• Language and Information
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.39-56
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• 2009

This paper investigates ordering alternation phenomena in Korean using the dative construction data from Sejong Corpus of Modern Korean (Kim, 2000). The paper first shows that syntactic weight and information structure are distinct and independent factors that influence word order in Korean. Moreover, it reveals that heaviness and givenness compete each other and exert diverging effects on word order, which contrasts the converging effects of these factors shown in word orders of right-branching languages like English. The typological variation of syntactic weight effect poses interesting theoretical and empirical questions, which are discussed in relation to processing efficiency in ordering.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.89-97
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• 2015

The aim of this study is to investigate the prosodic aspects of structural ambiguous sentences in Korean produced by Japanese Korean learners and the influence of their first language prosody. Previous studies reported that structural ambiguous sentences in Korean are different especially in prosodic phrasing. So we examined whether Japanese Korean leaners can also distinguish, in production, between two types of structural ambiguous sentences on the basis of prosodic features. For this purpose 4 Korean native speakers and 8 Japanese Korean learners participated in the production test. Analysis materials are 6 sentences where a relative clause modify either NP1 or NP1+NP2. The results show that Korean native speakers produced ambiguous sentences by different prosodic structure depending on their semantic and syntactic structure (left branching or right branching sentence). Japanese speakers also show distinct prosodic structure for two types of ambiguous sentences in most cases, but they have more errors in producing left branching sentences than right branching sentences. In addition to that, interference of Japanese pitch accent in the production of Korean ambiguous sentences was observed.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.19
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• pp.359-388
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• 2010

This study is aimed to investigate the aspect of using relative clauses in Korean. The data used for this study were extracted from the Korean text books for the foreign students and from the Chinese students' Korean compositions. They are the learners of Korean language at the early intermediated stage. As the result of analyzing them, the followings were found I)the majority of relative clauses in Korean consists of left-branching sentences. ii)The number of the subject relative clauses was higher than object ones in both of them. Especially in the aspect of using relative clauses, subject ones were used even more frequently than objective ones. This result is corresponded to the previous thesis, "the subject relative clauses was acquired earlier than object ones". iii)The relative clauses that those with a head noun function as subject in the main sentence showed in higher proportion in comparison of those as object. That is, this study showed that subjects were used more frequently than objects in the relative clauses used in their compositions. Finally, this study analyzed the errors of adnominal ending usage occurring in their compositions. More errors occurred when adjective form ended with '-hada' are changed into adnominal ending one.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.145-164
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• 1989

The present paper studies the development of null anaphor,with special attention to whether Korean children's use of null anaphora exhibits the type of directionality preforence predicted by Lust & Mangione(1983)and Lust(1986).If these researchers are correct,anaphora in Korean children's language should be constrained backward since Korean is a left-branching language.That is,it is predicted that Korean chidren would perfer backward anaphora to the forward pattern.For the purpose of this study, ninety-six children were individually tested in an elicited imitation task, twenty-four children from four age groups(4:1-9:7).Three types of constructions,sentences involving a redundant NP,forward patterns of ananphora,and backsward patterns of anaphora were devised.It was discovered that like English speaking children, Korean children prefer forward patterns of anaphora to backward structures.It was thus speculated that the forward preference may well be indedpendent of grammatical factors,reflecting instead processing considerations which favour mention of the referent befor the use of anaphoric elements.