영어 모국어 화자와 중국어 모국어 화자의 한국어 이야기 주제어 학습: 언어 유형별 생략 현상 대조와 응집성

Abstract

This study investigates how Chinese- and English-speaking learners of Korean as a foreign language ellipt a topic and maintain cohesion of a narrative text accordingly. It is known to have characteristics that Chinese and English are typologically different in terms of prominence of a topic vs. a subject (Li & Thompson, 1976). It has been reported that a topic is ellipted in a topic-prominent language in referring to old information, unlike in subject-oriented languages which typically disallow a null component in a sentence. The present study tests whether it is a typological difference or a topic-comment universality that is related to foreign language acquisition. A total of 36 subjects in their twenties in Seoul, Korea, including the two experimental groups and Korean native speakers as a control group, participated in this study. Spoken narratives were collected in a task of describing The Pear Story (Chafe, 1976). The results showed that Chinese and Korean native speakers used ellipsis more frequently than English native speakers. It is concluded that typology-specific first language properties play a role in foreign language learning.