Phonological Preparation in Korean: Phoneme, or Syllable or Another Unit?

With three experiments, the present study investigated the primary phonological preparation (PP) unit in spoken word production in Korean. Adopting the form preparation paradigm, 23 native Korean speakers named pictures in homogenous or heterogenous lists. In homogenous lists, the names of the pictures shared the same initial phoneme (Experiment 1), initial consonant + vowel (i.e., CV) body (Experiment 2), or initial consonant + vowel + consonant (CVC) syllable (Experiment 3); and in heterogenous lists, the names did not share any phonological components systematically. Compared to naming pictures in heterogenous lists, participants’ naming speed was significantly faster when the initial body or the initial syllable of target names was shared. However, this form preparation effect was not shown in Experiment 1, when only the initial phoneme was shared. These results suggested that the body serves as the primary PP unit in Korean, that is, native Korean speakers tend to plan spoken words in a body–coda fashion, probably due to a joint contribution from the strong prevalence of the CV structure and early literacy instructional approach.

Interpretation of Korean Null Pronouns in subject and object position: Comparing native and non-native speakers

We report an experiment that investigates how native and non-native Korean speakers’ interpretation of null pronouns in subject and object position is influenced by structural and discourse-level factors. We compare native Korean speakers to L2 Korean learners whose L1, Spanish, only has null pronouns in subject position. We find that native Korean speakers’ interpretation of subject and object null pronouns is guided by structural factors as well as discourse-level coherence relations, with subject nulls being more sensitive to coherence relations than object nulls. In contrast, our results suggest that L2 speakers’ interpretation of null pronouns in Korean is less influenced by coherence relations. Our results support claims that interface phenomena are challenging in L2 acquisition and provide new evidence that this occurs with null pronouns in L2 even when the L1 has null pronouns.

Verbs with the meaning of falling in Korean

The article discusses the semantic field of the verbs of falling in Korean language. Semantics of the fi eld of falling is investigated by using frame-based methodology of Moscow Lexical Typology group that is widely used for analysis of different semantic fi elds. In the article theoretical background is shortly discussed, necessary terms are presented (frame, domain etc.), and then semantic fi eld of falling in Korean is investigated. It is shown that the choice of the verb of falling depends on several features of the falling object and situation on the whole (type of falling: falling from above vs. loss of vertical orientation vs. crashing down vs. detachment, starting and ending point, reason of falling etc.). In Korean there is one dominant verb tteleci-ta that can be used in the majority of situations with some exceptions. However, we have found eleven other specifi c lexemes — their usage is limited by the type of falling. The wideness of the usage diff ers from verb to verb, but there is no verb that would cross the frame borders: every lexeme covers a whole frame, its part, or a combination of frames, but not a set of parts related to diff erent frames. We describe the meaning of each verb in terms of frames (or subframes) that they cover and provide examples. In our analysis, we rely on the set of frames that was developed beforehand by Moscow Lexical Typology group based on cross-linguistic data. Our Korean data were collected with the help of a context-based questionnaire: native Korean speakers were asked to translate sentences representing various situations of falling from Russian or English to Korean using the verb that suits the best the situation and providing synonyms for the verb in this context. In conclusive remarks we present an overview of metaphorical usages of the verbs of falling, and compare the semantic shifts to those found in other languages.