Earticle

This paper examines the current affairs terms characterized as ‘euphemisms with attitude’ in the economy sections of four Korean newspapers. A euphemism with attitude is defined as an euphemistic expression employed, particularly from the perspective of the speaker/writer, for intentionally hiding negative aspects of social realities. The impetus of this research is that the euphemism with attitude can reproduce social inequality among people if it hides negative social realities which everyone should be aware of. From the viewpoint of Critical Discourse Analysis, current affairs terms were analyzed to find out whether they can hide negative social realities, and as a results they can help reproduce and reinforce unequal power relations among various social groups. Based on the analysis, it can be argued that some of the familiar terms —‘labor market flexibility’, ‘sharing economy’, ‘ride sharing service’, ‘clean diesel’, and ‘shareholder activism’—can be categorized as euphemisms with attitude because they are all related to recent changes in neo-liberal capitalism societies, and tend to make negative social realities of the changes unrecognizable.

This paper aims to conduct a corpus-based study of English education textbooks and research articles through key cluster analysis. Specifically, using WordSmith Tools, this study investigates structural and functional features of English key clusters in the English education corpus. The English education corpus consists of three sub-corpora: TBC(Textbook Corpus), FWAC(Foreign Writer Article Corpus), KWAC(Korean Writer Article Corpus). The results show that compared with general corpus (BNC Baby), TBC, FWAC and KWAC have specific features, with differences and similarities in terms of 4-word cluster and key clusters. Regarding structural patterns, TBC has more NP-based clusters. Also, passive verb + PP patterns are more used with high keyness in the KWAC. In terms of functional features, it is noteworthy that the English education corpus contains genre-specific features with a considerable number of key clusters which belong to the categories of ‘others.’ Based on the study, pedagogical implications and suggestions for further study are provided in the conclusion.

This study focused on the decreasing trend of neutral tone words in the popular vocabulary of Mandarin and the standardization of these words to non-neutral tone words. Thus, based on the routine lexical syllabus from 1990s to the present for each period, we explored the aspect and the status of the formation of neutral tone words in Mandarin. First of all, for the lexical classification syllabus(1992) and New HSK lexical syllabus(2009, 2015) which have not been dealt with in the previous research, we investigated the aspect of standardization of neutral tone words. Next, focusing on the two-syllable neutral tone words of the lexical syllabus, we checked the present use against the modern Chinese dictionaries. Through a precise quantitative analysis, the following results were obtained. First, as for the beginners' levels of 1 and 2, the distribution of the neutral tone words was high. Second, through the common-used lexical syllabus, the neutral tone words became normative from irregular patterns to regular ones. Third, on the basis of the contrastive analysis with modern Chinese dictionaries, we can generally conclude that the current state of normality could be considered as the process of 'neutral tone words →optional neutral tone words→non neutral tone words.

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on the assimilation patterns of Perceptual Assimilation Model-L2(PAM-L2) by adopting the concept of ‘fit index’ conceived by Guion et al.(2000) and explore the variations of foreign speech perception predicted in PAM-L2’s framework. In the experiment, 33 college students participated in the online POSE tests and the results of 6 English vowel pairs ( /i-ɪ/, /ɪ-ɛ/, /ɛ-æ/, /u-ʊ/, /æ-ɑ/, /ʌ-ɑ/) were analyzed. By using the fit indexes, /i-ɪ/ and /ɛ-æ/ pairs were categorized as SC, /u-ʊ/ pair as CG, and /æ-ɑ/ and /ɪ-ɛ/ pairs as TC. The vowel /ʌ-ɑ/ pair was analyzed as UC type and excluded in the discussion. The perception accuracy of TC was 75%, and the perception accuracy was 50% for both CG and SC types. In general, the results substantiate the predictions of PAM-L2. In addition, the results from the POSE test showed lower perceptual accuracy rates than those from the previous studies, which may be resulted by the different types of perception experiments exercised in the research.

The present study compared features of single words and collocations used in 15 domestic and overseas primary- and secondary-level textbooks of English. The results are as follows: First, the amount of vocabulary used in Korean English textbooks was less than that of English-speaking or European countries, but more than that of other Asian countries. In addition, for the vocabulary density, a small number of vocabulary had a tendency to be repeatedly used in Korean English textbooks. The distributions of vocabulary levels examined within the 1 st 4000 words did not show significant differences among the textbooks. In comparing the use of collocations, the number of collocations in Korean textbooks was more than that of other Asian countries. Concerning the collocation POS combination pattern of Korean English textbooks, AJ+NN, AV+AV, and VB+AT+NN patterns were relatively more frequent compared to other countries while the use rate of VB+AV was less frequent. In conclusion, this study suggests some implications for improving the development procedure of English textbooks.

The present study attempted to analyze the reading passages of CSAT(Collage Scholastic Aptitude Test) from 2016 to 2019, which included two years of data before and after criterion-referenced testing was introduced. The categories analyzed are as follows: descriptive analysis, lexical diversity, syntactic complexity, cohesion index, readability index, and vocabulary frequency. Two different types of analysis were conducted by using web-based software, Coh-Metrix and VocabProfile. The ANOVA results suggested that there were no substantial differences between two different types of testing approaches: norm-referenced vs. criterion-referenced testing. Rather, the results showed considerable consistency in terms of syntactic complexity, lexical diversity, cohesion, or vocabulary frequency between the two types of testing. The study calls for further research on the construct validity of CSAT in order to provide rationale for the criterion-referenced testing and its usefulness in this educational context in Korea.

Many corpus-based studies of words have depended simply on collocation and lexico-grammatical patterns. This can lead to a distortion of the truth of words. This study aims to distinguish between disease, disorder and condition using corpus-based collocation and ‘Binary Opposition(henceforth, BO) Strategy proposed by Kim (2014) to distinguish a pair of lexical/ grammatical near-synonyms. The basic idea of BO is that in order to distinguish effectively between a pair of near-synonyms, the contextual BO features such as [part vs. whole], and [cause vs. effect], etc, must have critical difference between them. The results of this study show that these three near-synonyms are distinguished in the context by the opposite features such as [+diagnosed vs. -diagnosed], [intrinsic vs. extrinsic], [+curable vs. -curable], [concrete vs. abstract] and [part vs. whole].

This is a pilot study for the establishment of a Korean-Lexile system. The reading camp consisted of 24 elementary school students from grades 1 through 6, with intensive English reading guidance on various books as teaching materials, covering four hours and 12 times per day. A one-to-one diagnosis was conducted for the 24 subjects and the changes in the program’s subjects' pre- and post-reading ability were compared and analyzed. In addition, the trend of Lexile changes was analyzed according to the trend of the reading ability change. The results of the pre-diagnosis ability of the subjects showed that they were generally below benchmarks, and the difference in the ability within the group was large. The results of the post-diagnosis ability of the subjects showed an improvement of reading ability and the Lexile index. The correlation between post-diagnosis reading ability and change in the Lexile index was generally static, but the increase in the number of Lexile per person was not consistent with the increase in reading ability. Based on the results, the study emphasizes the need for follow-up studies and the establishment of a Korean-Lexile system.

Two self-paced reading experiments investigated the factors that influence the processing difficulty in relative clauses. Korean learners proficient in English participated in the experiments and the semantic factor and the locality factor were manipulated in the materials. The first experiment showed that there was no difference of the processing difficulty between object relative clauses and subject relative clauses with plausible sentential subjects. The second experiment showed that the processing difficulty of object relative clauses was greatly decreased when the sentential subject was inanimate. Additionally, it is noteworthy that the comprehension accuracy of subject relative clauses is lower than object relative clauses'. These results suggest that both of the semantic factor and working memory influence the processing and comprehension in relative clauses.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the university students’ perception of end-focus in English Wh-questions. The participants in this study consisted of 178 university students. These students were categorized into two groups according to their TOEIC scores: one group with the scores above 500 and the other group with the scores below 500. The participants were given Wh-questions and asked to select a more appropriate answer between two possible choices. The main findings are summarized as follows: First, the students’ scores from the test were considerably low. This may be because they are not aware of the principle of end-focus and thus, they don’t appreciate the difference in meaning between the two answers in the context.; and second, there was no statistical difference between their ability to perceive end-focus and their TOEIC scores. The findings suggest that the principle of end-focus should be integrated with teaching grammar regardless of students' English proficiency levels in order to communicate successfully.

Many researchers have discussed that metonymy and metaphor are not clear cut categories and that many metaphors are based on metonymies. However, the question regarding which type of metonymy is prone to metaphorical extension has not been addressed so far. In order to answer the question, this paper examines four Korean body-part idioms which were intentionally used in advertisements, since the visual and verbal signs of the advertisement effectively show different stages of the continuum of metonymy and metaphor. This paper compares CAUSE FOR EFFECT and EFFECT FOR CAUSE metonymies which are observed in the advertisements and concludes that the latter develops to metaphor more easily than the former. In the case of EFFECT FOR CAUSE metonymy, one’s emotion (cause) is referred to by one’s bodily reaction (effect), which is eventually followed by the deconflation of the domain of BODY and the domain of MIND. Since the deconflation of two domains leads to metaphor, the EFFECT FOR CAUSE metonymy is prone to metaphorical extension.

The purpose of this study is to verify the generalization of Ullmann’s(1963) “universal theory” through the synesthetic data in the self-built corpus of modern Korean poetry consisting of 1,000 poems, focusing on the issue of the directionality of synesthetic metaphor. This study also examines some characteristics of synesthetic phenomena in modern Korean poems. It is notable that the number of types is greater than that of previous research of Korean conventional synesthesia regarding lexical intensity such as tokens and types of Korean poetic synesthesia. This fact indicates that poetic synesthesia is relatively various, unique, and original, while conventional synesthesia tends to use a small number of common synesthetic expressions repeatedly in daily life. It is concluded that poetic synesthesia of the Korean language demonstrates unstable and inconsistent tendencies in the direction, source distribution, and target distribution of the transfers, which is different from the “universal” tendencies.

This paper discusses certain restrictions on the adnominal Right Dislocation (RD) in Korean. I suggest that the adnominal appendix tends to be associated with an overt host NP in the host clause, and that the association process is a processing-related one in nature, operating on the overt, surface form. The association process is further restricted by some factors such as closeness. In certain contexts, the workings of the factors give rise to the embedding effect, and when the factors become ineffective, the embedding effect is obviated/weakened. I also suggest that the association process is compatible with the ellipsis analysis since it applies to the surface form that results from the application of ellipsis. Due to the general processing mechanism, the overt host NP in the host clause is chosen over the elided/null NP in the appendix clause to lessen the processing load. I demonstrate that the ellipsis effect is observable in certain contexts.