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Paper short abstract:

In this study, we suggest that the use of time order expressions is one of the problems of linguistic performance in Japanese. This study aims to clarify the correlation between the choice of time order expressions and communicative intention in Japanese Language of Uzbek native speakers.

Paper long abstract:

In this study, we suggest that the use of time order expressions is one of the problems of linguistic performance in Japanese. We define time order expressions as expressions of the temporal correlation between two situations. Though there are plenty of types of time order expressions, we argue that the question of why a particular expression was used and what was intended to be conveyed by using that expression is relevant to the issue of proficiency in Japanese. Therefore, this study aims to clarify the correlation between the choice of expressions and communicative intention by learners of Japanese.

This study examines the word order of sentences containing time order expressions in the utterances of native Uzbek learners of Japanese. To achieve this objective, the following survey was conducted. The subjects of this study were 10 native Uzbek speakers majoring in Japanese at the Tashkent State University of Oriental Studies in Uzbekistan. The learners had N2 and N3 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). The object of analysis in this study is the speech data of Japanese learners. To analyze the data, we first used the I-JAS corpus (International corpus of Japanese as a second language) illustration (Sakoda et al., 2020), asked the learners to complete a storytelling task, and recorded a total of 40 data samples. Next, we transcribed the speech data and compared the prominences (emphasized words) of the learners' native language expressions with the corresponding Japanese time order expressions to examine how the time order expressions were interpreted.

The results of this analysis revealed a correlation between prominence in learners' native language and time-ordered expressions in Japanese. Specifically, it was found that prominences in Uzbek speech containing time order expressions tended to be placed in predicates. Also, based on the data of Japanese language learners of the N2 and N3 levels of the JLPT who speak in simple sentences, we conclude that linguistic performance problems remain even at the upper-intermediate level.