This study examines the acquisition of the semantics of Japanese giving and receiving verbs in a Japanese-English bilingual child. This study is based on 2-year longitudinal observation of a child using audio-taped conversation. The childŐs first language is English and he started acquiring Japanese when he was between 2 and 3 years old. Conversations were audio-taped, and partially transcribed. Although it is generally assumed that cognitive and morphological processes of language acquisition among L2 learners progress from less complex to more complex, we argue that this may not be true for a bilingual child. Current study reveals that L2 learners may learn more complex semantic concepts before acquiring less complex semantic concepts.
Japanese has three different verbs for giving and receiving. Those are "ageru", "kureru" and "morau". "Ageru" and "morau" have similar semantic property with English verbs "to give" and "to receive" respectively. In addition, L2 learners must also learn the semantics of "kureru", whose meaning is "SBJ gives OBJ to me". These Japanese giving and receiving verbs have two functions: as main verbs and as auxiliary verbs (ex. shite-ageru). The latter forms are more complex and more difficult to produce than the former verbs in terms of syntax and semantic concepts. We found, however, the child learned the auxiliary forms of the giving and receiving verbs earlier than that of main verbs. More particularly, the child uses auxiliary giving and receiving verbs without any difficulties while he still displays some difficulties using them as main verbs. One interpretation of this is that input frequency. That is, more complex items are learned more readily than less complex ones if the input frequency is greater than that of less complex items.