A Study Of The Japanese L1 Speakers' Acquision Of Chinese Prepositions Of Direction “Xiang/caho/wang”

The Japanese language makes use of many Chinese characters. Therefore, When a Japanese L1 speaker studies the Chinese language, he/she may mistakenly believe it is easy to understand and grasp Chinese. Indeed, the Chinese characters used in Chinese and Japanese are similar, but the grammar of the two languages differ in many ways. This is because the usage of Chinese characters in the Japanese and Chinese languages differs greatly. However for this very reason, Japanese L1 speakers encounter various obstacles when studying Chinese.For example when the three Chinese prepositions of direction “xiang/chao/wang” are translated from Chinese into Japanese, the differences between the three are lost. The Japanese translation of all three prepositions of direction “xiang/chao/wang” are “ni”. This Japanese “ni” has three functions: case particle, parallel particle, and sentence-final particle. Among those, as a case particle it has fourteen types of usage. If its usage as a case particle is added to its usage as a parallel marker and sentence-final particle, there are eighteen types of usage in total. The usage of the Japanese case particle “ni” includes “time, place, position, target, direction, destination, purpose, result, reason, condition, standard, proportion,” etc. Thus, the usage of Japanese particle “ni” is highly varied, furthermore the three Chinese prepositions of direction “xiang/chao/cwang” all translate from Chinese to Japanese as “ni”. That is why Japanese students don't understand accurately the difference between the Chinese prepositions of direction “xiang/chao/wang” and easily make different errors in usage between them.Taking this into consideration, in this thesis I research the acquisition of the Chinese prepositions of direction by elementary, intermediate and advanced class Japanese students of Chinese, as well as summing up their types of errors and distinguishing features, and analyzing the reasons for the errors.Using the result of questionnaires and statistics analysis, I analyze the problems Japanese L1 speakers face learning the prepositions of direction “xiang/chao/wang” in this thesis. According to my analysis, I identified and categorized four kinds of errors: substitution errors, sequential errors, omission errors, and lastly miscellaneous errors. Following on from this error analysis, I induce four main reasons for these errors. The main error reasons are as follows: L1 transfer, avoidance strategy, over-generalization, and induced errors.