Development and design of a compound verb AR learning system employing image schemas

Recently, the number of learners of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) has been increasing. In Japanese language acquisition, compound verbs (verbs that are composed of two verbs, e.g., tobikomu ‘jump into’) are frequently used in daily life; these present difficulties, including unclarity of combination and opacity of meaning. Matsuda (2001) proposed an image schema that applies core theory to Japanese compound verbs and the application of image schemas to Japanese language education. However, since image schemas are composed of simple diagrams and arrows and are highly sophisticated due to being intended for linguists, it has been suggested that they are not easy for JFL learners to understand (Tagawa and Yuizono, 2016). In this paper, we designed and developed a compound verb AR learning system with core theory and image schemas. Moreover, we discussed Japanese compound verbs acquisition, the image schema of compound verbs as well as the application of AR in learning, and also explained the design and development of the system based on problems in compound verb acquisition.