Earticle

This study examines the linguistic landscape of Korean-clustered areas in the Atlanta metropolitan region, focusing on how languages are spatially arranged on commercial signage. Adopting a descriptive, placement-centered approach, the study analyzes the formal and observable conditions under which languages are visually presented, rather than interpreting the meanings or motivations underlying language choice. The analysis employs the sign frame, defined as a visually bounded unit of signage, as the primary unit of analysis. Within each frame, languages are examined in terms of spatial placement, relative font size, and order of arrangement, with particular attention to how these features jointly contribute to visual salience. Based on these criteria, the study identifies recurring patterns of language placement and shows that such patterns vary across locations within the study area as well as across categories of commercial activity. By foregrounding observable placement patterns, this study provides a systematic descriptive foundation for documenting and comparing linguistic landscapes in suburban commercial areas characterized by concentrated Korean-language use.

This study reexamines conceptual metaphor theory from a neuroscientific perspective. It argues that metaphor is not just a linguistic device, but the basic way the human mind works through the interaction between the brain, body, and culture. Previous research in cognitive linguistics has shown that people understand abstract ideas through physical and sensory experiences. However, less research has explained how these metaphorical mappings are realized in the brain. To address this gap, this study reviews findings from fMRI, EEG, ERP, and MEG studies on metaphor processing. The results show that understanding metaphors involves not only traditional language areas, such as Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, but also wider brain networks, including prefrontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital regions, as well as emotion-related structures like the amygdala. Recent studies further suggest that metaphor comprehension unfolds in stages, requiring extra effort to adjust and combine meanings, as seen in the N400 and P600 responses. In conclusion, these findings support an embodied, network-based view of metaphor and highlight the importance of linking cognitive linguistics with neuroscience.

This study aims to elucidate the pragmatic functions performed by the auxiliary particle “maneun” in conversational discourse in Modern Korean. The analysis demonstrates that “maneun” functions both as a discourse connective marker, strategically linking stretches of discourse, and as a discourse modal marker, clearly expressing the speaker’s communicative intent. The pragmatic functions of “maneun” as a discourse connective marker can be classified into four types. First, “maneun” is strategically employed in situations where the speaker freely inserts spontaneously recalled information while continuing the utterance without disrupting the discourse context. Second, it is used to present relevant background information in advance of a forthcoming question or request. Third, “maneun” serves to display politeness by protecting the interlocutor’s face prior to asserting the speaker’s own viewpoint, and it may also function as a strategic device for mitigating the speaker’s responsibility for the subsequent claim. Fourth, “maneun” is used to signal to the listener the dimension or perspective from which the upcoming utterance should be interpreted. When “maneun” appears without linking to a subsequent utterance and instead concludes the turn with sentence-final intonation, marking the utterance as ending with an attitude of uncertainty, it functions as a discourse modal marker. In this role, “maneun” may indicate the speaker’s intention to confront a potential conflict directly by making their uncertainty explicit, or conversely, to defuse or avoid conflict by withholding categorical assertion.

This study provides a foundational basis for developing a Korean reading strategy module by qualitatively exploring proficiency-based reading challenges and educational needs. In-depth interviews were conducted with fifteen foreign learners, and the collected data were qualitatively analyzed. The findings are as follows: First, beginners experienced anxiety due to limited linguistic knowledge and text length, primarily using decoding-oriented, bottom-up strategies like repeated reading. They required strategies for keyword identification and prediction. Second, intermediate learners faced vocabulary burdens and time constraints from increased text complexity, expressing a need for explicit instruction on summarizing and speed adjustment. Third, advanced learners struggled with high vocabulary density and evaluative anxiety. They utilized contextual inference and metacognitive strategies, calling for systematic high-level self-regulation, such as strategic skipping and goal setting. These results suggest that Korean reading strategy education should follow a hierarchical structure. Consequently, the curriculum should prioritize decoding and affective support for beginners, information processing efficiency for intermediate learners, and self-regulation for advanced learners. By providing qualitative evidence that complements prior quantitative research, this study establishes a practical foundation for learner-centered reading modules.

This study examines the typical organization of pragmatic moves in Korean workplace communication. Using the Korean Business Email(KBE) corpus, we employed a corpus-based workflow consisting of frequency profiling, keyness analysis(log-likelihood, log ratio, and p-values), and node-centered dispersion visualization. The results show a high degree of conventionalization; requests are primarily expressed through mitigated, formally directive framing, while workflow actions are managed through explicit confirmation and reply requests. Keyness analysis highlights high-coverage request routines, and dispersion analysis confirms position-sensitive placement norms across message sections. The study shows that professional actions are routinized through the use of formulaic patterns in Korean business emails. The findings also provide educational implications for L2 learners of business Korean.

This paper proposes a conceptual framework that reconceptualizes English relative clauses as temporally organized “insertion-return” processing events unfolding during real-time sentence comprehension. Rather than treating relative clauses as abstract syntactic structures to be acquired through explicit rule learning, the framework characterizes grammatical difficulty by the chronological demands associated with suspending, maintaining, and resuming processing as sentences unfold. Within this temporal perspective, subject/object relative clause asymmetry is explained by the differing temporal extent of insertion-return events, providing a unified account of their well-documented asymmetry. The framework further introduces metronomic temporal structures an external scaffold that stabilizes predictive timing during sentence processing and supports the formation of grammatical intuition. By integrating insights from real-time language processing, temporal cognition, and implicit learning, this paper reframes grammatical acquisition as the development of temporally coordinated routines, offering a timing-based perspective on grammar and grammatical intuition.

This study traces the evolution of phonetic research in the Core Collection and the KCI from 1992 to 2024 using Biblioshiny. Moving beyond basic bibliometric mapping, we applied longitudinal keyword network analysis with centrality measures (PageRank and Betweenness) to identify influential hub keywords and bridge topics over time. Our findings are fourfold: First, we identified three developmental stages through Annual Scientific Production, Average Citation per Year(for the Core Collection only), and Trend Topics, illustrating an evolution from exploration to strategic specialization. Second, a significant divergence emerged: the Core Collection shifted toward a cognitive focus in speech processing, while the KCI shifted towards an applied emphasis on language pedagogy. Third, persistent keywords like “speech perception” functioned differently, serving as neuro-cognitive indicators in a global context, but as pedagogical tools within a domestic framework. Finally, we propose that Korean phonetics should align its pedagogical strengths with global trends in big data and cognitive modeling. These findings provide a strategic roadmap for advancing domestic research from a regional discipline to a global empirical contributor.

This study investigates how Korean listeners’ sensitivity to the English tense-lax vowel contrast influences their perception of /ɨ/ epenthesis in English loanword adaptation in Korean. Native Korean listeners completed English tense-lax discrimination tests and an ABX perceptual task using English CVC nonce words that varied by vowel tenseness, final stop voicing, release, and place of articulation. The results showed that the perception of /ɨ/ epenthesis increased significantly when the final stop was released, voiced, or alveolar/velar. Although vowel tenseness alone did not yield a significant main effect, it interacted significantly with listeners’ tense-lax discrimination ability: participants with higher discrimination ability perceived /ɨ/ epenthesis more frequently when the vowel was tensed. This indicates that individual perceptual acuity modulates adaptation patterns in Korean. Specifically, the influence of vowel tenseness on /ɨ/ epenthesis is mediated by listeners’ sensitivity to the English tense-lax vowel contrast, underscoring the role of perceptual ability in shaping how non-native sounds are mapped onto native phonological structures.

Generally, generative grammar assumes that syntactic objects that merge are words or, more recently, inscriptions(e.g., Chomsky et al., 2023). However, certain phenomena seem difficult to explain within a system describing them as syntactic objects. This article introduces a new kind of syntactic object: the pointer. By using pointers, the structural burden of I-language is dramatically reduced as pointers only consist of an identifier and a lexical address. Because pointers target the underlying concepts of an entry, the inaccessibility of specific formal features dose not preclude Merge. This mecahnism explains how the system can merge entries even when their phonological or formal forms are “forgotten.” This article also argues for the existence of pre-linguistic ‘proto-thought’, which predates the evolution of I-language. This proto-thought provides the conceptual scaffolding necessary for further operations involving lexical selection and pointer-based operations.

Building on Jang(2021), we test whether text-only LLMs show graded evaluation of written Korean aegyo and how these relate to (un)naturalness language in explanations. We generate 77 informal past-tense verb forms from 11 high-frequency stems: a standard spelling (S), a resyllabified baseline (S′), and alternations from S′ (/j/-insertion, affrication, stopping, and combinations). We query GPT-4o, o3, and GPT-5, collecting 1–7 cuteness ratings and by-item justifications. All models categorically recognize aegyo, rating manipulated forms well above S and matching Jang(2021) by placing CJ at the top. Differences emerge in how strongly they demote mid-tier variants judged less conventional. A cue-based justification analysis reveals that mentions of ‘awkward/unnatural/nonstandard’ predict lower ratings, whereas generic ‘cute/endearing’ language is near-ubiquitous. Written aegyo thus separates register detection from gradient evaluation of (un)naturalness under text-only conditions, making it a useful diagnostic probe and benchmark candidate as opposed to definitive tests of phonotactic competence.