Na-adjective “Kirei” causes many confusions between Japanese Learners (JLs). It is because the Na-adjective “Kirei” has the letter “i” at the end of the word. The following deals with this issue by estimating the damage on JLs’ utterances that contain adjectives. The Conclusion is that the damage on I-adjectives is more serious such that the Japanese teachers have to make efforts to correct the JLs’ errors.
1. Error Types
Two types of error E1 and E2 are described below. Considering the numbers of the words that are affected by each error type, it can be concluded that E2 causes more serious damage.
E1: Errors on Na-adjective “Kirei”
Some of JLs think that “Kirei” is an I-adjective. Such JLs conjugate “Kirei” as if it is an I-adjective. This type of damage is expected to happen only on conjugation of “Kirei”. It is not clear if the same errors occur or not on similar Na-adjectives “Kirai” and “Yukai” that end the word with the letter “i”.
E2: Errors on the entire word group of I-adjectives
Some of JLs think that I-adjectives conjugate identically to “Kirei” which is actually a Na-adjective. This type of damage is expected to happen on all I-adjectives that JLs know.
2. Occurrence of Errors
The author conducted quizzes to measure the occurrence of errors on I- and Na- adjectives. The result indicates that the error type E2 occurs slightly more than the of error type E1.
(1) Quizzes
The Quiz was conducted in the fourth week of the second semester for the first-year students. 55 students answered. The quiz asked the proper ending of two sentences as below;
Q1: A sentence of predicative Na-adjective “Kirei”; past-negative
Q2: A sentence of predicative I-adjective “Omoshiroi”; past-negative
(2) Q1
There are two selections in Q1; I-adjective ending and Na-adjective ending. Choosing I-adjective ending is wrong. Choosing Na-adjective ending is right because “Kirei” is a Na-adjective. The error indicated that the student thinks “Kirei” is an I-adjective.
(3) Q2
There are two selections in Q2; I-adjective ending and Na-adjective ending. Choosing I-adjective ending is right because “Omoshiroi” is an I-adjective. Choosing Na-adjective ending is wrong. The error indicated that the student thinks I-adjectives conjugate as “Kirei” does.
(4) Quiz Results
Students’ answers are classified into four patterns as shown below. Numbers of students who answered for each pattern are also shown. 29 students answered correctly for both questions Q1 and Q2. On the other, 26 students answered one or two wrong answer(s).
A1: Two right answers for both Q1 and Q2; 29 students
A2: Wrong answer for Q1 and right answer for Q2; 10 students
A3: Right answer for Q1 and wrong answer for Q2; 13 students
A4: Two wrong answers for both Q1 and Q2; 3 students
3. Consideration of Quiz Results
(1) Error types and answer patterns
29 students of answer pattern A1 are expected to have a knowledge about proper endings for both I-adjectives and Na-adjectives. 3 students of answer pattern A4 are likely that they have neither recognize differences between two adjectives nor correct forms for each yet.
Answer pattern A2 corresponds to Error type E1. 10 students applied I-adjective ending to Na-adjective “Kirei”, while answered correctly to the I-adjective sentence of past -negative. Although these 10 students answered wrongly to Na-adjective, however, they know a conjugation pattern of I-adjective which “i” turns to be “ku”. It shows a progress on students’ so-called “interlanguage” to some extent.
Answer pattern A3 corresponds to Error type E2. 13 students wrongly applied Na-adjective ending to I-adjective “Omoshiroi”, while answered correctly to the Na-adjective sentence of past -negative. The letter “i” of “Kirei” does not change by conjugation. These 13 students answered wrongly to I-adjective without changing the letter “i”. Therefore, they do not know a conjugation pattern of I-adjective which “i” turns to be “ku”. It seems that these students’ so-called “interlanguage” is still in the early stage.
4. Conclusion
The Conclusion is that the damage by not knowing conjugation of I-adjectives is more serious than the damage on “Kirei” by applying I-adjectives’ conjugation.
In order to estimate the magnitude of damage, severity and occurrence of errors must be considered.
(1) Severity by error types
The followings conclude that E2 is more serious in quality and quantity.
E1: Errors on Na-adjective “Kirei”
Damage only happens on the word “Kirei”. And JLs making this error knows I-adjectives’ conjugation. Probably they can conjugate I-adjectives correctly. The numbers of words affected by this error are limited to one or very few. I-adjectives are not affected.
E2: Errors on the entire word group of I-adjectives
Damage happens on all I-adjectives that JLs know, because JLs making this error do not know I-adjectives’ conjugation such as “i” turning to be “ku”. The large numbers of I-adjectives are affected by this error, while Na-adjectives are produced correctly.
(2) Occurrence of errors
Students’ answer patterns indicated that the numbers of E2 are slightly more than that of E1. Answer pattern A2 corresponding E1 is observed in 10 students. Answer pattern A3 corresponding E2 is observed in 13 students. Since sample number is small, the author does not prove that there is a significant difference between A2 and A3 in numbers. However, it seems to be safe to say that E2 happens with the same occurrence or slightly more than E1.
(3) Magnitude of Damage
E2 is more serious than E1, and E2’s occurrence is the same or more than E1. Therefore, E2 has the bigger magnitude of damage from both perspectives of severity and occurrence. Japanese teachers must pay more attention to how a student conjugate I-adjectives. If a student thinks I-adjectives’ conjugation is the same as “Kirei” that is a Na-adjective, the teacher needs to make effort to correct wrong conjugation of I-adjectives that the student makes.
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クイズに用いた2問は以下のような２択問題です。
Q1: きのうの旅館は きれ｛くなかったです or いでは ありませんでした ｝。
Q2: きのうのテレビは おもしろ｛くなかったです or いでは ありませんでした ｝。
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