This study investigated the processing of English articles by second language (L2) speakers whose first language (L1) is Korean. Previous studies in L2 English article use had some issues unresolved such as using offline tasks, conflating definiteness with real-world knowledge, and operationalizing definiteness and relevant constructs in ways that participants can be primed or get metalinguistic cues. To revisit such issues, the construct ‘definiteness’ was operationalized as unique identifiability, a self-paced reading task was used to collect data, and regression models were employed to analyse logarithm residuals of raw reading time data, which can detect subtle differences that are otherwise buried. The results show that L1 speakers show sensitivity to the use of definite and indefinite articles in response to given contexts and that both advanced and intermediate L2 speakers first resort to their non-target-like Interlanguage grammar, but the advanced group later revises their initial interpretation and eventually shows the effect of target grammar. The L2 behavior is discussed in terms of its theoretical implications.
Ahn, Hyunah. (2017). The Prosodic Resolution of Syntactic/Semantic Ambiguity: An Exemplar-based Account. Language Research, 53.3, 501-524.This study tests the hypothesis that the ambiguity of a null argument construction in Korean like Lwummeituka mwusewun ka poayo (The roommate must be scared/scary) can be prosodically resolved. The null argument construction is tested with two-place psychological predicates such as mwusewun (scared/scary) and kwichanun (bothered/bothersome). A naturalness rating experiment shows the following: (1) when the NP Lwummeituka is the experiencer of the psychological predicate scare and the sentence means 'The roommate must be scared,' both an Accentual Phrase (AP) boundary and an Intonational Phrase (IP) boundary are equally accepted between the NP and the VP; (2) when the NP is the stimulus (The roommate must be scary), only an AP boundary is perceived natural. Reaction time and comprehension question accuracy data further display the role played by prosody in ambiguity resolution. The results are discussed within the exemplar framework.
This paper investigates if boundary tones have either a gradient or a categorical indication of structural phrasing. The role of prosody in syntactic disambiguation has been well documented and a recent study showed Korean speakers use the presence and absence of boundary tones to disambiguate a null-argument sentence borne out of double nominative construction in Korean (Ahn, 2011). Two experiments show that boundary tones play an important role both in comprehension and in production in spoken Korean. In Experiment 1, speakers read a paragraph including contexts and the critical sentence given in a latin-square design. The critical sentences in this production experiment include both null-argument and non-null-argument sentences to see if the use of boundary tones is for addressees or for the speaker himself. In Experiment 2, participants judge the naturalness of null-argument sentences given in contexts and answer comprehension questions probing if they got the correct reading of the two ambiguous interpretations. The results show a clear interaction effect of prosody and structure on the accuracy to the comprehension questions. A gradient-categorical dichotomy of prosody in sentence processing will be discussed and suggestions for a further study will be made to investigate the relationship of boundary tones and comprehension.
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