Constructions In Korean Research Articles

Modelling child comprehension: A case of suffixal passive construction in Korean

The present study investigates a computational model's ability to capture monolingual children's language behaviour during comprehension in Korean, an understudied language in the field. Specifically, we test whether and how two neural network architectures (LSTM, GPT-2) cope with a suffixal passive construction involving verbal morphology and required interpretive procedures (i.e., revising the mapping between thematic roles and case markers) driven by that morphology. To this end, we fine-tune our models via patching (i.e., pre-trained model + caregiver input) and hyperparameter adjustments, and measure their binary classification performance on the test sentences used in a behavioural study manifesting scrambling and omission of sentential components to varying degrees. We find that, while these models’ performance converges with the children's response patterns found in the behavioural study to some extent, the models do not faithfully simulate the children's comprehension behaviour pertaining to the suffixal passive, yielding by-model, by-condition, and by-hyperparameter asymmetries. This points to the limits of the neural networks’ capacity to address child language features. The implications of this study invite subsequent inquiries on the extent to which computational models reveal developmental trajectories of children's linguistic knowledge that have been unveiled through corpus-based or experimental research.

The syntax of Korean reduced conditionals

Abstract The goal of this paper is to provide an analysis of two important aspects of conditional clauses in Korean. The first goal is to reveal the structure of the conditional clause. In investigating reduced conditionals and regular copula clausal conditionals, we suggest the right-periphery of conditional clauses based on the Split CP hypothesis (Rizzi 1997; Saito 2010). The second goal is to examine the distribution of the clausal pronoun kukes in reduced conditionals, which, we argue, is the result of FinP ellipsis, building on the ellipsis theory of pronominalization (Baltin & Craenenbroeck 2008). In doing so, we make two empirical points: (i) the parallelism regarding argument/adjunct asymmetry indicates that reduced conditionals are derived from clausal conditionals; and (ii) various connectivity effects reveal hidden clausal structure behind the pronominal element kukes, which means that there is a tight connection between focus constructions and conditional constructions in Korean. The implication of the present study is that we can argue against a simple-minded dichotomy of anaphora that says there are two types of anaphora, Deep and Surface, and Deep anaphora does not have syntactic structure.

Verb Copying Constructions in Korean

Verb Copying Constructions in Korean

Setting subject and the inferential cleft construction in Korean

Abstract This article aims to develop a cognitive-functional analysis of the Korean inferential cleft construction (ICC) by identifying two motivations. It is demonstrated that the ICC must be understood as a mechanism to improve coherence and relevance in the text; it is first and foremost motivated to establish relationships between the preceding context and the event denoted by the subordinate clause headed by kes. By pointing out that attempts to ascertain concrete meanings of the ICC are bound to be futile, we argue that various meanings the ICC exhibits arise by mapping it onto the result phase of the epistemic cycle. The second motivation for the ICC is to put the proposition in the spotlight by indicating that the global circumstances, not the speaker, warrant judgment. Consequently, the speaker staves off the responsibility for her epistemic judgment.

How ‘good-enough’ is second language comprehension? Morphological causative and suffixal passive constructions in Korean

AbstractThe ‘good-enough’ processing account argues that, given the parallel activation of two parsing routes—algorithmic and heuristic parsing, the processor prefers heuristics over algorithms when unfolding incoming input. Literature on L2 ‘good-enough’ processing conjoins with this argument, also claiming that various factors may modulate how the L2 processor adjusts its way to heuristic or algorithmic parsing. The present study investigates how L2 learners with contrastive L1 backgrounds (Czech; English) achieve ‘good-enough’ comprehension in Korean, a popular L2 target but understudied for this topic. We focus on morphological causative and suffixal passive constructions, which differ in terms of the alignment between thematic roles and case-marking and the interpretive computation that verbal morphology invites. Participants joined acceptability judgement and self-paced reading tasks, with manipulation of word order (verb-final vs. verb-initial). Results from these tasks suggest two aspects of L2 comprehension. First, L1 and L2 comprehension do not qualitatively differ regarding ‘good-enough’ processing: the L2 processor utilises both parsing routes to reduce the burden of work at hand at the earliest opportunity. Second, the divergence of L1 and L2 processing behaviours during comprehension may originate from various factors surrounding L2 learners (e.g., L2 usage, L1–L2 interface, task types), anchoring the noisy representations of L2 knowledge.

Case Morphemes in Korean: Their Morphosyntactic Implications

I will show that nominal expressions with a structural case morpheme in Korean have syntactic and morphological properties distinct from those with a semantic case morpheme as adduced in constructions involving floated quantifier, case drop on the clefts, binding condition C and Weak crossover. I claim that structural case morphemes are affixes, whereas semantic case morphemes are clitics, namely, syntactically independent words that belong to the syntactic category of postposition. It follows that nominal expressions with a semantic case morpheme are PPs whereas those with a structural case morpheme are NPs. The present thesis crucially diverges from Cho and Sells (1995), according to which case morphemes are affixes in Korean across the board, there being no independently identifiable category of postposition. I will discuss potential argument against the present proposal involving so-called genitive case marking construction in Korean, which, however, turns out to support the present thesis.

중세국어 ‘다’류 동등비교구문의 정도성 표현 연구 － ‘이’형 구문과 ‘과’형 구문을 중심으로

중세국어 ‘다’류 동등비교구문의 정도성 표현 연구 － ‘이’형 구문과 ‘과’형 구문을 중심으로

The Generative Perspective on Korean Constructions

The Generative Perspective on Korean Constructions

Linguistic Theory of Construction Grammar and Study of Korean Constructions

Linguistic Theory of Construction Grammar and Study of Korean Constructions

Disguised Imperatives in Korean

This paper examines a group of constructions in Korean that have recently emerged in specific registers. These constructions are truly intriguing pragmatically and syntactically, though they have not, to-date, received sufficient attention, nor serious linguistic analysis. Comparing these emergent constructions (e.g., yangchi ha-si-keyss-upni-ta ‘Rinse your mouth’) with their imperative counterparts (e.g., yanchi ha-si-e-yo), we show: (i) that they are declarative sentence addressed to the hearer; (ii) that they utilize a strategy of indirectness for the purpose of politeness (seemingly overriding Gricean maxims); (iii) that they are increasingly expanding into a wide range of registers used in service sectors; and (iv) that this emerging construction is now fully grammaticalized and is viewed as a fixed politeness expression for these registers irreplaceable by other politeness expressions. What this analysis implies is that a general pragmatic principle that round-about indirect expressions are considered more polite than direct ones, in some social situations and that this general principle is explicitly encoded in a linguistically identifiable form in languages like Korean.

Sensitivity to syntactic dependency formation in child second language processing: a study of numeral quantifiers in Korean

AbstractThis study investigates whether child second language (L2) learners can use syntactic information during the processing of sentences involving unbounded dependencies and how their processing patterns compare to those of child monolinguals and adult L2 learners. Through a self-paced reading experiment involving the numeral quantifier (NQ) construction in Korean, we tested participants’ sensitivity to agreement violations between a noun phrase (NP) and an NQ in local and nonlocal conditions. The results showed that a subset of child L2 learners who demonstrated target-like knowledge of NP-NQ agreement in an offline task spent a longer processing time in the NP-NQ mismatch than in the NP-NQ match condition, in both local and nonlocal contexts. These child L2 learners’ processing patterns were comparable to those observed in child monolinguals and adult L2 learners. These findings suggest that child and adult L2 learners rely on the same system of syntactic representations and processing mechanisms that guide first language processing.

Explainability of neural networks for child language: Agent-First strategy in comprehension of Korean active transitive construction.

This study investigates how neural networks address the properties of children's linguistic knowledge, with a focus on the Agent-First strategy in comprehension of an active transitive construction in Korean. We develop various neural-network models and measure their classification performance on the test stimuli used in a behavioural experiment involving scrambling and omission of sentential components at varying degrees. Results show that, despite some compatibility of these models' performance with the children's response patterns, their performance does not fully approximate the children's utilisation of this strategy, demonstrating by-model and by-condition asymmetries. This study's findings suggest that neural networks can utilise information about formal co-occurrences to access the intended message to a certain degree, but the outcome of this process may be substantially different from how a child (as a developing processor) engages in comprehension. This implies some limits of neural networks on revealing the developmental trajectories of child language. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: This study investigates how neural networks address properties of child language. We focus on the Agent-First strategy in comprehension of Korean active transitive. Results show by-model/condition asymmetries against children's response patterns. This implies some limits of neural networks on revealing properties of child language.

Dependency formation interacts with case: Evidence from Korean double nominative constructions

The subject-object asymmetry in relative clauses, where structures containing subject dependencies are typically easier to process than those with object dependencies, has been previously attributed to both grammatical function (subject > object) as well as morphological case (e.g., nom > acc). We investigate processing of Double Nominative Constructions (“DNCs”) in Korean, where the object exceptionally has nominative case like the subject (i.e., nom-nom). This enables isolation of grammatical function and case as possible factors driving the so-called “subject advantage.” We find that dependency formation is more costly in DNCs as compared with nom-acc structures, especially for object relative clauses. We tie this effect to distinctness in morphological case of the subject and object, suggesting that the less morphosyntactically distinct the subject and object are, the more difficult it is to process DNCs in dependencies.

Use of locative postposition-verb construction in Korean: analysis of L1-Korean corpora and L2-Korean textbooks

A usage-based account argues that the actual experience of language use greatly affects the course of language acquisition. On the basis of this premise, this study investigates how language textbooks, as a main input source for L2 learners, reflect the properties of a target language. We focus on a Korean locative postposition–verb construction, consisting of one of the three locative postpositions (– ey, – eyse and –( u) lo) and particular sets of verbs. For this purpose, we adopt representative L1 written/spoken corpora in Korean and two L2-Korean textbook corpora, and analysed three aspects of them: frequency of these postpositions and verbs, their association strength, and change in use of the construction’s components across the corpora. We find that ( i) verb types co-occurring with each postposition follow the Zipfian distribution in both datasets, ( ii) L1 corpora and L2 textbooks are inconsistent with their manifestation of postposition–verb associations within the construction, and ( iii) the two textbook types differ in verb use co-occurring with the postpositions. The implications of this study’s findings are discussed in terms of the acquisitional benefits of constructional frames and using corpora for L2 learning and teaching

한국어 “V1-어 V2” 구문의 운율

This article studies the prosody of the two kinds of “V1-e V2” constructions in Korean. In spite of their apparent identity, the “V1-e V2” constructions are divided into two different types on the basis of morphosyntactic and semantic criteria: verb-conjoined clause structures and compound verbs. A verb-conjoined clause structure conjoins two morphologically and syntactically independent verbs indicating two separate events (leading to semantic compositionality), while a compound verb carries an idiomatic meaning distinct from the meaning of the two component verbs in many cases. Previous studies have provided morphological, syntactic and semantic differences, which discriminate between the two kinds of “V1-e V2” constructions. This article identifies prosodic differences between the two constructions through a perception experiment. The experiment shows that there are indeed prosodic differences between the two constructions and that they are differentiated mainly in terms of the pause between the two conjoined/component verbs rather than the pitch contours superimposed on the given construction. Thus, this study provides empirical evidence of the two distinct “V1-e V2” constructions.

The Factive, IHRC, and Cleft constructions in Korean

Abstract This article aims to develop a Cognitive Grammar (CG) analysis of three grammatical constructions in Korean, all of which employ the bound noun kes. The data under examination includes the Factive, Internally Headed Relative Clause (IHRC), and Cleft constructions. We propose a uniform treatment of the three types of kes by arguing that it denotes a schematic noun that profiles a thing (noun) and has some role in the process of the adnominal clause. Different interpretations of these constructions arise due to different types of conceptualizations involved in each instance. In so doing, we point out that previous proposals that deal with kes are neither general enough to capture the commonalities observed in all three constructions nor can account for the new observations we present.

Phase-based Analysis on Cwu- Constructions

This paper discusses a novel observation on cwu- constructions in Korean and shows how it is captured under semantic and syntactic analysis. We suggest three semantic conditions for cwuconstructions: i) Referential Object Condition, ii) Transferability Reading Condition, and iii) Beneficiary Reading Condition. We further argue that the insertion of the argument introduced by cwuis sensitive to the feature of the accusative NP and the meaning established between two elements. Based on the semantic conditions, we present two syntactic structures of the cwuconstruction. To do so, we adopt Pylkkänen’s (2008) two different types of applicatives: high applicatives and low applicatives. For the Applied Argument Allowing Cwu- (AA Cwu-) construction, the low applicative head which relates an additional participant to the accusative NP is merged with VP. For the Beneficiary Allowing Cwu- (BA Cwu-) construction, on the other hand, the high applicative head which introduces benefactive NP is merged with vP, which forms a phase. We propose that the meaning relationship between the applied argument and the accusative NP is established when there is no phase intervening.

Two Different Types of Verb Phrase Fronting Constructions in Korean

In this paper, I attempt to investigate two forms of verb phrase fronting constructions in Korean: 1) verb doubling VP fronting and 2) do-support VP fronting constructions. First, I lay out common properties of the two constructions and show that verb phrase fronting constructions in Korean involve verb phrasal movement rather than being base-generated in the left-periphery. Furthermore, I observe that the two VP fronting constructions exhibit differences regarding the verb types and negation. I argue that these differences are caused by the variation in the size of the targeted materials for fronting and its interaction with the syntactic constraint, a type of the Condition of the Extraction Domain (CED).

Allocutive imposters in the form of referent honorification

A special class of honorific constructions in Korean, dubbed as allocutive imposters in this paper, has the form of referent honorifics but expresses respect to the addressee. Allocutive imposters have unique properties that distinguish them from the well-known honorific constructions, referent honorifics and addressee honorifics. Furthermore, they are uniquely sales speech register. Focusing on their marked pragmatic function of being used only in sales discourse, this paper builds on Portner, Pak and Zanuttini (2019, 2022), a functional head c in the left periphery encodes [Formal] and [Status] features and contends that first, these features, in particular, the [Formal] feature which represents the source social relation between the speaker and addressee, can be utilized to encode the markedness of the allocutive imposters. Second, allocutive imposters have a clausal structure with multiple subject positions, the higher position of which is occupied by a null DP with 2nd person features that require checking by the Addressee in the left periphery. It will be shown that the proposed analysis provides an account for the unique properties of allocutive imposters without invoking any special syntactic mechanism.

Awareness is one thing and mastery is another: Korean-speaking children’s comprehension of a suffixal passive construction in Korean

Two accounts—gradual abstraction and early abstraction—offer competing explanations for how learners proceed from concrete items to abstract representations pertaining to linguistic knowledge. The present study investigates which account better addresses developmental trajectories of child comprehension in Korean, an understudied language for this topic. Children’s (three-and-four-year-olds; five-and-six-year-olds) comprehension behaviours on a suffixal passive construction (characterised as its scarcity in input and the internal complexity driven by passive morphology) are measured through a series of picture-selection experiments with novel methodology that systematically omits and obscures portions of test sentences. We find an emerging sensitivity to passive morphology and increasing capacity to utilise passive-voice heuristics (which are tied to verbal morphology) with age, in conjunction with the interplay between these heuristics and active-voice knowledge involving a given stimulus. Results of this study are incompatible with the strong version of each account and rather align with the moderate version of each account, which argues for early emergence, but late mastery, of linguistic knowledge, the maturation of which necessitates a significant amount of language usage experience.