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Lee, Yong-hun?Kim, Eunah?Kim, Ji-Hye. 2015. Reflexive Binding and Adjunct Control as Subject Diagnostics in Korean: An Experimental Approach. The Journal of Studies in Language 31.2, 427-449. What makes a subject has been one of the hottest topics in Korean syntax, and several diagnostics have been proposed. Among the diagnostics, the current study chose two tests and experimentally investigated how they worked in single subject constructions (Non-MSCs) and multiple subject constructions (MSCs). The diagnostics examined in this study were Reflexive Binding (RB) and Adjunct Control (AC). An experiment was designed to test how these two subjecthood diagnostics applied to the Non-MSC and MSC environments. The intuition of seventy Korean native speakers was tested with magnitude estimation. The test items were composed of 80 Korean sentences which represented different subjecthood properties in Non-MSCs and MSCs. The analysis results show that (i) both RB and AC can be used as subjecthood diagnostic tests in the Non-MSC environment, but (ii) that only RB can be used as a subjecthood diagnostic test in the MSC environment. (Chungnam National University?Seoul National University?Soongsil University)

Present study examines L1 transfer effect and UG involvement in the acquisition of binding properties of Korean as second language (L2). The study especially investigates i) whether knowledge from different L1s (English and Chinese) affect the interpretation of binding in Korean as L2 and ii) whether L2 learners of Korean differentiate two Korean anaphors like Korean monolinguals do, based on their knowledge of universal form-function correlation of anaphors. 53 post-puberty L2 learners of Korean with English or Chinese L1, together with 30 Korean monolinguals, were tested over Truth Value Judgment Task with stories, composed of Korean sentences representing various types of binding with two Korean reflexives - caki and caki-casin. The results showed some effect of L1 transfer, though not always. Overall, late L2 learners of Korean seem to know the difference between the two anaphors in their properties related to form-function correlation, though their performance level was lower compared to Korean monolinguals. Detailed pattern of the results and the role of UG in the interpretations of Korean reflexives are also discussed.

This study investigated how Korean learners of English acquired the English reflexives. There is emphasis on the effects of the GCP and PAP(Wexler and Manzini, 1987). The purpose is to examine the major hypothesis that L2 learners are still constrained by Universal Grammar (UG), despite the influence of the parameter setting of their native language as well as the non-operation of the Subset Principle. The experimental group consisted of 30 middle school students (age 14-15), 30 high school students (age 16-17), and 30 university students (age 18-19) as well as 20 ESL students (age 16) studying English in the USA. Twenty native speakers of English served as a control group. The subjects responded to a test on reflexives that used a multiple-choice grammaticality judgement task. Findings show that L2 learners transfer their L1 parameter setting and, as a result, make errors in the choice of antecedents for reflexives. Therefore, I argue that the L2 learner is still constrained by UG.

This study investigated 1) whether learners’ L1 and proficiency levels affect the acquisition of Korean reflexive jasin and 2) how syntactic knowledge of reflexive binding interacts with pragmatic knowledge among a control group (40 native speakers of Korean) and an experimental group (20 Chinese learners of Korean and 13 English learners of Korean). The experimental group was divided into an intermediate and an advanced level. For data collection, this study guided the participants to conduct two interpretation tasks with multiple choice questionnaires. Task 1 employed three types of sentences: monoclausal, biclausal finite, and biclausal non-finite, which are pragmatically neutral without any contexts. Task 2 basically used the same sentences used for Task 1, but included two different contexts which strongly favored a specific antecedent of the reflexive jasin. The data were analyzed by the frequency of responses to each type of sentences. The overall results show that learners’ L1 and L2 proficiency can affect the interpretation of L2 reflexive binding, and that pragmatics plays important roles in the interpretation of reflexive binding to the extent that it overrides syntax.

This paper focuses on how the adult Korean learners of English interpret English reflexives with respect to binding. Specifically, the learners show the fact that they are constrained by the parameter of UG, the GCP (Governing Category Parameter: Manzini and Wexler 1987). They might also be expected to transfer their L1 value to the L2 grammar. Or else, they might be in between two(MacLaughlin 1998). This paper has examined the 35 adult Korean learners of English in terms of three respects; firstly, does UG operate in English reflexive-binding by the adult Korean learners of English? If so, which one do they use, the analogous L2 grammar or L1 grammar? Secondly, in line with some previous studies, may it be predicted that the advanced learners can be closer to the L2 grammar than the beginners and they differently bind English reflexives to antecedents according to their English proficiency? The experiment results represent that the adult Korean learners among each different group show the analogous response by binding English reflexives with the antecedents. Thus, this paper provides how the adult Korean learners of English comply with ‘in between parameter(interlanguage)’ under the GCP, which is different from the previous study results.

The present study investigates crucial factors that influence on the interpretation of Subjecthood in Korean Multiple Subject Constructions (MSCs), especially concerning two selected diagnostics: Obligatory Control (OC) and Reflexive Binding (RB). The current study employed experiment using magnitude esti- mation (ME) tasks and statistical modeling (Random Forest analysis) to compare distinctive diagnostics. In addition, the study incorporated mini- discourse contexts to obtain more stable and context-based acceptability judgments, which can contribute to the validity of the two syntactic dia- gnostics. Seventy Korean native speakers were tested over the sentences representing OC and RB, constructed with 6 variables (i.e., sentence type, construction type, subject type, presence of diagnostic feature, possession type, animacy of NP). Overall results demonstrated the following: i) MSC sentences got significantly lower than non-MSC counterparts across both diagnostics; ii) Both OC and RB selected the Grammatical Subject (GS) more often than the Multiple Subject (MS); iii) OC was less sensitive to discourse context, whereas RB showed greater interpretive flexibility depending on contextual cues.

This paper discusses various patterns of number (mis)match in reflexive binding relations, focusing on the Korean reflexive caki. By providing novel data, it is claimed that (i) various aspects of number interpretation in reflexives is (partly)　attributable to the presence/absence of plural markers in Korean (e.g., -tul and -ney), and (ii) in terms of semantic (in)compatibility, the semantic markedness of number plays a crucial role in specifying environments where a binding pair can be covalued with each other. Especially, it is discussed why, despite the symmetric nature of covaluation, the plurality in the antencedent[sg]-reflexive[pl] pair should amount to the associative plural reading while that of antencedent[pl]-reflexive[sg] one cannot. Taken together, the distinctive nature of the unmarkedness in a number domain is reexamined to clarify why a reflexive is required to bear a more unmarked feature to give rise to a (genuine) number mismatch in a binding relation.

以前认为“自己”的长距离约束用法产生于清代，但我们通过对明清小说的调查发现：这种用法其实在明代已经产生。此外我们还简略讨论了以下问题：一、长距离约束用法的范围，或许还可以扩大。二、在长距离约束用法中，“自己”既可以是由深层结构中的第一人称代词“我”转化而来，也可以是由第二人称代词“你”转化而来。三、长距离约束用法中先行语可以通过一套程序进行认定。