Korean Words Research Articles

Visual letter similarity effects in Korean word recognition: The role of distinctive strokes.

While the impact of visual letter similarity on word recognition in the Latin script has been extensively documented using masked priming techniques, research into non-Latin scripts such as Hangul remains limited. Hangul letters are systematically formed by adding one or two strokes to the base form, creating a pool of visually similar letters in the inventory. This study investigated the role of added distinctive strokes in word recognition by employing two experimental tasks: a lexical decision task (Experiment 1) and a same-different word matching task (Experiment 2). The results of Experiment 1 revealed a visual similarity effect only for primes without distinctive strokes, indicating an asymmetry in the priming effects. Conversely, Experiment 2 showed that visually similar primes facilitated target word processing regardless of the presence of the distinctive stroke, indicating no asymmetric priming effect. These findings suggest initial uncertainty of letter identity during Korean word processing and the processing of distinctive strokes in differentiating visually similar words.

Reflecting the language of ancient civilizations: A diachronic transition of “爵” and contrastive analysis of Sino-Korean Chinese characters

This study focuses on the historical and cultural significance of the Chinese character “爵” (jue), reflecting the culture of the ancient Bronze Age, and examines its semantic evolution and characteristics from a cognitive linguistic perspective. In addition, it compares and contrasts this with its use in Korean hanja (Chinese characters used in the Korean language). The research highlights that in ancient China, “爵” was initially used to denote a ceremonial wine vessel, symbolizing authority and social status, and was closely associated with rites and nobility. Over time, the meanings of “爵” expanded to include titles of nobility and official positions. Furthermore, the study explores the impact of Chinese culture and language on Korea, showing how “爵” and its related concepts were adopted and adapted within the Korean language and culture, maintaining some of its original meanings while also developing unique interpretations. It suggests that many Korean hanja words share identical meanings with their Chinese counterparts, but some have evolved distinctively, especially in the realm of religion, highlighting the interplay and diversity of cultural and linguistic influences between China and Korea.

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) for the diagnosis of pronunciation of speech sound disorders in Korean children.

This study presents a model of automatic speech recognition (ASR) that is designed to diagnose pronunciation issues in children with speech sound disorders (SSDs) to replace manual transcriptions in clinical procedures. Because ASR models trained for general purposes mainly predict input speech into standard spelling words, well-known high-performance ASR models are not suitable for evaluating pronunciation in children with SSDs. We fine-tuned the wav2vec2.0 XLS-R model to recognise words as they are pronounced by children, rather than converting the speech into their standard spelling words. The model was fine-tuned with a speech dataset of 137 children with SSDs pronouncing 73 Korean words that are selected for actual clinical diagnosis. The model's Phoneme Error Rate (PER) was only 10% when its predictions of children's pronunciations were compared to human annotations of pronunciations as heard. In contrast, despite its robust performance on general tasks, the state-of-the-art ASR model Whisper showed limitations in recognising the speech of children with SSDs, with a PER of approximately 50%. While the model still requires improvement in terms of the recognition of unclear pronunciation, this study demonstrates that ASR models can streamline complex pronunciation error diagnostic procedures in clinical fields.

The time course of semantic ambiguity in visual word recognition: behavioral and ERP evidence for the lexical-semantic effect.

Homonyms are words with multiple, unrelated meanings that share a single form and pronunciation. These words provide valuable insights into how semantic representation is retrieved and selected independently of orthography and phonology. This study aims to investigate the temporal dynamics of lexical and semantic processing in the visual recognition of Korean words. Specifically, we examine how homonyms and unambiguous words are processed differently during a lexical decision task (LDT) with EEG recording, considering the effects of word frequency and the number of meanings (NOMs). Participants performed a lexical decision task where they were required to determine if a visually presented stimulus was a valid Korean word. We compared the behavioral responses and event-related potentials (ERPs) evoked by homonyms and unambiguous words, each possessing either high or low word frequency. Both subjective and objective NOMs were measured and manipulated, while controlling for the subjective balance of individual frequencies of meanings to control for confounding from the relatedness of meaning (ROM). For ERP analysis, a non-parametric cluster-based permutation test was employed in addition to the two time windows of interest (i.e., N400 and P600). Behavioral results indicated a marginally significant interaction between word frequency and semantic ambiguity along with a main effect of word frequency, showing faster and more accurate responses for high-frequency words. An ambiguity advantage was observed only for low-frequency words, with no significant effect found for high-frequency words. ERP results revealed that lexical-semantic interactions were reflected in the modulations of the N400 and P600 components. High-frequency homonyms elicited an enhanced N400 amplitude, while low-frequency homonyms showed a reduced P600 amplitude. The findings suggest that the activation of semantic information occurs simultaneously with lexical processing, rather than during post-lexical or decision-making processes. Furthermore, considering balanced homonyms were employed in this study, inhibitory competition may arise from the high-frequency individual meanings of high-frequency words. In contrast, in low-frequency words, a facilitative effect may arise from gains in global semantic activation or semantic feedback to the orthographic level.

SNSMiner_VAC: Analyzing vaccination based on social network service data for safety surveillance

COVID-19 has created a major issue around the world, posing a serious threat to socioeconomic and human health, and there is still fear of new infectious diseases like this. In Korea, in response to COVID-19, the COVID-19 vaccine approved by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety was sequentially administered to each group, raising national interest in the safety, side effects, and effectiveness of the vaccine, and securing the basis for related policies. Many attempts have been made for this. We are interested in a methodology to establish a scientific basis for how to respond to issues regarding vaccine stability due to the emergence of new infectious diseases. In this study, we use comments posted on Naver, the largest social platform in Korea, to obtain consumer sentiment information about vaccines and understand the change in Korean public sentiment in the first half of 2021 for each vaccine based on the analysis pipeline (SNSMiner_VAC). We investigated the Korean public’s response to the COVID-19 vaccination on social media from November 30, 2021, to January 31, 2022. We collected comments related to the COVID-19 vaccination using the Korean words for “COVID-19 vaccination” as keywords. Of the 329,559 comments, 240,322 were analyzed after preprocessing. We developed three lexicons (stopwords, sentiment words, and custom words related to COVID-19) for Korean natural language processing. Furthermore, we extracted five clusters — including symptoms, side effects, vaccine hesitancy, pro-vaccination, and infectious disease control policy — through network analysis. The sentiment analysis revealed that negative public opinion was prominent even after the commencement of the phased recovery of daily life. From these results, we were able to automatically collect data-based information on patients’ symptoms and side effects for the new vaccine and prepare and analyze the basis for collecting public opinions about vaccination. We hope that the pipeline proposed in this study can be used as a tool to create a data source for effective management policies for vaccines being developed against the emergence of new infectious diseases.

한국어 교사, 한국어 학습자, 한국인 모어 화자의 단어 연상 의미 관계 비교 연구

Objectives This study investigates the semantic relations of associated words between Korean language teachers, Korean language learners and Korean native speakers through word association test. Methods This word association task was conducted with 3 subject groups. They were given 10 stimulus words which were derived from the novice level in Korean language text books, then they were asked to associate and write 3 associative words to 10 stimulus words. Results This study reveals three important results. First, Korean native speakers’ group showed the most associated words among the 3 groups. Second, Korean language teachers’ group showed the least number of associative words. Third, Korean language learnes’ group and Korean teachers’ group had the the most common associated words. Conclusions The result that Korean teachers’ group showed that least number of assciated words suggests that the diversity of associative words may have emerged due to occupational influences but it also means that the trained teachers focused on the language learners’ proficiency and associated the words which they use in teaching or from textbooks. Second, whereas the associative words of native Koreans are very authentic and various, other two groups’ associative words seemed more focused on the vocabulary in the textbook so they had more associated words in common. Therefore, in order to teach and use the authentic Korean words to foreign Korean language learners, we may utilize the word association test to find and develop more ways to use the authentic words which are frequently used in each field.

아동양육시설 초등학생들의 기초문해력 실태 조사

The purpose of this study was to examine the level of basic literacy skills among elementary school students in residential child care institution based on their reading development. A total of 118 students participated in the reading screening test. According to the results of the screening test, students with severe reading difficulties were classified as ‘at risk’, students with reading difficulties were classified as ‘some risk’, and students with average and above average reading levels were classified as ‘typical’. The ‘at risk’ students were administered the Korean language acquisition and word recognition tests, while students in the ‘some risk’, and ‘typical’, were administered the reading fluency and comprehension tests. The main research findings are as follows. First, elementary school students in residential child care institution generally showed low levels of basic literacy skills. Second, almost students in the ‘at risk’ group were found to have difficulty in word recognition. Third, students in the ‘some risk’ and ‘typical’ groups were found to have greater difficulty in reading comprehension than reading fluency. Based on these research results, implications for enhancing basic literacy skills of elementary school students in residential child care institution were proposed.

Lateralized displays reveal the perceptual locus of the syllable transposition effect in Korean

Studies of letter transposition effects in alphabetic scripts provide compelling evidence that letter position is encoded flexibly during reading, potentially during an early, perceptual stage of visual word recognition. Recent studies additionally suggest similar flexibility in the spatial encoding of syllabic information in the Korean Hangul script. With the present research, we conducted two experiments to investigate the locus of this syllabic transposition effect. In Experiment 1, lexical decisions for foveal stimulus presentations were less accurate and slower for four-syllable nonwords created by transposing two syllables in a base word as compared to control nonwords, replicating prior evidence for a transposed syllable effect in Korean word recognition. In Experiment 2, the same stimuli were presented to the right and left visual hemifields (i.e., RVF and LVF), which project both unilaterally and contralaterally to each participant's left and right cerebral hemisphere (i.e., LH and RH) respectively, using lateralized stimulus displays. Lexical decisions revealed a syllable transposition effect in the accuracy and latency of lexical decisions for both RVF and LVF presentations. However, response times for correct responses were longer in the LVF, and therefore the RH, as compared to the RVF/LH. As the LVF/RH appears to be selectively sensitive to the visual-perceptual attributes of words, the findings suggest that this syllable transposition effect partly finds its locus within a perceptual stage of processing. We discuss these findings in relation to current models of the spatial encoding of orthographic information during visual word recognition and accounts of visual word recognition in Korean.

A literature review to explore the use of Contact Theory, in exploring integration strategies between students who have defected from North Korea and South Korean students

Objectives The purpose of this research was to explore effective integrated strategies utilizing Contact Theory principles, to reduce prejudice and discrimination and build friendships between North and South Korean students.
 Methods A literature review synthesizing the findings of literature retrieved from searches for integration between North and South Korean students. Especially, Contact Theory was particularly used for the theoretical framework.
 Results Intergroup cooperation: Repeated integrated strategies and high-quality contact strategies should be applied in school curriculums to build friendships based on intergroup cooperative tasks such as discussion or presentations about each other’s culture, and societal issues between the two Koreas’ students. Common goals: Both students groups should discuss and debate the common goal of peace within the Korean Peninsula by allowing students to consider the advantages and disadvantages of inter-Korean unification on their own. Equal status: Schools should provide some programmes via literature or films related to North Korean words which are neglected by South Koreans who will need to change their perception by developing a more objective view of North Korean culture and their way of thinking that can ultimately bring equal status between the two Korean student groups. Support of institutions: The support of authorities of the Korean government is suggested. Especially, the government will need to provide more effective teacher education for integrated education between two Korean students to prepare for future reunification.
 Conclusions The implications and limitation of the study is provided. Suggestions for future studies are also presented.

Association between Multiple Trace Elements, Executive Function, and Cognitive Impairment with No Dementia in Older Adults.

Many studies suggest a significant association between individual essential trace elements (ETEs) and cognitive impairment in older adults, but evidence of the synchronized effect of multiple ETEs on cognitive function is lacking. We investigated the association between multiple ETEs, cognitive impairment with no dementia (CIND), and executive function in older Korean adults, using the Bayesian kernel machine regression (BKMR) model. Three hundred and thirty-six older adults were included as the study population and classified as the CIND and control groups. Blood manganese (Mn), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), selenium (Se), and molybdenum (Mo) were measured as relevant ETEs. The frontal/executive tests included digit symbol coding (DSC), the Korean color word Stroop test (K-CWST), a controlled oral word association test (COWAT), and a trial-making test (TMT). Overall, the BKMR showed a negative association between multiple ETEs and the odds of CIND. Mn was designated as the most dominant element associated with the CIND (PIP = 0.6184), with a U-shaped relationship. Cu and Se levels were positively associated with the K-CWST percentiles (β = 31.78; 95% CI: 13.51, 50.06) and DSC percentiles (β = 25.10; 95% CI: 7.66, 42.53), respectively. Our results suggest that exposure to multiple ETEs may be linked to a protective mechanism against cognitive impairment in older adults.

Is There any Similarity between Laos Language and Korean Language?

In this work, the authors tried to find the similar aspect between Laos culture and Korean culture. An English-Lao Dictionary (1996) was used for this study. The pronunciation of tens of Laos words was compared with that of similarly pronounced Korean words. This study is about the pronunciation of Laos language and Korean language. And the title of this work is ‘Is there any similarity between Laos language and Korean language?’. As a conclusion, some of Lao words are similar to Korean words.

한국어 문법에 의한 톨카피얌 해독의 가능성 검토

Tolkāpiyam, the oldest known book written in Old Tamil, is believed to have been authored around 100 B.C. Although Tolkāpiyam deals with the grammar of Tamil, a language still spoken by Tamils today, this ancient text, along with other Old Tamil books, has remained largely undeciphered. The reason for this lies in the fact that the grammar of Old Tamil has not been fully comprehended. Previous attempts to decipher Tolkāpiyam have mostly involved making educated guesses about the meaning of a paragraph based on the meanings of individual words.
 In this paper, I reveal the grammatical system of Old Tamil, drawing from the grammar theory presented in Part 2 of Tolkāpiyam. Old Tamil, much like pre-medieval Korean, employs predicates as nouns. It features elements such as chosa (조사), verb endings, honorifics, and causative verb suffixes. Remarkably, Tolkāpiyam is structured following the Korean word order. The grammar of Old Tamil closely resembles that of modern Korean. As a demonstration that Koreans can decipher Tolkāpiyam without prior knowledge of ancient Tamil, relying on word meanings alone, I also provide a correct interpretation for several paragraphs in Part I (Phonology). These interpretations challenge previous misconceptions and affirm the validity of my paper's argument, highlighting the limitations of prior research.

Effects of age and word frequency on Korean visual word recognition: Evidence from a web-based large-scale lexical-decision task.

The present study examined age differences in word-frequency effects in Korean visual word recognition through a large-scale, web-based lexical-decision task. Four hundred ninety-seven adult Korean speakers in their 20s through 60s participated in the task, in which they decided the lexicality of 120 Korean words varying in frequency and 120 nonwords. Overall, both lexical-decision accuracy and response times increased with age, and more frequent words were recognized more rapidly than less frequent words. We also found significant effects of participants' reading skill as well as age of acquisition of words. Crucially, despite older adults' generally slower reaction times, there was no hint of any interaction between participant age and word frequency on lexical-decision times. This result adds to the literature on age-related changes in visual word recognition and provides evidence for stable word-frequency effect across the adult age spectrum. These findings are discussed with different hypotheses of lexical access and aging proposed in the literature. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

崔南善 編 『新字典』의 揷圖 연구

The purpose of this paper is to understand the current status of the illustrations in 『Sinjajeon』 edited by Nam-seon Choi in 1915, and to analyze the origin and characteristics of the illustrations in 『Sinjajeon』. Through this, the influence of illustrations in Korean Word Chinese-character dictionary compiled after 『Sinjajeon』 and the relationship between Korean and Chinese Word Chinese-character dictionarys compiled at the same time were identified.
 Research on the dictionary in Korea was mainly conducted on the ‘motivation and influence relationship of compilation’, ‘organizing method’, and ‘shape, sound, and meaning of recorded Chinese characters’. In addition to this, this paper focused on the illustrations in the dictionary to understand the origin of the illustrations and the influence relationship was reviewed. The results of the review are as follows.
 First, 『Sinjajeon』 edited by Nam-Seon Choi was the first Korean dictionary to use illustrations, and was introduced under the Chinese character.
 Second, 『Sinjajeon』 edited by Nam-Seon Choi was influenced by the illustrations of China's 『Xinzidian』 edited by Er-kui Lu at the same time.
 Third, the illustration of 『Sinjajeon』 edited by Nam-Seon Choi was influenced by 『Xinzidian』 edited by Er-kui Lu. However, it was not necessarily the same with 『Xinzidian』 edited by Er-kui Lu. The illustrations in 『Sinjajeon』 edited by Nam-Seon Choi were similar to Wang-Qi’s 『Sancaituhui』 and Nie-Chong Yi’s 『Sanlitujizhu』.
 This study identified the current status of illustrations in 『Sinjajeon』 edited by Nam-Seon Choi in 1915 and studied the characteristics of illustrations in 『Sinjajeon』. This is expected to contribute to understanding the influence between Korean and Chinese Word Chinese-character dictionary. In addition, it will be able to contribute to the study of book exchanges in East Asia in the future.

책임의 분류와 유기적 이해

The Korean word ‘chaek-im’(responsibility) is used in different meanings which I respectively name blameworthiness-responsibility, liability-responsibility, role-responsibility, and pseudo-responsibility. The concept of blameworthiness-responsibility refers to the blameworthiness on the actor in relation to an act or its outcome, the concept of liability-responsibility the potential occurrence of a burden, or the burden itself, in relation to a past norm-violating act, and the concept of role-responsibility a kind of task asked for as a norm. Each concept can be classified into sub-meanings.
 Also responsibility can be classified in various ways according to subject, addressee, object, sanction, reason, norm, etc., which are the basic elements of the structure of responsibility, as well as according to the nature, for example, pre-event responsibility v. post-event responsibility, backward-looking responsibility v. forward-looking responsibility, and positive responsibility v. negative responsibility, etc.
 Lastly, I propose response-based theory of responsibility, which, I think, can give the most coherent understanding of the various concepts and structure-comprising elements of responsibility.

Zero-derivation in Korean: the effect of covert structure in real-time processing.

Korean words like balgda 'bright/become bright' and gilda 'long/become long' are categorially ambiguous; they can appear as both adjectives and verbs. Some suggest that these words are listed under separate lexical entries, while others propose that they share one single lexical entry, and that the verb form is morphologically derived from the base adjective through a process called zero derivation. This study presents the results of a real-time experiment that investigates whether these words involve zero derivation and if so, how zero derivation may affect the real-time processing of these words. Our findings suggest that the reader recognizes the base adjective and obtains the derived-verb form by virtue of adding a covert category-changing morpheme in real-time sentence processing. This study provides promising evidence of the zero derivation of Korean categorially ambiguous adjectives and verbs, as well as crosslinguistic evidence of the role of covert structure in lexical access.

A study on Suffix Clipped Words in Korean: Focusing on the Clipping of Suffix Ending Syllable ‘i’

A study on Suffix Clipped Words in Korean: Focusing on the Clipping of Suffix Ending Syllable ‘i’

Decoding foveal word recognition: the role of interhemispheric inhibition in bilateral hemispheric processing

Extant research has largely favored the Split Fovea Theory (SFT) over the Bilateral Projection Theory (BPT) in the context of foveal word recognition. SFT posits that during foveal fixation, letters in the left and right visual fields are projected to their respective contralateral hemispheres, thereby facilitating a division of labor across the bilateral hemispheres. This division may serve as a regulatory mechanism to mitigate redundant processing in both hemispheres. The present investigation conducted two experiments utilizing Korean visual words to explore whether this hemispheric division in foveal word recognition is a strategy to circumvent potential interhemispheric inhibition arising from duplicated processing. Experiment 1 established the suitability of Korean visual words for studies involving both unilateral and bilateral presentations. Experiment 2 revealed that the split presentation of a word elicited greater accuracy compared to its identical presentation in the bilateral visual fields. These findings lend credence to the notion that interhemispheric inhibition may drive the hemispheres to engage in divided labor, thereby reducing processing redundancy in foveal word recognition.

Repetition Suppression for Familiar Visual Words Through Acceleration of Early Processing.

The visual N1 (N170) component with occipito-temporal negativity and fronto-central positivity is sensitive to visual expertise for print. Slightly later, an N200 component with an increase after stimulus repetition was reported to be specific for Chinese, but found at centro-parietal electrodes against a mastoid reference. Given the unusual location, temporal proximity to the N1, and atypical repetition behavior, we aimed at clarifying the relation between the two components. We collected 128-channel EEG data from 18 native Chinese readers during a script decision experiment. Familiar Chinese one- and two-character words were presented among unfamiliar Korean control stimuli with half of the stimuli immediately repeated. Stimulus repetition led to a focal increase in the N1 onset and to a wide-spread decrease in the N1 offset, especially for familiar Chinese and also prominently near the mastoids. A TANOVA analysis corroborated robust repetition effects in the N1 offset across ERP maps with a modulation by script familiarity around 300ms. Microstate analyses revealed a shorter N1 microstate duration after repetitions, especially for Chinese. The results demonstrate that the previously reported centro-parietal N200 effects after repetitions reflect changes during the N1 offset at occipito-temporal electrodes including the mastoids. Although larger for Chinese, repetition effects could also be found for two-character Korean words, suggesting that they are not specific for Chinese. While the decrease of the N1 offset after repetition is in agreement with a repetition suppression effect, the microstate findings suggest that at least part of the facilitation is due to accelerated processing after repetition.

한국어와 우즈베크어의 신어 대조 연구

The primary purpose of this study is to analyze the commonalities and differences between the two languages by contrasting 'dog' in Korean and 'it' in Uzbek. Furthermore, there is a secondary purpose in reducing errors in the language use of Korean and Uzbek learners as foreign languages. The Korean word “dog” and the Uzbek word “it” have something in common that they originate from the animal's name, “dog” [犬]. In addition, “dog” and “it” are characterized by being used in negative meanings as well as in positive meanings in recent years. On the other hand, the difference is that the Korean word “dog” has a strong dependency, but the Uzbek word “it” has an adverbial usage. Through this study, it was possible to derive similarities and differences between the elements 'dog' and 'it' of forming new words in Korean and Uzbek, and to suggest the relevance of the use of new words.