The Development of Filler Use in Japanese Learners' Role-Plays

A Longitudinal Corpus-based Analysis of Request and Refusal Scenes with a Native-speaker Comparison

Abstract

   This study investigates the developmental trajectory of filler use by Chinese learners of Japa-nese. Drawing on a longitudinal learner corpus (B-JAS), it quantitatively examines how their use of fillers evolves over four years in pragmatically and cognitively demanding role-play tasks (requests and refusals), and compares their performance with that of native Japanese speakers using I-JAS data.
   The analysis yielded two key findings. First, while the frequency of filler use decreased across academic years in both task types, the rate of decline varied: a steeper reduction was observed in the more cognitively demanding refusal scenes. By the fourth year, learners’ filler frequency in request scenes approached native-speaker levels, whereas a significant disparity remained in re-fusal scenes. Second, the forms of fillers shifted over time from simple vowel-type fillers preva-lent in early stages to more lexicalized forms such as ano and etto, indicating a partial conver-gence toward native-speaker usage.
    These findings suggest that the development of filler use among L2 learners is not a linear process of approximating native speaker norms, but rather a dynamic, learner-driven process in which strategies are adapted in response to the specific cognitive and pragmatic demands of each communicative task.