Learning Japanese as a Second Language: A Processability Perspect ...

the three ‘speech-processing strategies’: canonical order strategy (COS), where the learner uses strictly canonical order; initialisation-finalisation strategy (IFS), where the learner places additional elements at the sentential initial or final position; and subordinate clause strategy (SCS), where subordinate clauses are avoided (Clahsen, 1987). COS is based on Bever’s (1970) experiments on speech comprehension. IFS is based on the findings from memory research, and SCS is based on the finding that the subordinate clause is processed differently from the main clause. The developmental sequences for GSL word order rules and the strategies are as follows (Pienemann, 1988a):

The structure of the sentence becomes psychologically more complex with its progression through each stage. As Pienemann (1998b), summarising Clahsen (1984) said, ‘[t]he psychological complexity of a structure is dependent on the degree of reordering and rearrangement of linguistic material involved in the process of mapping underlying semantics onto surface forms’ (p. 46). The learner has to remove the constraints in order to be able to process structures that are psychologically more complicated. As can be seen in table 2.1, learners use a combination of strategies. Strategies become available in stepwise accumulation, according to the progression of stages and, in turn, create a processing constraint that blocks development. When a constraint is removed, the learner can move to the next stage.

Clahsen’s explanations of each stage of development and the processing strategies used by the learner provide a better understanding of SLA. In Stage X (+ COS, + SCS), learners do not require any grammatical knowledge of the target language: The focus is on meaning, and sentences are processed in canonical order where the semantics of the information can be directly mapped onto surface grammatical structures (Clahsen, 1984). This is similar to the idea suggested by Foder and Bever (1965), in which the unit of speech perception corresponds to the constituent of the sentence.

In Stage X+1 (+COS, +IFS, +SCS), the strategy IFS is added, while the previous strategies, COS and SCS, are preserved. Preposition of an adverb, which does not disturb the canonical order, but which involves