Earticle

Kim, Mi-Ryoung. 2012. Tonogenesis in Korean: Some Recent Speculations on the Sound Change. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 37-2, 243-283. Recent studies show that Korean stops are undergoing the sound change in that there is a partial or complete VOT merger of aspirated and lax stops. Little research has been done about the possible relationship between the sound change and tonogenesis in contemporary Korean. In the present study we propose that contemporary Korean is undergoing tonogenesis, characterized by two phonetic evidence, onset-tone interaction and merging of aspirated and lax stops. The nature of the sound change of Korean stops must be understood as tonogenesis. Without the theory of tonogenesis, the current sound change of the Korean stop system remains a puzzle, in particular, why voiceless lax onsets lowers F0, and why they become heavily aspirated. We also suggest that Korean has not undergone tonogenesis before: instead, tones in historical Korean came from pitch accent (Korea Soongsil Cyber University).

Kim, Jungsun. 2012. Some Aspects in Mimicry of Lexical Pitch Accent by Children and Adults. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 37-2, 285-300. This paper investigates whether the mimicry behavior of lexical pitch accent exhibits categorical production by children and adults of the different dialects in Korean. The current study used the resynthesized stimuli, and focused on the patterns of mimicry production appeared in the difference of f0 values at the mid point of the first and second syllable. On the basis of this measurement, the hypothesis in this paper is that native speakers of lexical pitch accent will exhibit the categorical production akin to categorical perception, and non-native speakers of lexical pitch accent will exhibit the continuous production or random production characterized by no sensitivity on the dimension of phonological contrast. The results revealed that North Kyungsang speakers imitated categorically the pitch movement of lexical pitch accent contrasts, though there were more or less continuous patterns for the pitch accent contrast such as HH-LH. Most of South Cholla speakers showed the random production which was not correspondent to the changes of f0 values, but there also appeared, for some individuals, or for HL-LH, some sensitivity similar to the change of f0 values. With respect to children’s mimicries regardless of the regional origins, there seemed to be the general tendency tracking the changes of f0 values on acoustic continua, although the end points of stimuli for the two pitch accent categories were statistically different. But there was less variability for children of the North Kyungsang region. (Yeungnam University)

Kim, Jong-Bok. 2012. English Emphatic Reflexives: A Lexicalist Analysis. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 37-2, 301-323. English emphatic reflexives (ER) have at least three different distributional possibilities: adnominal ER, adverbial ER in the VP final position, and medial ER after an auxiliary. Each of these three ER types also has different semantic contributions. In this paper, we first examine the distributional possibilities of each ER in detail together with its semantic and pragmatic contributions and then offer a lexicalist analysis that can capture these grammatical properties. In particular, the paper shows that the lexicalist analysis, allowing tight interactions among syntax and semantics, can serve a viable way to capture the mismatches between syntax and semantics in English ER constructions. (Kyung Hee University)

Noh, Eun-Ju, Koh, Sungryong & Yoon, Si On. 2012. The Markedness of Metalinguistic Negation: An Eye-tracking Study. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 37-2, 325-343. This paper is a preliminary research on the interpretation process of metalinguistic negation (or MN) as opposed to descriptive negation (or DN), using an eye-tracking method. It is generally assumed that MN is marked and takes more processing effort than DN. However, there has been no experimental evidence to confirm this assumption. In this research, we conducted two eye-tracking experiments using Korean negative sentences. Experiment 1 was designed to investigate the processing time of the clarification clause of an MN. The results confirmed that the clarification clause takes longer to process when the preceding negation is interpreted as an MN than when it is interpreted as a DN. We conclude that negation tends to be interpreted descriptively on a first pass, and when that DN interpretation turns out to be wrong, it is reanalyzed as an MN on a second pass. Experiment 2 was designed to examine the processing time of an MN when the clarification clause is provided before the negative clause. The results showed that MN takes more processing time than DN, even when the clarification clause is given in advance. The results of these two experiments confirmed the markedness of MN. (Inha University, Seoul National University & University of Illinois)

An, Duk-Ho. 2012. NP-Ellipsis, Its Impostors, and Minor Argument Pronominalization in Korean. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 37-2, 345-356. The goal of this paper is to examine the nature of a newly discovered construction in Korean which on the surface resembles “NP-ellipsis” (a.k.a. “N’-Ellipsis”; henceforth, “NPE”). I argue however that this similarity is only apparent and that the construction in question is totally different from NPE. Rather, I show that the construction in question does not involve any kind of ellipsis and is actually derived from the multiple Case-marking construction. (Konkuk University)

Yoon, Jeong-Me. 2012. Wh-island Effects in Korean Wh-in-Situ Questions: Degradedness or Misinterpretation? Korean Journal of Linguistics, 37-2, 357-382. This paper addresses a question arising from the unexpected results of a judgment study of wh-island effects of wh-in-situ questions in Korean reported in Yoon (2010). In the study, two groups of speakers were found: the speakers who mistakenly interpreted wh-in-situ questions with a non-local wh-Q association as Y/N-questions and judged them to be acceptable and those who judged them to be acceptable under the correct wh-question interpretation. A natural question arising from such a result is why neither judgments are identical to the standard wh-island effect judgment in the syntactic literature. As an explanation, I hypothesize that the standard wh-island effect judgment corresponds to the misinterpretation judgment and argue for it by showing that there is a strong correlation between the wh-island effects reported in the syntactic literature and the possibility that wh-in-situ questions with a non-local wh-Q association will be misinterpreted as Y/N-questions but (ii) that no correlation is observed between the wh-island effects and the acceptability scores obtained from the study of average native speakers. Ultimately, the validity of this hypothesis suggests that the genuine nature of wh-island effects of wh-in-situ questions is misinterpretation, not degradedness. (Myongji University)

Lee, Sun-Young. 2012. The Acquisition of Korean Reflexive Caki by Heritage Speakers and L2 Learners. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 37-2, 383-400. This study investigates acquisition of the Korean long-distance binding anaphor caki by heritage speakers of Korean, compared to English-speaking L2 learners of Korean and Korean native speakers. In English, a reflexive should be locally bound by its antecedent (e.g., Johni thinks that [Billj likes himself*i/j], whereas it can be bound either by a local antecedent or a long-distance antecedent in languages like Korean (e.g. Johni-un [Billj-i cakii/j-lul cohaha-n-ta]-ko sayngkakha-n-ta). An experimental study using a sentence-picture matching judgment test with auditory stimuli was conducted with 32 heritage speakers, 20 English-speaking L2 learners, and 14 native speakers of Korean, comparing accuracy scores of judgments. The results indicated overall native-like competence throughout different oral proficiency scales in a range from ILR 2 (85% accuracy) to ILR 4 (100% accuracy), still obtaining statistically significant correlations between proficiency scores and individual, as well as mean accuracy scores. Comparing heritage speakers and L2 learners, a similar pattern was found in both groups for long-distance binding conditions, correctly accepting the long-distance antecedent in matched conditions and correctly rejecting the long-distance antecedent in unmatched conditions, with slightly higher accuracy scores for heritage speakers. However, differences were found in local-binding conditions. Heritage speakers accepted the local antecedent only 40% of the time in matched conditions, similar to native speakers, whereas L2 learners accepted the local antecedent 70% of the time even though both groups correctly rejected the local antecedent in unmatched conditions. The results of the study add to the pool of evidence showing the advantages of heritage speakers in the acquisition of syntax in SLA. (Cyber Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)

Lee, Sungbom. 2012. A Pragmatic Analysis of Defamation and Slanderous Remarks. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 37-2, 401-416. This study is an attempt to explore defamation in the framework of linguistic pragmatics. The focus is laid on various types of defamatory utterances. The recipient's perception of such statements and the speaker's liability on the basis of directness of imputation are investigated from the viewpoints of speech act theory and forensic pragmatics. To this end, two experiments are conducted: an off-line experiment testing the recipient's perception of defamatory statements in varying degrees of directness and an on-line experiment measuring the response time for each type of defamatory statements as well as the recipient's judgment of the speaker's illocutionary intent. The results of the experiments and their correlation are discussed. (Sogang University)

Jung, Yeun-Jin. 2012. On the Nature of Wh-Prosody and Its Syntactic Dependency. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 37-2, 417-444. In the standard minimalist tradition, the overt/covert distinction for wh-movement has been accounted for in terms of formal features such as “strong” or “weak” wh-features, or more recently the presence or absence of an EPP feature in C. Richards (2010), on the other hand, has recently proposed from quite an opposite direction that the syntactic parameter for wh-movement has directly to do with the wh-specific phonological effects, that is, prosodic effects feed syntactic wh-movement. In this paper I will provide evidence that for wh-interpretation, syntax feeds phonology, rather than vice versa, hence supporting the standard feature-based account of wh-movement. In so doing, it will be also argued that some agreement-related syntactic features may directly influence phonology, hence opening up the possibility of a direct reference approach to the syntax-phonology interface. (Dongeui University)

Han, Jeong-Im, Choi, Tae-Hwan, & Choi, Young-Mi. 2012. Language Specificity in Perceptual Compensation for Native and Non-native Assimilation. Koran Journal of Linguistics 37-2, 445-480. The present study investigated whether compensation for phonological assimilation is driven by multiple mechanisms, as suggested by Darcy et al. (2009). Native and non-native speakers of Korean were tested on their compensation for the Korean place and nasal assimilations using two different types of experimental tasks, phoneme monitoring and cross-modal priming with a lexical decision, each of which is expected to provoke responses in a low auditory level and a more abstract phonological level. The results demonstrated that native and non-native listeners relied on the acoustic characteristics of the stimuli in the phoneme-monitoring task (Experiment 1), whereas in the lexical decision task, only native listeners employed phonological knowledge of the manner in which assimilation functions in Korean (Experiments 2 and 3). However, compensation for phonological assimilation appeared to operate less strongly in the presence of optional rules than in the presence of obligatory rules. Together, these results suggest that compensation is driven by both language-specific and universal auditory mechanisms at distinct levels. (Konkuk University & Kyungdong University)