Gradients in Korean case ellipsis: An experimental investigation

Lee, Han-Jung

doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2010.07.002

Cited by 35 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…In contrast, when the sentence contained a case-ellipsed or zero-marked object, the stimuli with a selecting focus object were rated highest, and the stimuli with a replacing focus object were rated lowest. This result corroborates the findings of Lee (2011), who found that the pattern of object case ellipsis cannot be accounted for in terms of the dichotomous distinction between contrastive vs. non-contrastive focus but is sensitive to subtypes of focus.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 91%

“…In the replacing focus condition, the second speaker presumes that the addressee (the first speaker) possesses some incorrect piece of information X, which is to be replaced by some correct piece of information Y. Unlike in Lee (2011), the contrastiveness of replacing focus NPs was further manipulated by means of context sentences so that both the referent of the replacing focus NP and the excluded alternative(s) are explicitly given in the context, and the replacing focus NP is chosen from a clearly delimited contrast set. In the selecting focus condition, the speaker presumes that the addressee believes that either X or Y is correct but does not know which.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Explaining variation in Korean case ellipsis: Economy versus iconicity

Lee

2010

J East Asian Linguist

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The naturalness with which case ellipsis occurs in certain environments in Korean has been attributed to the information status and markedness of arguments. In recent accounts of case ellipsis in colloquial Korean proposed by Lee (Lang Res 42:323-355, 2006a; J Pragmat 39:1465 J Pragmat 39: -1481 J Pragmat 39: , 2007 and Kim (PhD dissertation, 2008), the effects of these factors on case ellipsis have been subsumed under iconicity of complexity. In this paper we argue that iconicity plays no role in stating and explaining patterns of variation in case ellipsis and propose an alternative usage-based explanation in terms of economy. This proposal subsumes and clarifies previous findings about the influence of the factors of contrastiveness, animacy, and definiteness and connects these findings to asymmetries in frequency and predictability. In addition, the economy account leads to a number of other predictions that the iconicity account does not make, including differences in the direction of the effects of contrastiveness and animacy/definiteness and differences between subject and object marking. Using evidence from two rating experiments, this paper also demonstrates that preference for case ellipsis on three subtypes of focused objects (selecting, replacing, and informational focus) increases relative to the degree of predictability whereas average ratings between sentences with these subtypes of focus subjects do not show a statistically significant difference. This finding is not consistent with the prediction of the iconicity-of-the-complexity principle and cannot be accounted for in terms of the dichotomous distinction between contrastive vs. non-contrastive focus. This paper is the first demonstration that the gradient pattern of case ellipsis shown by subtypes of focus can be explained in terms of asymmetries in frequency and predictability, i.e., the economy principle, and suggests that it may be possible to explain the effects of information Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 structural factors and animacy/definiteness on the ellipsis of case markers for both focused and non-focus arguments entirely through the economy principle.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining variation in Korean case ellipsis: Economy versus iconicity

Lee

2010

J East Asian Linguist

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“…Alternative semantics (Rooth, 1992) defines focus as follows: "Focus indicates the presence of alternatives that are relevant for the interpretation of linguistic expression (Féry & Krifka, 2008, p. 4 ( , 2011) reported that case markers in Korean are rarely dropped when the argument they mark is contrastively focused. For example, Lee (2011) found that native Korean adults gave low acceptability ratings to sentences in which the object is contrastively focused and case-elided. This has also been proposed for Japanese.…”

Section: Grammar and Processing: Casementioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the parser does not extract the accusative information when -ul/-lul occurs with non-arguments because it is merely a use of case morphology to deliver the topical property of a non-argument, as Sim (2005) points out. 9 In addition, discourse properties (e.g., contrastive focus) are relevant to case morphology, as discussed by Lee (2007Lee ( , 2011. In producing case markers, the producer must choose correct case markers for syntax-morphology mapping, out of tens of postpositional particles (e.g., -to 'also', -man 'only').…”

Section: Grammar and Processing: Casementioning

confidence: 99%

“…This task made use of the fact that case markers in Korean cannot be dropped when the argument they mark is contrastively focused; replacing focus on a definite and animate referent is the strongest in terms of the contrastive strength (Lee, 2007(Lee, , 2011 For the subject-marker condition in the case-marker-elicitation task, I showed participants a picture depicting an event between 2 animate characters, then presented an incorrect description of the subject NP. For example, when the picture depicted Cookie Monster pushing Elmo, I incorrectly described the scene by saying (in Korean) "Big Bird is pushing Elmo," using a different character name for the subject.…”

Section: Case-marker Elicitation Production Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Unveiling linguistic competence by facilitating performance

Kim

2015

Language Acquisition

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This dissertation looks at the question of whether the source of language learners' poor performance is a deficit in knowledge or a performance problem. Two constructions are examined, both being cases in which learners have been reported to show deficits in linguistic competence: (1) Korean OSV (e.g., Elmo-lul Big Bird-ka anayo. 'Elmo, Big Bird is hugging.'), where knowledge of both scrambling and case markers is necessary for target performance; (2) the English tough construction (English TC; e.g., The doll i is easy to see e i ), where knowledge of tough movement is necessary for target performance (i.e., the object interpretation only). If poor performance (operationalized as chance performance or below) is due to a failure to apply knowledge rather than the absence of knowledge, good performance (i.e., significantly-above-chance performance) should emerge with the effective manipulation of non-grammatical factors to facilitate learners' application of knowledge. I experimentally tested this hypothesis in two studies, employing both (a) sentence-internal manipulations and (b) sentence-external manipulations. The Korean OSV study collected data from Korean Heritage children (KHC) (n = 31) as well as two groups of native Korean-speaking children, a younger group (n = 21) and an older group (n = 23). The English TC study collected data from native Korean-speaking adult L2ers of English (n = 49) and native Korean-speaking child L2ers of English (n = 30), along with adult native speaker controls (n = 10). Study 1:Knowledge of scrambling and case in Korean was assessed, first, via picture-selection comprehension tasks that (a) manipulated the prosodic salience of case markers and (b) manipulated context to make the direct object a natural scrambled topic, and, second, via a production task eliciting case markers. The results suggested three possible sources of poor performance. Many participants showed good performance only in the manipulation conditions (vs. the baseline condition), suggesting that their poor performance in the baseline condition could be due to a performance problem (e.g., perception failure or a heavy processing load). Some participants showed absence or errors of case in the production task, which suggests that their poor performance could come from a deficit in knowledge of case or from a mapping problem between a Case feature and case morphology. Comparisons between the Korean and the English TVJT results revealed a strong subject-interpretation bias in both languages for lower proficiency adult and child L2ers but only in Korean for higher proficiency adult L2ers, which suggests that L2ers do transfer their L1 subject interpretation but can subsequently unlearn it--despite an (ostensible) absence of negative evidence. However, (most of) the high proficiency adult L2ers still showed (below) chance performance in the error-inducing conditions, which suggests that non-grammatical factors can conceal knowledge of the English TC that some of them actually have.The two studies show that p...

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Case Particle Ellipsis

Lee¹

2015

The Handbook of Korean Linguistics

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Gradients in Korean case ellipsis: An experimental investigation

Cited by 35 publications

References 42 publications

Explaining variation in Korean case ellipsis: Economy versus iconicity

Explaining variation in Korean case ellipsis: Economy versus iconicity

Unveiling linguistic competence by facilitating performance

Case Particle Ellipsis

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