L2 Acquisition of the Japanese Associative Plural Marker -tati
Keisuke Kume and Heather Marsden
1. Introduction
The Japanese plural marker -tati allows a so-called associative reading of thenoun it attaches to (i.e., N and others), in addition to a regular plural reading.
However, the associative reading is not always available when a noun with -tati
is modified with a numeral classifier. This paper investigates whether thissemantic constraint on associative -tati can be acquired by second language (L2)speakers of Japanese whose first language (L1) is either Korean, which has acorresponding associative plural morpheme and distributional constraint, orEnglish, which has no associative morpheme and hence no constraint.
This paper is organised as follows. Section 2 introduces plurality in Japaneseand the semantic constraint on the associative -tati. In Section 3, predictions forthe acquisition of -tati in L2 Japanese are provided after illustrating the relevant
properties of Korean and English. Sections 4 and 5 illustrate the methodology andthe results, Section 6 discusses the findings, and Section 7 concludes.
2. Plurality in Japanese
Plural marking is not obligatory in Japanese; it is optionally marked onanimate nouns by means of the suffix, -tati. As indicated above, -tati can also
express associativity, whereby N-tati refers to a group of individuals denoted by
the noun and associated others. For example, Mary-tati is ambiguous between two
readings: the plural reading, ‘more than one person named Mary’; or the
associative reading, ‘Mary and others’. However, when N-tati combines with anumeral classifier (NC), the associative reading is not always allowed. In
postnominal NC constructions, where a numeral with a classifier follows N-tati,
both associative and plural readings are available (1a). By contrast, in prenominal
NC constructions, where the NC precedes N-tati, only the plural reading ispossible (1b) (e.g., Ochi, 2012; Ueda, 2014).

*Keisuke

Kume, University of York, keisuke.kume@outlook.jp; Heather Marsden,
University of York, heather.marsden@york.ac.uk.

© 2022 Keisuke Kume and Heather Marsden. Proceedings of the 46th annual Boston
University Conference on Language Development, ed. Ying Gong and Felix Kpogo,390-400. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

391(1) a. Postnominal NC construction
Mary-tati
san-ninMary-TATI 3-CL
✓Associative: ‘Mary and the other two’
✓Plural: ‘three persons named Mary’b. Prenominal NC constr.
San-nin-no John-tati
3-CL-GEN John-TATI✗Associative✓PluralAccording to Ueda (2014), -tati fills distinct structural positions depending
on its interpretation: plural -tati is the head of NumP, Num, taking an NP
complement (2a), whereas associative -tati is D, taking a DP complement (2b).
(2) a. Plural
DP
NumP

D

NP

Num

Mary

tati

b. Associative
DP
DP

D
tati

Mary

In the prenominal construction, the NC is assumed to be an NP adjunct (e.g., Saito,
Lin, & Murasugi, 2008), which means that plural -tati can take as a complement
an NP consisting of an NC and its associated noun (3). However, because an NC
cannot be adjoined to a DP with associative -tati, the associative reading isprecluded, as sketched in (4).

392

(3) Prenominal NC construction
DP
NumP
NP

D
Num
tati

CLP(NC)NP(plural)Marysan-nin-no(4) Illicit prenominal NC constructionDP
CLP(NC)DP

san-nin-no
DP

D

Mary

tati
(associative)

By contrast, in the postnominal construction, the NC is the head of ClassifierP(CLP) and can take a DP complement (e.g., Shin, 2017) (5). In this configuration,
both plural and associative interpretations are available because structurally, -tati
can be either Num or D. That is, the DP in (5), Mary-tati, is ambiguous between
the structures in (2a) and (2b).
(5) Postnominal NC construction
DP
CLP
DP

D
CL(NC)
san-ninMary-tatiThis study examines whether L2 learners can acquire this interpretive
contrast between prenominal and postnominal NC constructions that include -tati.
Korean and English were chosen as L1s, because of the properties of theselanguages regarding plurality and associativity, described in the next section.

393
3. Crosslinguistic differences and predictions
3.1. Plurality in Korean
Like Japanese, Korean has an associative marker, -tung (An, 2016). However,unlike Japanese -tati, it cannot have a plural interpretation (6). Plurality isexpressed with a suffix, -tul instead (7).
(6) Mary-tung✓Associative: ‘Mary and others’✘Plural: ‘more than one person named Mary’(7) Mary-tul✘Associative✓PluralKorean -tung behaves similarly to Japanese associative -tati in NC constructions.
In Korean prenominal NC constructions, the associative morpheme -tung is not
acceptable (8a), though the plural -tul is fine (8b) (An, 2016) (cf. Japanese (1b)).
(8) a. *sey-myeng-uy Mary-tung
3-CL-GEN
Mary-TUNG‘Three persons named Mary’b. sey-myeng-uy
Mary-tul
3-CL-GEN
Mary-TUL‘Three persons named Mary’In the postnominal construction, however, both associativity and plurality can be
expressed with -tung (9a) and -tul (9b) (cf. Japanese (1a)).
(9) a. Associative
Mary-tungsey-myeng
Mary-TUNG 3-CL
‘Mary and the other two’b. Plural
Mary-tul
sey-myeng
Mary-TUL 3-CL
‘Three persons named Mary’
Therefore, -tung and -tul seem to correspond to associative -tati and plural -tati,
respectively.

394
3.2. Plurality in English
In English, the plural marker -s does not mark associativity. That is, Marysrefers to more than one person named Mary but not a group of people consistingof Mary and others. Furthermore, in English, numerals can directly combine withnouns (e.g., three Marys), unlike Japanese and Korean, where classifiers are
required. This means English does not have NC constructions equivalent to theones in Japanese and Korean. Particularly, numerals never occur postnominally inEnglish (e.g., *Marys three).
3.3. Predictions
Following L1 transfer approaches to L2 acquisition of properties (e.g.,
Lardiere, 2009), we assume that the abstract L1 grammar is the starting point forL2 acquisition. Given the crosslinguistic differences above, if L1-Korean speakers
observe the associative meaning of -tati, they are predicted to map this form onto
the lexical representation of the associative morpheme -tung which already exists
from their L1. That is, they will be able to acquire the interpretive constraint as aresult of this L1 transfer. By contrast, L1-English speakers. lacking a ready-madelexical representation from their L1, will need to build a lexical representation for
the associative form-meaning from scratch. Therefore, the basic prediction is that
Korean-speaking learners will acquire the interpretive constraint on theassociative -tati in the prenominal NC construction more easily or faster thanEnglish-speaking learners.
However, the question remains of whether L1-English speakers are predicted
to acquire the constraint at all, due to a potential learnability problem that arises
because of lack of evidence from which the constraint could be induced. First,
although associative -tati is absent in prenominal NC constructions, absence alone
does not provide determining evidence for the constraint. Second, Japanese
language instruction is also unlikely to provide evidence. Examination ofJapanese textbooks and discussion with teachers confirmed that the interpretive
constraint is not commonly (if ever) taught. Finally, the observable evidence of-tati in the input may even be misleading for acquiring the constraint. This isbecause, in most cases, there is no difference in meaning between prenominal andpostnominal NC constructions, as in (10).
(10) a. Gakusei san-nin (postnominal)
student 3-CL‘(the) three students’b. San-nin-no gakusei (prenominal)
3-CL-GEN student‘(the) three students’395This might lead learners to overgeneralise the acceptability of associative -tati inpostnominal NC constructions to prenominal NC constructions, by analogy.
Therefore, these three factors, combined with the lack of an L1 counterpart
property, may result in an L2 poverty-of-the-stimulus (POS) problem for L1English speakers, where there is no direct evidence for the constraint on
associative -tati (e.g., Schwartz & Sprouse, 2013).
However, previous research on L2 POS at the syntax-semantics interface (e.g.,
Dekydtspotter & Sprouse, 2001; Marsden, 2009) suggests that similar learnability
problems can be overcome. The driver of acquisition in these cases has beenargued to be Universal Grammar (UG), an innate domain-specific algorithm preempting certain syntax-semantics mappings. In the case of the incompatibility of
associative -tati with the prenominal NC construction, we assume that this arises
due to associative -tati and plural -tati having different semantic type properties.
UG imposes restrictions on the way in which different semantic types can
combine at the syntax-semantics interface. We return to this issue in the
Discussion, but in terms of predictions, if UG is operative in L2, then L1-English
learners may be able to acquire the subtle interpretive constraint on -tati, despite
the lack of direct evidence for it. By targeting this novel Japanese phenomenon,
the present study aims to expand the database of research on L2 POS at the syntaxsemantics interface.
4. Methods
4.1. Participants
Twenty L1-English and 20 L1-Korean speakers of Japanese participated in
the study. The L1-English participants were UK university students of Japaneserelated majors, Japanese language instructors at UK and US universities, anduniversity teachers at Japanese universities. The L1-Korean speakers were mostly
resident in Japan at the time of testing: they were undergraduate students at
Japanese universities or Korean language teachers in Japan except for one being
an US university student. Twenty Japanese speakers, who were university students
and professionals residing in Japan, also participated as native controls. The two
L2 groups were matched for proficiency using a cloze test adapted from Marsden(2005). They can be considered relatively advanced learners because their meanscores were within the native range.
4.2. Acceptability judgement task
A web-based acceptability judgement task (AJT) was administered using
Qualtrics. For each test item, the participants were asked to read a short passage
and rate a target sentence for its acceptability on a 7-point scale (0 = completely
odd, 6 = completely natural). An I don’t know option was also included. There
were eight experimental item pairs, each of which differed in whether the sentence
contained a postnominal or prenominal NC, as illustrated in (11). In each item,the context (presented in Japanese in the experiment though in English for396
convenience in (11)) biased towards an associative reading of -tati. Consequently,
the expected native response was significantly lower ratings in the prenominal
condition than in the postnominal construction.
Two item lists were created so that no participant saw both postnominal andprenominal versions of any item. Each list also included 64 distractors that wereexperimental items for other studies and 24 fillers that were all unacceptable tobalance the number of acceptable and unacceptable items. The test items were
pseudo-randomised for each participant.
(11) Context: Hanako and her parents visited her uncle by train last weekend.
Target: Ozi-wa
yuugata kara
uncle-TOP evening from{ Hanako-tati san-nin-o /Hanako-TATI 3-CL-ACC /
umi
sea

ni
to

*san-nin-no Hanako-tati-o }3-CL-GEN Hanako-TATI-ACC

doraibu ni turete-itte-kure-masita
drive
for take-go-give-did‘Her uncle took Hanako and the other two for a drive to theseaside in the evening.’
5. Results
5.1. Group resultsGroup mean acceptability ratings were calculated for each NC construction
type, as shown in Figure 1. I don’t know responses were removed (6/480, or 1.25%of the data). As predicted, the control group gave the prenominal construction
clearly lower ratings than the postnominal construction. the L2 groups exhibited
similar rating patterns, though less categorically than the control group.
The raw ratings of the experimental items were further analysed with an
ordinal mixed-effects model (Christensen, 2018). The fixed effects were
CONDITION (postnominal, prenominal), L1 (Japanese, Korean, English), andtheir interactions with maximally specified random effects. CONDITION wassum-coded whereas L1 was Helmert-coded so that the native group was comparedwith the two L2 groups together, and then the L2 groups were compared with eachother. Table 1 summarises the model output. The effects of CONDITION, the two
L1 contrasts, and the interaction between CONDITION and the native–L2
contrast were significant. However, the interaction between CONDITION and the
Korean-English contrast was not significant. This suggests that sensitivity to theinterpretive contrast differs between the native and L2 participants, but not
between the L2 groups.

397

Figure 1. Acceptability of -tati in associative contexts (error bars = SE)
Table 1. Omnibus model output
Fixed Effects

β

SE

z

p

Condition−3.0210.363 −8.314 <.001*
L1: Native vs L2−0.9640.260 −3.714 <.001*
L1: Korean vs English
0.430
0.211
2.031
.042*
Condition × L1: Native vs L2−2.9710.540 −5.506 <.001*
Condition × L1: Korean vs English−0.446
0.405 −1.101
0.271
Note. Formula: raw rating ~ condition × L1 + (condition | participant) + (condition
× L1 | item) * p < .05
In order to examine whether the L2 groups distinguished the construction
types at statistically reliable levels, a nested ordinal model was fit to the rating
data. The model output in Table 2 shows a significant effect of CONDITION foreach group. Thus, Table 2 confirms that both L2 groups are sensitive to theconstraint, though to a lesser extent than the native group.
Table 2. Nested model output
Fixed Effects
β

SE

z

p

L1(1): Native vs L2−0.9640.260 −3.711 <.001*
L1(2): Korean vs English
0.429
0.211
2.030
.042*
L1: Native / condition−5.9930.689 −8.696 <.001*
L1: Korean / condition−1.9810.653 −3.034.002*
L1: English / condition−1.0900.509 −2.141.032*
Note. Formula: raw score ~ L1/ condition + (condition | participant) + (condition
× L1 | item) * p < .05

398
5.2. Individual results
Individual response patterns were also examined to see how many
participants in each group exhibited target response patterns. Table 3 shows how
many individuals per group had lower mean ratings for the prenominal
construction than the postnominal (target pattern), how many showed nodifference between the two, and how many had the opposite (non-target) pattern.
Table 3. Distribution of response patterns within each group
L1
Prenominal
Prenom.
Prenominal< postnominal= Postnom.
> postnominal
N
Size of diff.
N
N
Size of diff.
Japanese
20
0.50–6.00
00NA
Korean13
0.50–4.75
3
4
0.25–1.50
English13
0.25–4.80
2
5
0.25–1.00
In both L2 groups, the majority showed the target pattern, though around a thirdin each group showed a non-target pattern. We take this as evidence that theinterpretive constraint is acquirable for L2 learners, even though not all
participants had acquired it.
6. Discussion
Now let us discuss these findings in relation to the research question andpredictions. First, the answer to the question of whether L2 learners can acquire
the interpretive constraint on -tati seems affirmative, in that both Korean andEnglish groups made a significant distinction between the conditions. The
individual response analysis also supported this. Turning to the first predictionthat L1-Korean speakers would acquire the constraint faster than L1-English
speakers due to L1 difference, this was not confirmed because there was no
statistical difference between the two L2 groups in terms of sensitivity to thecontrast. The second prediction that if UG is operative, L1-English speakers
would be able to acquire the constraint was confirmed, as already addressed in theanswer to the research question. In the following, we consider what exactly UG
provides learners with so that they can acquire the constraint.
We assume that the UG knowledge in question is the syntax-semantics
restriction that prenominal numeral quantifiers must be adjoined to an NP ofsemantic type <e, t> (= predicate). This prevents prenominal numeral quantifiers
from modifying a DP with the associative -tati of type e (= entity), as previously
illustrated in (4). Recall that in the structures proposed in (2), -tati is Num when
it has the plural meaning but D when it has the associative meaning. We assume
that a prenominal numeral quantifier must be an NP adjunct, which is semanticallya function that takes an NP of the semantic type <e, t> and returns an NP of thesame type. This prevents a prenominal numeral classifier from modifying a DP
headed by the associative -tati, which is semantically an entity rather than a399
predicate. Assuming this is a cross-linguistic restriction, the structure in (4) isuniversally impossible. We also assume that the associative meaning isuniversally incompatible with Num, which preempts the associative -tati being
mapped onto Num rather than D. Given this UG knowledge, the constraint would
emerge automatically once learners acquire (i) the plural and associativeinterpretations of -tati, and (ii) Japanese NC constructions. These properties
should in principle be acquirable based on positive evidence alone. Thus, the L2
POS problem is solved for English-speaking learners.
Nevertheless, there are at least two remaining questions. First, why was there
no difference between the Korean and English groups? Given the relatively
advanced proficiency of the L2 groups, the English group may already haveacquired the pre-requisite properties. In that case, the predicted L1-Koreanadvantage was no longer visible. Second, why were the L2 learners much lesssensitive to the semantic constraint than the native controls? We speculate that, in
this particular experiment, the complexity of judging inter-sentential acceptability
may have played a role. Our experiment required participants to pay close
attention to the discourse for judging the acceptability of -tati. This taskcomplexity could have meant that L2 participants were less confident about
selecting the lowest points on the rating scale, even though they nonethelessselected ratings that differentiated between the two conditions.
7. Conclusion
L2 acquisition of the constraint on the associative -tati seems possible
whether learners have a corresponding property in the L1 or not. We propose thatsuccessful acquisition by L1-English learners despite the absence of direct
evidence for the constraint is possible through UG-knowledge, namely
prohibition of DP adjunction to prenominal numeral quantifiers. This supports theview that syntax-semantics computation is guided by UG in L2 acquisition, in thesame way as in L1.
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Proceedings of the 46th annual
Boston University Conferenceon Language Development
edited by Ying Gongand Felix Kpogo
Cascadilla Press

Somerville, MA

2022

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