What Second Language Learners’ Errors Reveal About Fossilization

This study was conducted to see if patterns in fossilization could be identified in the language use of second language learners over a period of twenty-two months of in-country experience. Specifically, the study examined longitudinally the language development of English speaking learners of Japanese as a second language (JSL) to see if, during a period of approximately two years, they begin to stabilize in their development of specific grammatical features of Japanese. The JSL learners continued to improve in global proficiency throughout the two years of residency in Japan, although they seemed to stabilize in the area of particles and honorifics in Japanese. Errors in nominalization, adjectives, and verbs continued to decrease while errors in the lexicon and connecters increased. From the beginning, JSL learners had few problems with word order.

Thesis Author: Irie, Nobuaki

Year Completed: 1992

Thesis Chair: C. Ray Graham