Acquisition of Existence and Possession Structures in Japanese-Chinese Cross-Referentiality of Two-Way Learner Corpora: Beginner and Advanced Level-Wise Production Trends and Analysis

This study elucidates the dynamics of the acquisition of existential and possessive sentences in Japanese and Chinese among learners of differing proficiencies. It reveals advanced Japanese CFL learners’ significant progress in employing the Chinese existential “yǒu Y” construction, contrasting with beginners’ reliance on the elementary “X yǒu Y” construct. Furthermore, it identifies a prevalent error among Chinese JFL learners: the omission of the particle ni, attributing this to the syntactic influence of their L1. This investigation highlights the pivotal role of first language structures in second language acquisition, particularly the existential and possessive structures.