External Argument and English Psychological Verbs

정태구 한국생성문법학회 1999 생성문법연구 Vol.9 No.2

A UG Approach to the Development of L2 English Articles

정태구 한국언어학회 2012 언어 Vol.37 No.4

This study examines the development of L2 English articles by Korean EFL students (middle school, high school and college students) in terms of the specificity feature. It shows that the acquisition order or difficulty level of L2 English articles is [-specific] a > [+specific] a > the > [+specific] Φ > [-specific] Φ (from the earliest/easiest to the latest/most difficult), which has not been presented in the literature. This finding implies that the prototypical meaning of a DP with the indefinite article a is a non-specific entity, and a DP with the zero Φ article typically refers to the most definite one (Berezowski 2009, Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freemman 1999). The significant role of the UG feature specificity with the Korean teenage speakers of L2 English is consistent with the findings of Ionin et al. (2004). But the findings reveal that the number of a certain type of learners who are sensitive to specificity and thus overuse the does not decrease as their proficiency increases, suggesting that some special instructions or treatments be needed for this type of Korean EFL learners.

논항구조이론과 연쇄동사:영어와 한국어를 중심으로

정태구 한국생성문법학회 1995 생성문법연구 Vol.5 No.1

The Input of L2 English Unaccusative Verbs: EFL Textbooks and Teachers' Knowledge

정태구 한국영어학회 2011 영어학 Vol.11 No.2

Several studies have reported that L2 learners of English have great difficulty learning English unaccusative verbs and several learner-internal factors have been investigated regarding this difficulty: UG (linking rules and passive rules) (Balcom, 1997; Ju, 2000; Oshita, 1997; Yip, 1995; Zobl,1989) and L1 influence (Hirakawa, 1995; Montrul 2000). It was also reported that overpassivization of uanaccusative verbs is fossilized (Han 2006) and that Korean EFL learners have more difficulty with such verbs than other L1 EFL learners (Chung, 2011). On the other hand, there have been only a few studies on learner-external factors affecting the L2 acquisition of these verbs (Juffs, 1998; Toth, 2000). This study investigates two major learner-external factors, EFL textbooks and teachers' knowledge of the verbs. It finds that the textbooks used in the Korean secondary schools do not supply balanced input for the verbs and do not contain any instructions regarding verb alternation. Moreover, Korean EFL teachers do not have enough knowledge of the verbs. The findings suggest that the verbs and verb alternation should be dealt with in Korean secondary school textbooks and in the curricula for EFL teachers to reduce the learner-internal difficulty.

영어 상태 술어 명령문의 습득 요인: 문법범주와 행위성

정태구 한국외국어대학교 외국어교육연구소 2022 외국어교육연구 Vol.36 No.1

본 연구는 영어의 상태 동사와 형용사 명령문에 대한 한국인 상위 영어 수준 학습자들의 습득 연구이다. 한국인 영어 학습자는 일반적으로 상태 술어의 명령문과 상적 전환에 대한 학습이 거의 없었기 때문에 이들의 명령문은 어려운 항목으로 간주된다. 본 연구는 영어 상태 술어 명령문에 대한 한국인의 습득에 영향을 주는 요소로 문법범주(동사와 형용사)와 행위성에 대한 역할을 조사하였다. 첫째 연구 결과는 한국인 상위 수준의 영어 학습자들도 상태 술어의 명령문을 어려워한다는 것이다. 둘째 결과는 상태 동사보다는 형용사의 명령문을 더 어려워한다는 것이다. 세 번째 결과는 한국인 영어 명령문 습득에서 행위성이 유의미한 역할을 하는 것으로 나타났지만, 한국인들은 영어의 상태 술어가 비상태 술어로 상적 전환되어 사용되는 것을 확실히 습득하지 못하고 있다는 것이다. 본 연구의 결과는 다음의 습득 연구의 의의와 교육적 시사점을 제공한다. 첫째로, 영어 상태 술어의 명령문과 술어의 상적 전환에 대한 습득 연구가 없는 상황에서 본 연구의 결과는 의미가 적지 않다. 둘째로, 기존의 영어교육 자료에는 상적 전환에 대한 설명이 거의 없는 상황에서 본 연구는 상태 술어의 명령문 및 상적 전환에 대한 교육이 필요하다는 중요한 시사점을 던진다. This study explores the acquisition of the English imperative of stative predicates by Korean advanced EFL learners. It examines the roles of grammatical category and the semantic feature, doability, in the L2 acquisition of the English imperative. The first finding is that Korean EFL learners have difficulty with the imperative of stative predicates, although they are very advanced learners; their acceptability of the imperative is significantly different from that of English native speakers. The second finding is that grammatical category plays a significant role in the L2 acquisition of English imperatives. Specifically, they have more difficulty with the imperative of adjectives than that of stative verbs. The third finding is that doability also plays a significant role for the EFL learners. Although they distinguish doable predicates from undoable ones, they haven't acquired clearly which stative predicates can be used non-statively in what contexts. We suggest that English teachers are aware of aspect shift of stative predicates, and English textbooks or pedagogical materials present the relevant phenomena.

영어 조동사의 인식 양상 위계와 한국 대학생의 습득 실태

정태구,노경희 한국외국어대학교 외국어교육연구소 2022 외국어교육연구 Vol.36 No.3

Epistemic modal auxiliary verbs such as must or may express some degrees of certainty or doubt of a situation described, and literature has shown some disagreement on the relative degrees of certainty expressed by English modal verbs. The purpose of this study is to present the epistemic modality hierarchy of English modal auxiliary verbs based on empirical data analyses, which can be used as a reference for L2 English learning, and to investigate some problems with its acquisition by Korean learners of English. For this purpose, an online survey was conducted on 39 native English speakers and 54 Korean college students to investigate how they perceive the degrees of certainty of seven modal verbs (must, will, would, should, may, might, could). Statistical analyses of the survey results showed the following. First, the modality hierarchy of the modal auxiliary verbs derived from the native speakers is formed into three groups: will, must, and would belong to the strong modality group, should to the medium group, and might, may, and could to the weak group. Second, the strong group expresses a certainty level of approximately 80% or 90%, the medium group 60% to 70%, and the weak group 40% to 50%. Third, the past tense form of the modal auxiliary verbs doesn't play a role in the strength of epistemic modality. Fourth, the problems of Korean students regarding the auxiliary verbs lay in the strong modality group: they perceive that will and would express much lower degrees of certainty than the native speakers do. Finally, it discusses some causes of the problems with the Korean students. 영어의 인식 양상 조동사는 어떤 상황에 대한 확신이나 의심의 정도를 표현하는데, 문헌에 보고된 각 조동사의 상대적 확신도는 연구에 따라 차이가 있다. 본 연구의 목적은 영어학습자에게 준거가 될 수 있는 영어 인식 양상조동사의 확신도에 대한 위계를 원어민 화자들의 인식을 바탕으로 도출하고자 하며, 인식 양상조동사의 습득에서 나타나는 한국 학생들의 문제점을 파악하고자 한다. 이러한 목적으로 영어 원어민 화자 39명과 한국 대학생 54명을 대상으로 7개의 양상조동사(must, will, would, should, may, might, could)의 확신도를 척도로 나타내도록 설문조사를 실시하였다. 응답 자료를 통계 분석한 결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 원어민 화자의 응답에서 도출한 조동사의 양상 위계에서, 고강도 그룹에 will, must, would의 세 개의 조동사가 포함되며, 중강도 그룹에는 should가 포함되고, 저강도 그룹에는 may, might, could의 조동사가 포함된다. 둘째, 고강도 그룹의 조동사는 대략적으로 80% 또는 90% 이상의 확신을 표현하고, 중강도 그룹의 조동사는 대략적으로 60%~70% 정도의 확신을 표현하며, 저강도 그룹의 조동사는 대략적으로 40%~50% 정도의 확신을 표현한다. 셋째, 양상조동사의 과거시제형이 영어 원어민과 한국인 영어학습자의 인식 양상 강도에서 어떤 역할을 하지 않는다는 것이다. 넷째, 한국 학생들의 문제점은 고강도 그룹에서 나타나는데, 한국 학생들은 will과 would의 확신도를 원어민 화자들의 준거에 비해 훨씬 낮게 인식하고 있었다. 마지막으로, 한국 학습자들이 영어 조동사의 인식 양상을 배우기 어려운 이유가 무엇인지를 논의하였다.

존재구문 ‘-어 있다’와 연쇄동사

정태구 한국언어학회 2023 언어 Vol.48 No.1

The existential construction consists of a verb and issta, where the verb is a complement of issta. Previous studies have proposed several conditions on the complement verb: i) It describes a telic situation, ii) it has a result state reading, iii) it describes an achievement situation, or iv) it is not a transitive verb. However, the studies face three types of problematic data. One is the construction where the complement verb describes an existential state that is neither telic, a result state, nor an achievement. The other is the construction that has a transitive verb. The third type is a new type of data, the construction where the complement of issta is a serial verb construction. A serial verb construction has a complex argument structure and a complex event structure. The present study proposes a lexical approach where the lexical semantics, argument structure and event structure of the existential verb issta play key roles. And the study shows that this approach can not only account for problematic data for the previous studies, but it can also explain the existential construction of serial verbs. A big advantage of this approach is that it doesn’t require any grammatical conditions other than the lexical properties of the existential verb.

교육영문법을 위한 문법용어의 고찰

정태구,노경희 한국언어정보학회 2018 언어와 정보 Vol.22 No.1

This study examines pedagogical appropriateness of metalinguistic terms being usedin pedagogical grammar books and English teacher’s guide books for secondary schoolteachers in Korea. It first presents criteria for good grammatical terms and evaluatesmetalinguistic terms based on the criteria. The terms are “subordinate conjunction” that,“relative pronoun” that, and “subordinate conjunction” after/before, all of which are termsfrom traditional grammar. This study proposes new terms for those forms and suggeststhat the grammatical terms in English teaching materials needs to be designed for learners,drawing upon the latest linguistics and applied linguistic research.

교육 영문법에서 전치사의 문법범주와 기능: L2 영문법의 학습가능성 향상을 위한 방안

정태구,노경희 한국언어정보학회 2019 언어와 정보 Vol.23 No.1

The present study investigates some problems with pedagogical English grammar and provides solutions to enhance the learnability of the pedagogical grammar, focusing on prepositions. In the pedagogical grammar books developed and used in Korea, a preposition or prepositional phrase is often treated as an adverb (phrase), adjective (phrase) or conjunction, depending on its function or distribution. This study points out that describing prepositions as differing categories in those materials is misleading, and such descriptions stem from the confusion of grammatical category and function, which is likely due to misunderstanding the two terms, “adverb” as a category and “adverbial” as a function from the traditional grammar (Quirk et. al. 1985). This study argues that those descriptions of prepositions are invalid pedagogically as well as linguistically, since they cause severe learnability problems. In order to solve these learnability problems, this study posits that the term from modern theoretical grammar, “adjunct”, should be adopted in the pedagogical grammar.

국어 존재구문의 의미와 사건구조

정태구 한국언어학회 2007 언어 Vol.32 No.4

Chung, Taegoo. 2007. An Event Structure Approach to the Korean Existential Construction. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 32-4, 779-801. This study proposes an event structure approach to the Korean existential construction -e issta, where the existential verb issta takes another verb/predicate as its complement. After it examines the problems with the previous work, the present study proposes the Extended Boundedness Condition which is based on the complex event structure of the existential construction: the complement predicate of the existential verb contains a bound in its event structure, which is the end point or the beginning point, or a bound in the property scale. It also gives an argument structure account for why most of the transitive verbs are not allowed in the construction. (Korea University)