Earticle

Kim, Hyung-Sun. 2016. Incidental Development of Epistemic Modality in an Interactive Discourse: The Use of Boosters and Hedges. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 41-4, 545-570. Epistemic modality (EM) concerns how writers qualify their claims in terms of commitment. It is mostly realized by means of boosters and hedges that constitute a subset of metadiscoursal skills. The outcome texts of a computer-mediated forum created internationally between American and Korean university-level speakers of English was utilized in searching for clues about the incidental development of EM. This study attempted to determine the level of EM occurrences as it changed over time. As for the within-group variance, while the L1 uses stayed at a relatively steady rate for both categories, the L2 use changed in statistically significant degrees. The semantic analysis revealed that the L2 fluctuation moved in the direction of more prudence and deference to audience in voicing one’s opinion as the discourse sessions continued, and the subject-related knowledge increased. Even in employing boosters, the frequency of those featuring strong versions of certainty constantly decreased while that of its milder version, probability markers, increased. This trend was confirmed by the between-group analysis, which also showed the incidental effect was more evident for hedges than for boosters. Pedagogical implications and suggestions for future studies are also offered. (Chosun University)

Park, See-Gyoon & Kim, Ji-Young. 2016. A Study on the Perception and Production of Korean Single and Geminate Stops in Intervocalic Position by Korean Native Speakers. Journal of Linguistics, 41-4, 571-591. There has been a long debate of ‘deletion’ of preceding one of Korean geminate stops in intervocalic position amongst scholars(Kim, 1981; Lee, 2005; Heo, 1965; Ryu, 1989; Pae, 1996; Kim & Oh, 2013; Kim, 2014). Our perception and production experiments revisited this matter to examine whether the preceding stop is deleted or not. In the perception test, the subjects could not distinguish amongst ‘ap$pa’, ‘a$p’a’ and ‘ap$p’a’types under‘natural speech condition’. They, however, could distinguish ‘ap$pa’ and ‘ap$p’a’types with over 70% of correctness rate under ‘cautious speech condition’. In the production test, the subjects showed that they used the length of closure duration (CD) of the geminate stops for giving distinguishing cues for ‘ap$pa’ and ‘ap$p’a’types and the length of voice onset time (VOT) for ‘ap$pa’type not under ‘natural speech condition’ but under‘cautious speech condition’. Our outcome shows that the matter of deletion of the preceding stop has complex factors to elicit a clear answer. (Kunsan National University)

Song, Jaemog. 2016. Mirative: Do We Need It as a Grammatical Category?. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 41-4, 593-617. Since mirativity was first proposed as an independent grammatical category of 'new, unexpected information' in DeLancey (1997), its existence has been reported in many languages. Korean suffixes such as '-kuna/-kun, -ney, -te-' have been analyzed as mirative markers too. However, there has been much controversy over mirativity in the literature concerned with its status as an independent category. Grammatical forms which were claimed as mirative markers later turned out to be markers of evidential or mediative. This paper examines problems found in the notion and examples of the mirative. It also analyzes problems in the claims of mirative markers in Korean. (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)

Lee, Seon-Yeong. 2016. A Study on the Formation of Slang Words. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 41-4, 619-635. Slang words mean ‘lowbrow words that are popularly used’. Many studies have made no distinction between slang words and coarse language. So slang words often have been regarded as reluctant expressions. But coarse language is the concept including slang words and vulgar words. The object that we must use carefully in a sentence is not slang words but vulgar words. Vulgar words are the ones that mean ‘look down on others or belittle opponent’. On the other hand, some slang words have been used naturally in everyday language life and sometimes slang words make our language life richer and more various. So far few studies have been conducted to find out the formation process and the usage of slang words, because of the confusion about slang words and vulgar words. In this paper we tried to sort out the formation process of slang words by types. The most typical ways to create slang words are metaphor. Generally in metaphor the meaning of person has been extended to the meaning of animal, and the meaning of animal has been extended to the meaning of the thing. On the contrary in the formation of slang words, the meaning of animal has been extended to the meaning of person, and the meaning of the thing has been extended to the meaning of person. Also metonymy make slang words. And we examined some affixes and collocations which create new slang words. More studies on the relation to slang words are necessary. (Hongik University)

Lee, Sechang. 2016. Revisiting the /n/-Insertion in Korean. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 41-4, 637-659. This paper revisits the so-called /n/-insertion analyses in Korean phonology and aims to provide further insight into the phenomenon. The assumption presented in this paper constitutes a far going departure from the standard explanation type of insertion theory. I point out that the earlier treatments are inadequate both on descriptive and theoretical grounds. I show that the previous OT analyses fail under the force of universal constraint requirements. I claim that a better way of handling this problem is to operate in terms of allowing the input specification of /n/ to be added to that of /j/. The [nasal] feature of /n/ is assumed to be parasitic in that it can only be licensed by doubly-linked structure. It means that the /n/ is supposed to be realized as a partial geminate, which turns out to be the case in crucial data. Following this line of thought, I show that the relevant OT constraints come to be equipped with universal nature in the sense of Prince and Smolensky (1993), arguing that proper establishment of universal constraints sheds new light on the phenomenon. All the relevant data are explained in terms of the interaction of constraints in a single constraint hierarchy in the spirit of OT. (Sookmyung Women’s University)

Yi, Eunkyung. 2016. What Modulates the Resultative Alternation? A Corpus-based Study. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 41-4, 661-677. This article is concerned with speakers’ syntactic choice between the Verb-Object-Result (VOR) and the Verb-Result-Object (VRO) construction (e.g., push the door open and push open the door). This syntactic contrast is referred to as the resultative alternation. The main goal of this article is to investigate whether the resultative alternation is modulated by (at least some of) the putative factors that are known to influence postverbal argument alternations. I examined some of the effects, namely, pronominality, definiteness, type of modification, semantic abstractness and word length of object NPs, on the syntactic choice between VOR and VRO in naturally occurring resultative sentences found in the British National Corpus. The frequency of occurrences revealed that VOR is the more frequent and canonical construction, as has been assumed in the literature, while VRO is in general less common but highly frequent when occurring with some particular verbs and particular result phrases. The results also showed that definiteness, post-modified structure and extended length of object NPs tend to increase the likelihood of occurring in the VRO construction, although it is in general the less frequent or less favored than the VOR construction. This study demonstrates that the resultative alternation does not arbitrarily occur but is constrained by semantic and syntactic properties of the postverbal NPs. (Seoul National University)

Lee, Chungmin. 2016. Expressing the Self: Psych Predicate and the Issue of Evidentiality. Journal of Linguistics, 41-4, 679-713. This work characterizes psych-predicates in Korean (and Japanese), attempting to explain why a third-person subject is infelicitous with a psych-predicate in PRESENT in Korean and Japanese as opposed to English (and French/Chinese). We focus on the status of the Experiencer (or ‘judge’ in the relativists’ term) in relation to other arguments (and higher attitude verbs) and examine the first-person subjectivity constraint via immunity to error through misidentification (IEM, Shoemaker 1968) and first-person authority (Davidson 1984). A speaker attributes her mental states/attitudes to her present self, presuming that she is not mistaken. An evidence acquisition event before speech time is claimed to be accommodated for a third-person subject to be acceptable with a psych-predicate in PRESENT in English. Predicates of personal taste as in “The cake is tasty” are also claimed to involve the first person Experiencer underlyingly. For accommodation of an evidence acquisition event, simulation theory and ‘spkokesperson’ effect are employed. Relevant cause and effect relations and consequent coerced event functions are also postulated. Interaction between psych-predicates and the first-person perceiver requiring direct evidential marker –te in Korean is also analyzed. The paper solves how a future event is referred to by -te. The subjective matter of first-person data is crucial also for the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness in philosophy of mind, cogntive science and even qunatum physics. (Seoul National University)

Lee, Juwon. 2016. Lexicology of Korean Common Nouns. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 41-4, 715-739. In this paper I attempt to analyze various Korean transitive verb constructions whose meanings are associated with a qualia role. In particular, four generalizations are observed: (i) the verbs culki- `enjoy' and kyenghemha- `experience' must be associated only with a telic role of common noun object, (ii) the non-final light verb of a serial verb construction is related only to an agentive role of common noun object, (iii) if a quale of a common noun is associated with the light verb ha- `do', then that quale is also associated with another qualia-related verb (e.g., culki- `enjoy' or kyenghemha- `experience'), and (iv) the verb sicakha- `begin' must be associated only with the first qualia role on the LV-QUALIA list, which I propose in this paper. Based on these generalizations, the transitive verb constructions are formalized in Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). (Kyung Hee University)

Choe, Jinsun. 2016. Intervention Effects in the Comprehension of English Raising Constructions by Korean Learners. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 41-4, 741-759. This paper investigates how Korean learners of English comprehend English raising constructions with a fronted experiencer (e.g., To Mary, John seems to be happy). Previous work on the acquisition of raising has shown that raising constructions pose a challenge not only to L2 learners but even to early L1 learners. However, L1 acquisition studies have recently found that there are cases in which this difficulty is considerably alleviated - for example, by moving the experiencer to the beginning of the sentence. This study therefore examines whether the position of the experiencer has the same (facilitating) effect on L2 learners' comprehension of English raising constructions as it does on L1 comprehension. A total of fifty-five Korean college EFL learners participated in a Truth-Value Judgment Task that tested their comprehension of raising constructions, and the results showed that they were significantly better at comprehending the construction with a fronted experiencer than the one with an intervening experiencer. Such findings parallel the pattern of raising acquisition in L1 English, indicating the presence of intervention effects in both L1 and L2 acquisition. (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)

Hong, Yong-Tcheol. 2016. Obligatory Presence of the So-called Genitive Marker "uy" on the Nominal Dependents of Proper Nouns: a Case Supporting "uy" as a Modifier Marker. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 41-4, 761-779. 박소영(2014) has observed that the so-called genitive marker “uy” appears obligatorily on the nominal dependents of proper noun heads, and claimed that this interesting fact provides a piece of evidence that “uy” is a structural Case marker, but not a modifier marker. This paper presents the exactly opposite claim by showing that “uy”-as-a-modifier-marker analysis, but not “uy”-as-a-structural-Case-marker analysis, accounts for the same fact. (Sungshin Women’s University)