indicated that cognates(similar in spelling, sound, and meaning) are processed faster than non-cognates (e.g.,
Costa, Caramazza and Sebastián-Gallés 2000; de Groot, Delmaar and Lupker 2000;
Dijkstra and van Heuven 2002; Green 1998; van Heuven, Dijkstra and Grainger 1998;
van Heuven, Schriefers, Dijkstra and Hagoort 2008). Cognates for kanji-compoundwords between Chinese and Japanese are defined as orthographically-similar andsemantically-same words. For example, the Japanese two-kanji compound word 法則
is represented as the two orthographically-similar kanji 法则 in Chinese, having thesame meaning ‘law’. This word is pronounced quite differently /hoo soku/ in Japanese,and /fa3 ze2/ in Chinese though; consequently, the term cognate does not refer tophonologicalsimilarity.

Conversely,

the

term

non-cognatesisdefinedasorthographically- and semantically-different words. An example is 財布 ‘wallet’ /saihu/ in Japanese. This combination of two kanji does not exist in Chinese, with ‘wallet’
being 钱包 /qian2 bao1/ in Chinese. This Chinese word can be written using two
orthographically-similar kanji 銭包 in Japanese, which, of course, does not exist inJapanese. Since a majority of kanji are basically shared in both languages, the realdifference between cognates and non-cognates among kanji-compound words is the way
in which kanji are combined.
A unique difference was found between cognates and non-cognates in processing
Japanese kanji-compound words by native Chinese speakers. H. Chiu (2003) conducteda naming experiment on three different types of words: cognates, non-cognates with
On-readings, and non-cognates with Kun-readings. The experiment was conducted withfour different groups; native Chinese speakers (studying Japanese at a university in
Taiwan) with the second (n=17) and first (n=19) levels of the Japanese Proficiency Test,
those with highly advanced Japanese (n=15) studying in Japan, and also native Japanese
speakers (n=20). She controlled participants’ age of acquisition (AoA) of
kanji-compound words. AoA is defined as the age at which a word is learned inacquiring spoken language. Morrison and Ellis (1995) found a strong AoA effect whenword frequency was controlled, but no word frequency effect when AoA was controlled.
The stimulus manipulation of AoA by H. Chiu (2003), however, differs from Morrison

31and Ellis (1995). She divided the stimuli into two groups—beginner level for Japanesewords with an early AoA and intermediate level for words with a late AoA—based on
difficulty-levels of words provided by the Japan Foundation and Japan Educational
Exchange and Services (2002). In order to avoid confusion with AoA studies in English,
in which some studies have only reported minor effects (e.g., Zevin and Seidenberg
2002) in contrast with Morrison and Ellis (1995), I describe early AoA as easy words
and late AoA as difficult words in the following explanation of Chiu’s results.
H. Chiu (2003) found unexpected results between cognates and non-cognates in her
naming task. Native Chinese speakers of the second level (intermediate Japanese)
showed a trend in ascending order of naming latencies on easy words; non-cognateswith On-readings, cognates, and non-cognates with Kun-readings as in Table 11. This
trend was much clearer among difficult words, with an ascending order of non-cognateswith On-readings, cognates, and non-cognates with Kun-readings.
Table 11. Mean naming latency for cognates and non-cognates in On- and Kun-readings
On reading
Words

Kun reading

Non-cognates

Cognates

Non-cognates

2nd Level (Intermediate) Easy

846 ms893 ms1,151 ms

Difficult948 ms1,135 ms

1,232 ms

Easy

852 ms

806 ms991 msDifficult875 ms

948 ms987 ms

1st Level (Advanced)

In comparison, Chinese learners of the first level (advanced Japanese) displayed nodifference between cognates and non-cognates with On-readings on easy words.
However, cognates were named faster than non-cognates with Kun-readings. Among
difficult words, the previous trend was observed again in the ascending order of
non-cognates with On-readings, cognates, and non-cognates with Kun-readings. This
trend was observed neither among Chinese-speaking learners with highly-advanced
Japanese, nor among native Japanese speakers. Error rates also indicated a very similar
overall tendency.
Unlike the facilitation effects of cognates in European languages (e.g., Costa,
Caramazza and Sebastián-Gallés 2000; de Groot, Delmaar and Lupker 2000; Dijkstra
and van Heuven 2002; Green 1998; van Heuven, Dijkstra and Grainger 1998; van
32

Heuven, Schriefers, Dijkstra and Hagoort 2008), inhibitory effects were found in H.
Chiu (2003) that cognates were named much more slowly than non-cognates among
native Chinese speakers who were less proficient (both easy and difficult words) and
who were advanced speakers in Japanese (only difficult words). Based on this result, H.
Chiu (2002, 2003) proposed that the processing routes of kanji-compound words varies
depending on the lexical relationship between Japanese and Chinese, and she
constructed a phonological processing model which contrasts cognates andnon-cognates. As depicted in (i) of Figure 4, cognates are first processed through thephonological route in Chinese, and then further to their concepts. In contrast, as shownin (ii) of Figure 4 non-cognates do not exist as Chinese words, so that newly-acquired
non-cognates are easily processed through the Japanese sound route. Due to thedifference of these two phonological processing routes, the naming of cognates inJapanese is slowed down, whereas non-cognates are pronounced more quickly inJapanese than cognates.

Phonology inChinese
Input

Orthography

Concepts
Phonology inJapanese(i) Processing of cognates
Phonology inChinese

Input

Orthography

Concepts
Phonology inJapanese(ii) Processing of non-cognates

Figure 4. Difference in phonological processing of cognates and non-cognates by native
Chinese speakers learning Japanese (The figure is taken from H. Chiu (2002) andtranslated into English)

33

The model in Figure 4 (H. Chiu 2002, 2003) was supported by several studies (Y.
Chiu 2006; Hayakawa 2010; Hayakawa and Tamaoka 2012; Komori 2005) and partly
by a paper by Y. Chiu (2007). Komori (2005), as previously described, showed that
Chinese speakers have an advantage in reading comprehension, but not in listening
comprehension due to their kanji orthographic knowledge. This study further describedthat cognates (56.35% accuracy) were understood nearly as well as non-cognates(51.18% accuracy) in listening comprehension, while cognates (80.57% accuracy)yielded a greater advantage than non-cognates (64.07% accuracy) in reading
comprehension. Y. Chiu (2006) conducted an experiment with 12 native Chinese
speakers who had passed the first level of the Japanese Proficiency Test, employing alexical decision task for words embedded in a sentence. In her study, a sentence
containing parentheses as in (studied ()で勉強したので，とても眠い ‘Because I), I am very sleepy’ was visually presented, followed by the auditory

presentation of a compound word. In this sentence, a possible correct response is theword /tetuya/ ‘all night’. Participants were required to decide whether this word
appropriately fits into the parentheses in the sentence. Kanji compound words whichwere cognates required more time for participants to make a lexical decision thannon-cognates. Since stimulus words were auditorily presented, as shown in Figure 4,
non-cognates must be strongly tied to both Japanese phonology and concepts, while
cognates must have only loose ties with Japanese phonology.
Hayakawa (2010) and Hayakawa and Tamaoka (2012) provided support for themodel in Figure 4. Hayakawa (2010) tested 48 Chinese speaking learners of Japanese(26 at the first level and 22 at the second level of the Japanese Proficiency Test). In
order to investigate the effects of traditional Chinese characters, which are usedprimarily in Taiwan, she selected kanji compounds based on orthographic figures of
traditional characters. For the lexical decision task using auditory-presented words,
Hayakawa (2010) chose three different types of 16 kanji compound words each (48target words in total): (1) S-type (e.g., 記 憶 in Taiwan and Japan) –orthographically-/semantically-same compounds that are considered to be cognates in H.
Chiu(2003),(2)

D-type(e.g., 作 業

inJapan 工 作inTaiwan) –orthographically-similar but semantically-different, and (3) N-type (e.g., 退屈 onlyused in Japan) – two-kanji combinations that do not exist in Chinese and are considered34

non-cognates in H. Chiu (2003).
Table 12. Mean response times for auditory-presented cognates and non-cognates
S-TypeD-TypeN-Type

2nd Level (Intermediate)

1,400 ms

1,283 ms

1,192 ms

1st Level (Advanced)

1,201 ms

1,143 ms

1,086 ms

Although H. Chiu (2003) did not obtain a clear trend among Chinese learners ofadvanced Japanese on difficult words (or late AoA), Hayakawa found an ascendingorder of both N-type, D-type, and S-type among the Intermediate level learners (n=22),
and N-type, D-type, and S-type among the advanced learners (n=26), as in Table 12.
With this result, phonological inhibitory effects for cognates were extended to a wider
population of native Chinese speakers including those at the advanced learners or those
who passed the first level of the Japanese Proficiency Test.
Furthermore, Hayakawa and Tamaoka (2012) examined phonological processing of
S-type (cognates) and N-type (non-cognates) in lexical decisions of auditory-presented
words, using 38 native Chinese speakers from mainland China and 38 Korean speakers(control group) learning Japanese. Once again, lexical decisions were slower for S-type
than N-type among Chinese, whereas no difference was found between S-type andN-type among Koreans, as in Table 13. Since Koreans use little of the kanji script intheir language, and since S-type and N-type were classified based on similarity in
Chinese character words, null effects among the Korean control group strengthened theresults found with the Chinese participants.
Table 13. Mean response times for auditory-presented cognates and non-cognates
S-TypeN-TypeChinese (n=38)

1,188 ms

1,111 ms

Korean (n=38)

1,168 ms

1,157 ms

Hayakawa (2010) and Hayakawa and Tamaoka (2012) explained the processing
mechanism in detail as follows. Cognates of kanji compounds already havephonological representations in the Chinese mental lexicon. For instance, 未来 is35

pronounced /wei4 lai2/ in Chinese. To acquire this word in Japanese, a native Chinese
speaker has to memorize its Japanese sound /mi rai/ in addition to their prior knowledgeof the Chinese sound. In doing so, the orthography of the cognate 未来 becomes
simultaneously connected to two different phonological representations, /wei4 lai2/ in
Chinese and /mi rai/ in Japanese. The connection from orthography (未来) to phonology(/wei4 lai2/) in the first language is very strong, but the newly-learned sound of theword (/mi rai/) has a relatively weak connection. As a result, when the cognate ispresented auditorily, the newly-learned Japanese phonology /mi rai/ delays theactivation of the Chinese pronunciation in reaching its necessary threshold. On the other
hand, since there is no lexical phonology in Chinese for non-cognates, thenewly-learned sound of a non-cognate is easily activated without competition fromexisting Chinese phonological representations.

4. Processing syntactically different features
Are native Chinese speakers learning Japanese unable to break free from the spell ofChinese syntactic features when processing the Japanese language? Due to the great
syntactic difference between Japanese and Chinese, or so-called longer linguistic
distance in syntax, it is frequently presumed that native Chinese speakers have greaterdifficulties in processing Japanese sentences compared to native Korean speakers whose
language, in terms of syntax, is considered to exhibit shorter linguistic distance (Horiba
and Matsumoto 2008; Koda 1993, 2005). However, according to Fan and Wu (2006),
among second-year native Chinese speakers majoring in the Japanese language at Xi’an
International Studies University, 79.79% in 2002 and 82.26% in 2003 passed the fourthlevel of the Japanese language specialization test (i.e., Nihongo Senmon Shiken 4;
NSS4) conducted by the Ministry of Education in the People’s Republic of China. The
fourth level is said to be equivalent to the second level of the newer Japanese language
proficiency test (i.e., N2) administered by the Japan Foundation. Furthermore, although
there is no specific data available, it is commonly known among instructors of theJapanese language in China that approximately half of the native Chinese speakers
majoring in Japanese at the eight major universities of foreign languages in China (i.e.,
two in Beijing, and one in Dalian, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Sichuan, Tianjin, and Xi’an)
can pass the highest level of the Japanese language proficiency test (i.e., N1) at the endof three years of Japanese study, even when starting with no Japanese knowledge. Given

36this remarkable improvement in such a short period of learning Japanese, it may not bedifficult for Chinese students to overcome syntactic differences between Chinese andJapanese to the degree that researchers have previously assumed.

4.1 Morphosyntactic inflections and differences in Chinese and JapaneseMany learners of Japanese with no kanji background devote numerous hours tomemorizing kanji orthography. By contrast, thanks to the high degree of orthographic
similarity between Japanese kanji and Chinese characters, native Chinese speakers canallocate the majority of their classroom and study hours to learning Japanese grammaror syntactic features from the early stages of study. If so, despite the Chinese language
being syntactically dissimilar to Japanese (i.e., a longer linguistic distance in syntax),
high levels of achievement would be expected in acquiring Japanese grammar over ashort period among Chinese students. This implies a strong version of the predicted
learning potential of native Chinese speakers in that they will likely encounter little
syntactic difficulty in learning Japanese.
The Chinese language has no morphosyntactic inflections. This poverty of syntactic
features is expected to present difficulties in the acquisition of Japanese verb inflections(if one assumes L1 transfer). Chu, Tamaoka and Yamato (2012) investigated how 102
native Chinese speakers learning Japanese acquire verb inflections during only a fourmonth period at a university in China. Participants were tested on te-form verb
inflections which were reported as being very difficult for Japanese learners (e.g.,
Nagatomo 1997; Sakamoto 1993). Cronbach’s reliability for 54 target verbs by Chu et al.
was very high at α=0.86. Their verbs were taken from four sources, (i) 15 verbs fromthe students’ textbook (e.g., oyogu ‘swim’ and au ‘meet’), (ii) 15 verbs not in the
textbook (e.g., mayou ‘lost’ and susumu ‘progress’), (iii) 15 nonsense verbs created by
the authors (e.g., kaziku and miaru), and (iv) 9 recently-coined verbs (e.g., tikuru‘secretly tell someone’ and kokuru ‘confess one’s feelings’). All students were asked towrite the te-form inflections of all 54 verbs. For example, when yomu ‘read’ is presented,
participants must write the correct te-form yonde for 1 point.
The results of Chu et al. (2012) are indicated below in descending order ofaccuracy; 90.33% for verbs from the textbook < 88.00% for nonsense verbs = 87.20%
for verbs not in the textbook = 86.44% for newly-created verbs. Verbs taken from the
textbook and used in their classroom were better than those from other categories. What37

is more surprising is that Chinese students exhibited over 86% accuracy on all four
categories. They further reported difficulty levels of te-inflections depending on forms,
indicated in descending order of accuracies; –tte form (98.13%, e.g., atte ‘meeting’) >–site form (94.04%, e.g., zyunbisite ‘preparing’) = –te form (90.76%, e.g., mite ‘seeing’)> –ite/ide form (85.59%, e.g., oyoide ‘swiming’) > -nde form (74.03%, e.g., susunde‘progressing’). Besides the –nde form, all other forms displayed high performance atover 85% accuracy.
It is amazing that native Chinese speakers could apply the te-form inflection rules
to nonsense verbs after a mere four months of Japanese study; a difference in accuracyof only 2.33% between verbs in the textbook and nonsense verbs (90.33% - 88.00%).
Proper application of inflectional morphology for nonsense verbs is considered anindication of well-formed, rule-based knowledge. According to these results, native
Chinese speakers learning Japanese, even for a period of only four months, adequately
apply their acquired knowledge of te-inflection rules to various verbs, despite theabsence of inflectional morphology in their first language. In this sense, language
acquisition researchers generally seem to be overestimating the negative effects oflinguistic differences in syntax between Chinese and Japanese. The absence of syntactic
features may not be a crucial obstacle for acquiring Japanese, although it provides nofacilitation. It should, however, be noted that Chu et al. (2012) simply asked native
Chinese speakers to inflect a verb stem. They did not test the actual use of verbs in a
sentence. Therefore, acquisition of verbal inflections should be further investigated bymeans of on-line processing of a sentence predicate.
Difficulties in processing two-kanji compounds by native Chinese speakers could befound when noun compounds are used as verbs (i.e., verbal nouns). Native Chinese
speakers are likely to apply their knowledge of Chinese to Japanese, even though someverbal nouns differ in their usage, such as transitive/intransitive and active/passive. For
example, as shown in examples (6a) and (6b), a majority of verbal nouns are used for
active and passive in both Japanese and Chinese (e.g., kakunin ‘check’). Yet, someverbal nouns are used in active form in both Japanese and Chinese, but with the passive
used only in Japanese (e.g., zyunbi ‘prepare’) as shown in (7a) and (7b).
(6)

a.

Active form used in both Chinese and JapaneseSuuti oaratani kakuninsita.

38

numerical value ACC

newly

check PST‘(He) newly checked the numerical values.’b.

Passive form used in both Chinese and JapaneseSuuti gaaratani kakuninsareta.

numerical value NOM

newlycheck PASS PST‘The numerical values were newly checked.’(7)a.

Active form used in both Chinese and Japanese
Siryoo okeikakutekini zyunbisita.

reference ACC

deliberately

prepare PST‘(He) deliberately prepared the reference.’b.

Passive form used only in Japanese
Siryoo ga

keikakutekini zyunbisareta.

reference ACC

deliberately

prepare PASS PST‘The reference was deliberately prepared.’
A majority of two-kanji compound nouns shared by Chinese and Japanese arefundamentally used in the same way as shown in (6a) and (6b). As a result, native
Chinese speakers are predicted to show no qualitative differences among sentence typesin (6a), (7a), and (6b). However, if the morphosyntactic knowledge of Chinese words ismerely applied to Japanese, lower accuracy and possibly slower speed are expected tooccur in the processing of passive sentences like in (7b), which is not used in Chinese.
This type of subtle difference observed in verbal nouns is expected to lead to occasional,
but unavoidable mistakes. Morphosyntactic knowledge of Chinese will therefore likely
cause considerable influence on the processing of second language Japanese two-kanji
compounds. The question of on-line predicate processing by Chinese speakers still
remains to be answered in future studies.

4.2 Word order and processing Japanese sentences
Japanese base word order is SOV while Chinese one is SVO. Due to the different
word order in their L1 and the target language, Chinese speaking learners of Japanese
may face difficulty in the processing of even simple Japanese sentences because of thedifferent base word order and flexible word order, i.e., scrambling (for processing ofJapanese scrambled sentences, see Koizumi’s and Chang’s chapters in this volume.)

39

They are required not only to process SOV-ordered Japanese sentences, but also tocomprehend sentences with a phrasal movement operation of OSV scrambled order.
According to word order typology by Dryer (2012), SVO and SOV are the two major
types, with 41.08% being SVO (488 languages) and 47.56% being SOV (565languages) out of 1,188 languages (a total of 1,377 minus 189 languages lacking adominant word order). Both the Chinese and Japanese languages are included in the two
major language typologies.
An early cross-linguistic study by Koda (1993) measured sentence correctness
among Chinese, English, and Korean speaking learners of Japanese at an American
university. Note that her study indexes the end result of sentence processing because she
did not measure the reaction time of each sentence. The study showed the null effect on
scrambling by Koreans. This result must have been caused by a measurement limitationin which the Korean speakers had reached the performance ceiling in terms ofcomprehension of the 12 total sentence stimuli in both canonical (M=11.5) andscrambled (M=12.0) order under the condition where case particles were present.
Without case particles, however, they seemed to lose cues for processing, resulting inlower scores for both canonical (M=8.5) and scrambled (M=8.6) sentences, though
there was still no scrambling effect. Here it should be noted that sentences without caseparticles are considered to be incorrect in Japanese, so that it is problematic to estimate
the mechanism for those sentences processed by any of the three language groups.4
In contrast with Koreans, the scrambling effect was apparent for both the American(native English speakers) and Chinese groups (see Koda 1993, Table 1). Koda drew therather unclear conclusion that Japanese sentence processing of canonical and scrambled
orders by L2 learners involves both L1 and L2 effects. It is tempting to interpret theseresults in such a way that American and Chinese learners were able to establish afiller-gap dependency (the relationship between the moved landing site and the original
position where it was moved from) for processing scrambled sentences in a similar way
to native Japanese speakers, yielding lower accuracy in the scrambled condition.
However, the interpretation of gap-filling parsing is a great logical jump to apply to theresults since Koreans, whose first language has case particles similar to Japanese, did
not show the scrambling effect.
Selecting participants from students at an American university invites two major
potential weaknesses. First, it is difficult to know how efficiently these students can40

handle their first languages of Chinese and Korean, as their length of residence in the
US was unknown. Second, all participants may have a great deal of variation of
proficiency in English. Some of the Chinese speakers may no longer have Chinese as
their dominant language; instead, English may have become the more highly activatedof their two languages. So-called ‘heritage’ learners who grew up in the US with
Chinese/Korean parents are likely to be more English dominant. On the other hand, forstudents who arrived in the US after attending high school in their home country,
Chinese/Korean usually remains their dominant language. With potentially low Chinese
ability, can we still say these participants are good representatives of native Chinese
speakers? In contrast, as far as they can proficiently speak the Korean language,
Koreans may have the advantage of speaking an SOV-ordered language because
Japanese also has the same SOV-order. In fact, the ceiling score in Koda’s study may be
the result of syntactic similarity between Japanese and Korean. Nevertheless, both the
Chinese and Korean participants must have already obtained an excellent level ofEnglish ability as their second or possibly first language, and thus, Japanese mustnecessarily be the third language for them. The effect from their English knowledge
remains unknown.
In addition to accuracies on sentence correctness decisions, Koda conducted areading comprehension test. A regression analysis showed that case particle knowledge(R2=0.4795) was a highly significant predictor of reading comprehension (p<.0001).5
This result clearly established a causal relation between the knowledge of case particles
and reading comprehension. However, because she did not report group differences on
the reading comprehension scores, the question to be raised is whether the Koreanparticipants were higher achievers than the American and Chinese participants at thetime when they were tested. Future cross-linguistic studies should be conducted bycontrolling the Japanese ability of different first-language groups, ideally focusing on
Japanese being learned in the second language environment, not a foreign language
environment.
Experimental approaches measuring reaction times are rather scarce in the study ofJapanese sentence processing by Chinese speaking learners of Japanese. One of the few
examples is Tamaoka (2005, Experiment 1) which investigated how Chinese learners
who studied Japanese for two to four years at a university in Dalian, China, processed
and made correctness decisions on active transitive-verb sentences with canonical and41scrambled orders. Because sentence processing requires a heavy cognitive load,
Tamaoka selected 24 participants out of 87 native Chinese speakers with scores higher
than 22 points or 91.7% accuracy based on the results of a grammar test with 25
multiple choice questions (i.e., a maximum score of 25).
The results showed that simple active sentences in canonical order were more
quickly and accurately processed than the same sentences in scrambled order as in Table
14.
Table 14. Mean response times and accuracy for canonical and scrambled sentences
Response times

Accuracy

Canonical

3,566 ms

87.5%

Scrambled

3,933 ms

78.0%

A scrambling effect of 367 milliseconds in reaction time and 9.5% accuracy suggests
the possibility that it is highly probable that the Chinese participants generated the basestructure [S NP-NOM [VP NP-ACC V]] for active transitive-verb sentences and established afiller-gap dependency for scrambled-ordered sentences, as with native Japanese
speakers (Aoshima, Phillips and Weinberg 2002; Koizumi and Tamaoka 2004, 2006,
2010; Mazuka, Itoh and Kondo 2002; Miyamoto and Takahashi 2002; Sakamoto 2002;
Tamaoka et al. 2005).
Native Chinese speakers learning Japanese understood simple Japanese active
sentences with a transitive verb in the SOV-canonical order like ‘My elder sister ate anapple’ more quickly and accurately than OSV-scrambled orders. This provides evidence
that they may manipulate syntactic operation for the scrambled order. If so, at least, thisfinding does not support the shallow structure hypothesis proposed by Clahsen andFelser (2006), which claims that second language learners can process semantic roles
such as lexical items, but not syntactic information, even at the advanced level. Rather,
the result supports the claim by White (2003) that syntactic features related to functional
categories could be acquired in an early stage of second language acquisition, althoughsome features such as the definiteness of determiners a and the in English are very
difficult for Japanese and Chinese speaking L2 learners to acquire because their L1
lacks such a feature (Trenkic 2002).
The Chinese language has no overt wh-movement. Wh-words stay in situ in Chinese42

(He 2000; Huang 1981; Lin 1998). For example, English sentence (8a) is expressed as(8b) in Chinese.
(8)

Likewise, (9a) is expressed as (9b).

a.

What do you eat?

b.

你吃什么?
ni3 chi1 shen2-me0.
you NOM eat PRS what ACC

(9)

a.

Whom do you like?

b.

你喜欢谁?
ni3 xi3-huan0 shui2.
you NOM like PRS whom ACC

Syntactic operations of English wh-questions include an additional fronting operation ofa wh-word, compared to yes/no-questions that require the insertion of do when verbs are
regular (not BE). Yet, adult native Chinese speakers, who have been studying atuniversities where English is the instructional language, seem to be able to handle
wh-questions in English fairly well. Thus, it is anticipated that they can also processscrambled sentences in Japanese using a filler-gap parsing operation.
Experiment 2 in Tamaoka (2005) further examined potential sentences whose caseparticles conflicted with the grammatical information of subject and object taken fromthe stimuli of Experiment 4 in Tamaoka et al. (2005). For example, in the potential
sentence (10a) the subject is marked by the dative case particle –ni, having a syntactic
structure of [s NP-ni [vp NP-ga V]]. In this sentence, NP-ni is the subject whereas NP-ga
is the object. Thus, case particles cannot provide the proper information to constructbase structure. In contrast, according to case particle order suggesting that nominative
proceeds dative and accusative, the canonical order should be (10b). If native Chinese
speakers utilize case particles, they will have great difficulty processing thenominative-marked inanimate noun Greek-NOM. If they can understand Greek-NOM
as actually being the object, and if they can comprehend that the dative-marked animate
noun Takashi-DAT is the subject, then they can properly understand a potential sentence
based on the base structure [S NP-subject (marked by the dative -ni ) [VP NP-object (marked by the nominative-ga) V]].

43

(10)

a.

Takasi ni

girisyago ga kakerudarooka.

Takashi DAT Greek NOM write-POTEN-wonder-Q‘Can Takashi write Greek?’b.

girisyago ga Takasi ni

kakerudarooka.

Greek NOM Takashi DAT write-POTEN-wonder-Q
The processing of Japanese potential sentences by native Chinese speakers showed atrend that differed from non-potential active sentences. Tamaoka (2005, see Table 2 inExperiment 2) indicated that potential sentences in canonical order (M=3,405 ms) did
not significantly differ in reaction times from the same sentences in scrambled order(M=3,774 ms). Taking null scrambling effects into account, it is possible to interpretthat native Chinese speakers learning Japanese have not figured out the base structure ofpotential sentences, and therefore, the gap-filling parsing in the processing of potential
sentences with scrambled order cannot apply to these Chinese speakers.
Before discussing the results of the response times, let’s examine accuracies.
Canonical order had an average of 69.1% with a high standard deviation of 23.9%,
whereas the scrambled order had an average of 56.9% with an even higher standard
deviation of 29.7%. This difference of 12.8% (Tamaoka 2005 showed 12.9%, but thiswas caused by a rounding error) between the canonical and scrambled orders was
significant. Yet, the standard deviations of both the canonical and scrambled orders werevery high, at over 20%. Individual participants are depicted below in Figure 5, byplotting participants’ (or students’) accuracies on canonical order sentences on thehorizontal axis and scrambled order on the vertical axis. To highlight participants’
individual differences, the hierarchical cluster analysis for accuracies of canonical andscrambled orders revealed three clusters drawn on top of the plotting in Figure 5.
Let’s consider three illuminating facts on individual differences of the clusters. First,
three participants among the members of Cluster III in Figure 5, lying exactly on thehorizontal axis, rejected all potential sentences with scrambled order as incorrect. In thescrambled order of OSV, an inanimate noun such as ‘Greek’ comes in the initial
specifier position of the sentence, as in (10b), which is repeated below with theschematic structure.
(10)

b.

girisyago ga Takasi ni

kakerudarooka.

44

Greek NOM Takashi DAT write-POTEN-wonder-Q[s NP-ga1 [S’ NP-ni [VP gap1 V]]‘Greek’ is in a subject position in (10b), marked by the nominative case particle –ga,which usually indicates the subject of a sentence. These three native Chinese speakers
must have employed a simple and strict strategy that an inanimate subject did not takethe nominative case particle –ga, especially when placed in the initial specifier position,
possibly indicating the subject of a sentence. For them, the following dative-marked
animate noun adds the clear indication of incorrect marking.

100%

Pearson's correlation coefficient
r=.64, p<.001
80%

2 students

2 students

Scrambled order2 students

Cluster I(n=13)

60%

Cluster Ⅱ
(n=6)

40%

20%

Cluster Ⅲ
0%
0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Canonical orderFigure 5. Accuracy plotting of canonical- and scrambled-ordered potential sentences(This figure is taken and translated from Tamaoka (2005: 103), n=24).

45

As some researchers (e.g., Lamers and de Hoop 2005) suggest that animacy
information plays a crucial role on language comprehension studies, native Chinese
speakers may have utilized this strategy (see also Yamashita 2008). In fact, considering
the typical events in daily life, animacy information is usually correct in that an animate
actor as a subject acts upon an inanimate object, such as in ‘My brother eats breakfast’,‘My mother cooked clam chowder’, and ‘My father runs a vegetable shop’. The strategy
of animacy, however, is not universally true, having some exceptions including potential
sentences. The strategy of animacy with case particles must be deeply embedded inthese three Chinese participants, allowing for no flexibility.
The second illuminating fact is that the five participants among the members ofCluster I in Figure 5 could process potential sentences at an accuracy rate higher than
80% in both canonical and scrambled orders. This is noteworthy in light of thepossibility that a few native Chinese speakers could produce the base structure [SNP-subject (marked by the dative -ni ) [VP NP-object (marked by the nominative -ga) V]] for potential sentences,apparently moving beyond the conflicting nature of animacy and case particles. We
must also bear in mind that these five participants were originally taken from a pool of
87 Chinese students majoring in Japanese language based on scores on a grammar test.
This places them in approximately the top 5 % of this group (more precisely 5.74%). It
is quite possible that a few, possibly 5% of native Chinese speakers learning Japanese at
a Chinese university, may understand potential sentences at a high rate of accuracy,
which leaves open the great possibility that these learners could produce the basestructure for potential sentences, and that they could also process scrambled-order
potential sentences by gap-filling parsing.
The third fact is that accuracies on potential sentences of two participants among themembers of Cluster II ranged between 40% and 60% in both canonical and scrambled
order. They displayed a random pattern of decision making without a clear guideline forpotential sentences. These two native Chinese speakers must have been puzzled toencounter potential sentences, in which animacy and case particles did not matchcorrectly in terms of the nature of subject and object.
The contribution of individual differences to Japanese sentence processing must be
measured as a reflection of Japanese language proficiency levels. This aspect was
scrutinized by Tamaoka et al. (2010). They examined the degree of understanding of46

orally-presented single sentences in canonical and scrambled order based on Japaneseability. A listening comprehension test with a maximum of 8 points was conducted with
92 native Chinese speakers learning Japanese from one to three years at a university in
Taiwan. Based on the test scores, a total of 48 participants were divided into higher (6-7
points), middle (4 points), and lower (2-1 points) listening comprehension groups (16participants each) to undergo an experiment to investigate the understanding oforally-presented simple sentences (maximum of 11 points each). Two ditransitive active
sentences in canonical and scrambled order were presented to the 48 native Chinese
speaking participants. After canonical and scrambled active sentences were orally
presented, the participants were asked two questions about the content of each sentence;
one was related to the canonical sentence and another to the scrambled sentence. If a
correct response was given, it was counted as one point. The study found a clear trend
among the three groups. Scores of canonical ordered sentences significantly increased
as comprehension levels increased: lower, middle, and higher. Scores of scrambled
order sentences were comparatively lower for each group, with the higher group scoringsignificantly above the lower and middle groups, as in Table 15.
Table 15. Mean comprehension scores for canonical and scrambled sentences by group
Canonical

Scrambled

Lower

6.19

5.06

Middle

7.44

4.88

Higher

8.31

7.19

Possible interpretations are that the lower group might have confused both canonicaland scrambled order, which may have been caused by the difference in both parametersetting of the verb phrase and scrambling of subject and object noun phrases between
Chinese and Japanese. The middle group was able to overcome the difference in word
order of the verb phrase, and began to be able to handle the processing of Japanese
sentences with canonical order. The higher group was able to establish a dependency
between the initially-presented dative/accusative-marked phrase as filler, and its gap in
the verb phrase (i.e., filler-gap parsing), resulting in higher scores in understanding bothcanonical and scrambled order sentences.
In sum, as seen in Figure 5, a great diversity was found among learners of Japanese47

with the same language background of Chinese. Once these individual differences aretaken into consideration, it seems that researchers applying the theory of generativegrammar to second language acquisition might be overly sensitive to the syntactic
aspects of language. The shallow structure hypothesis by Clahsen and Felser (2006)
cannot explain these individual differences in the manipulation ability of scrambled
sentences. Rather, as White (2003) put forward, functional categories must be acquired
at a relatively early stage of Japanese acquisition among native Chinese speakers. The
progressive increase of scores in sentence comprehension shown by Tamaoka et al.
(2010) must reflect the development of learners’ facility with word order andadvancement of parsing ability as native Chinese speakers improve their proficiency in
the Japanese language.

5. Concluding remarks
Various studies with Chinese speaking learners of Japanese were reviewed in thischapter. As discussed, future studies can be categorized in three research areas: First,
native English speakers showed an “awfully random” pattern of Japanese pitch accentacquisition regardless of the length of learning and proficiency (Taylor 2011a, 2011b,
2012), but native Chinese speakers displayed both random trends (Lee et al. 2006) and
improvement as their learning progresses (Pen 2003). Since Chinese has tone accent,comparable to pitch accent, and since the position of the pitch accent in each word isthoroughly taught when introducing Japanese vocabulary at universities in China (e.g.,Hong 2010; Pan 2011; Zhang 2011; Zhao 2012; Zhou and Chen 2009, 2010, 2011a,
2011b), Chinese learners may exhibit some progress in acquiring Japanese pitch accent
and advantage compared to learners of other L1 languages. Then, future studies onacquisition of pitch accent should pay special attention to dialectic influences in both
Japanese and Chinese, differences in pitch accent patterns, and function of homophonicdistinctions by controlling Japanese language proficiency of Chinese learners.
Second, due to the script similarity in kanji between L1 Chinese and L2 Japanese,
Chinese learners demonstrate specific advantages and disadvantages in reading
Japanese. Advantages are found in processing visually presented kanji compound words(e.g., Matsunaga 1999; Tamaoka 1997, 2000; Yamato and Tamaoka 2009, 2013). In
contrast, because Chinese speakers heavily rely on their orthographic knowledge tounderstand Japanese words, their phonological processing of kanji compound words

48

does not display advantage, and occasionally even showed inhibitory effects (e.g., H.
Chiu 2003, 2003; Y. Chiu 2006; Hayakawa 2010; Hayakawa and Tamaoka 2012). In
addition, semantic similarities and differences between L1 Chinese and L2 Japanese
seem to exhibit complex processing trends in Chinese learners’ understanding Japanese
kanji compound words (e.g., Komori and Tamaoka 2010; Hayakawa and Tamaoka2012). Therefore, future studies on advantages and disadvantages of L1 Chinese kanji
knowledge for understanding L2 Japanese words should be conducted on the processingof phonologically similar/dissimilar words, kanji compound words with On- andKun-readings, and semantic differences between the two languages, again with apopulation whose L2 Japanese language proficiency is controlled.
Third, Japanese and Chinese are considerably different in their syntactic features.
Japanese word order is SOV while Chinese is SVO. Japanese has case particles while
Chinese does not. Japanese allows scrambling (word permutation) while Chinese
fundamentally does not. Because both languages are considered to have longer
linguistic distance in syntax, difficulties in processing or understanding Japanese
sentences are predicted (e.g., Horiba and Matsumoto 2008; Koda 1993, 2005). However,
Chinese speakers’ kanji knowledge allows them to allocate their Japanese learning
hours to syntax, while those with no kanji language background spend many hours tomemorize kanji. Thus they are likely to concentrate on syntax from the beginning stageof learning, resulting in high accuracies on morphosyntactic inflections of verbs (Chu etal. 2012). They also display the scrambling effect in processing SOV and OSV
sentences (Tamaoka 2005; Tamaoka et al. 2010), as native Japanese speakers do (e.g.,
Aoshima, Phillips and Weinberg 2002; Koizumi and Tamaoka 2004, 2006; Mazuka, Itohand Kondo 2002; Miyamoto and Takahashi 2002; Sakamoto 2002; Tamaoka 2004, 2006,
2010; Tamaoka et al. 2005). Difficulties by Chinese learners seem to come from slightly
different verb and adjective usages between L1 and L2, such as transitive/intransitive
and active/passive. These usage differences should be investigated in future studies.
Notes
1. This database was created from the corpus of the Asahi Newspaper from 1985 to 1998,
which contains 341,771 words for type frequency and 287,792,797 words for token
frequency. Within the high familiarity range (familiarity index taken from Amano andKondo 1999) the unaccented-accented opposition or flat pattern versus other accented

49

patterns is more prevalent than the accent-location oppositions.
2. It should be noted that these Chinese university students are native Chinese speakers
who came from a country where Chinese is spoken. They are sometimes referred to as‘visa students’.
3. Japanese kanji pronunciation can be divided into two types: On-readings derived
from the original Chinese pronunciations, and Kun-readings originating from Japanese
pronunciations (for details about kanji see Hadamitzky and Spahn 1981; Hirose 1998;
Kess and Miyamoto 1999; Miller 1967; Tamaoka 1991). For example, the kanji 海
meaning ‘ocean’ is pronounced /kai/ in its On-reading (or Sino-Japanese) but /umi/ in its
Kun-reading. On-readings are frequently used for multiple kanji compound words suchas 海岸 /kaigan/ meaning ‘seashore’, 海賊 /kaizoku/ meaning ‘pirate’, and 海藻/kaisoo/ meaning ‘seaweed’. The Kun-reading frequently appears in isolated kanji, often
having a concrete meaning of its own. In the case of 海, this single kanji meaning‘ocean’ or ‘sea’ is pronounced /umi/ in the Kun-reading. On- and Kun-readings are useddistinctly for different words: On-readings for kango (Chinese-derived words) andKun-readings for wago (Japanese-based words).
4. Koda (1993) was testing the strengths of different cues (e.g., animacy, case particles,
word order) in the competition model (Bates and MacWhinney 1987). Thus, she used
the unnatural sentences. See Shirai’s chapter in this volume on the competition model.
5. In her article, the R2 value of 47.95 is printed in Table IV, which, I assume, must havea mistake in the decimal point.
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