@article{ART003382455},
author={HWANG, YOUNG HEE},
title={Changes in Learner Modality across the Acquisition and Attrition Stages of the L2 Life Cycle: A Comparative Study of Colonial Japanese and Returnee Japanese},
journal={The Japanese Language Association of Korea},
issn={1229-7275},
year={2026},
number={89},
pages={45-66}
TY - JOUR
AU - HWANG, YOUNG HEE
TI - Changes in Learner Modality across the Acquisition and Attrition Stages of the L2 Life Cycle: A Comparative Study of Colonial Japanese and Returnee Japanese
JO - The Japanese Language Association of Korea
PY - 2026
VL - null
IS - 89
PB - The Japanese Language Association Of Korea
SP - 45
EP - 66
SN - 1229-7275
AB - This paper presents a longitudinal comparison of modality use by Korean learners of Japanese across two phases of the L2 life cycle—acquisition and attrition—drawing on two sociolinguistically distinct populations. The first group consists of members of the colonial generation who acquired Japanese under colonial rule before 1945 and subsequently lost regular contact with the language. The second group comprises Korean returnee children who naturally acquired Japanese while living in Japan and underwent attrition after repatriation. Diary-based written data from the colonial period and conversational corpora from the returnee group are examined within a unified analytical framework consisting of four modality categories: negation, conditionals, sentence-final forms, and sentence-final particles.
The analysis identifies four convergent tendencies in the attrition stage across both groups: (i) regression of the dialectal negative N; (ii) convergence on TARA among conditional forms, as it is the form least constrained by sentence-final modality, along with avoidance of TO, BA, and NARA; (iii) destabilization of the NDA, NDESU explanatory system and a shift toward analytic restructuring; and (iv) erosion of interpersonal modality expressed through sentence-final particles, with the politeness-oriented function of YO being lost earlier than its information-marking function. At the same time, marked differences also emerge between the two groups: colonial Japanese retains the strong-negation function of dialectal N and exhibits interlanguage pragmatic transfer, whereby Korean honorific norms lead to overextension of the addressee-oriented use of YO, whereas returnee Japanese shows more rapid regression of dialectal and interpersonal forms without comparable L1 pragmatic transfer.
These findings demonstrate that L2 attrition does not proceed as uniform loss but rather as functionally selective restructuring shaped by age of acquisition, contact conditions, and sociolinguistic environment. The study thus carries clear implications for the explicit teaching of modality in Japanese-language pedagogy and for L2 relearning.
KW - Japanese modality;acquisition;attrition;colonial Japanese;returnee Japanese
DO -
UR -
ER -
HWANG, YOUNG HEE. (2026). Changes in Learner Modality across the Acquisition and Attrition Stages of the L2 Life Cycle: A Comparative Study of Colonial Japanese and Returnee Japanese. The Japanese Language Association of Korea, 89, 45-66.
HWANG, YOUNG HEE. 2026, "Changes in Learner Modality across the Acquisition and Attrition Stages of the L2 Life Cycle: A Comparative Study of Colonial Japanese and Returnee Japanese", The Japanese Language Association of Korea, no.89, pp.45-66.
HWANG, YOUNG HEE "Changes in Learner Modality across the Acquisition and Attrition Stages of the L2 Life Cycle: A Comparative Study of Colonial Japanese and Returnee Japanese" The Japanese Language Association of Korea 89 pp.45-66 (2026) : 45.
HWANG, YOUNG HEE. Changes in Learner Modality across the Acquisition and Attrition Stages of the L2 Life Cycle: A Comparative Study of Colonial Japanese and Returnee Japanese. 2026; 89 : 45-66.
HWANG, YOUNG HEE. "Changes in Learner Modality across the Acquisition and Attrition Stages of the L2 Life Cycle: A Comparative Study of Colonial Japanese and Returnee Japanese" The Japanese Language Association of Korea no.89(2026) : 45-66.
HWANG, YOUNG HEE. Changes in Learner Modality across the Acquisition and Attrition Stages of the L2 Life Cycle: A Comparative Study of Colonial Japanese and Returnee Japanese. The Japanese Language Association of Korea, 89, 45-66.
HWANG, YOUNG HEE. Changes in Learner Modality across the Acquisition and Attrition Stages of the L2 Life Cycle: A Comparative Study of Colonial Japanese and Returnee Japanese. The Japanese Language Association of Korea. 2026; 89 45-66.
HWANG, YOUNG HEE. Changes in Learner Modality across the Acquisition and Attrition Stages of the L2 Life Cycle: A Comparative Study of Colonial Japanese and Returnee Japanese. 2026; 89 : 45-66.
HWANG, YOUNG HEE. "Changes in Learner Modality across the Acquisition and Attrition Stages of the L2 Life Cycle: A Comparative Study of Colonial Japanese and Returnee Japanese" The Japanese Language Association of Korea no.89(2026) : 45-66.
