On gapless relatives in spoken English

( Park Myung-kwan ) 한국외국어대학교 언어연구소 2024 언어와 언어학 Vol.- No.103

This paper investigates gapless relatives in spoken English. Typically, relative clauses in English contain gaps inside them, being derived via Move of wh-relative pronouns to their peripheries. Collins and Radford (2015) in fact follow this traditional approach to gapless relatives in spoken English, postulating prepositions that underlyingly take as their complements wh-relative pronouns but undergo ghosting as PF ellipsis in this construction. In their account, gapless relatives in spoken English are now reanalyzed as gapped ones. Pointing out that their postulation and later deletion of prepositions for gapless relatives confronts the well-known deletion recoverability problem, we instead propose that gapless relatives in the language at issue are derived by base-generation of relative pronouns in the specifier of TopP in relative clauses, and that to obtain the proper meaning relationship between relative pronouns as topics and the following relative clause TPs, prepositions are recruited via pragmatic inferencing. In this regard, we show that gapless relatives in spoken English are derived in much the analogous fashion as their counterparts in East Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

양태 구문 ‘-ㄹ 수 있-’의 다의성 동기

나익주 담화·인지언어학회 2020 담화와 인지 Vol.27 No.4

This paper aims to show that the polysemy of a Korean modal construction (-l su iss-) is not arbitrary but motivated. It is argued that the construction traces back to the Chinese loanword ‘su(手)’ referring to a body-part “hand” through the medium of various senses of ‘su’ as a naturalized noun which are also linked to the “hand” sense. Those senses are semantically interrelated through metaphor, metonymy, and pragmatic inferencing. Although ‘su(手)’ refer to “hand” just as part of a word, the “hand” sense is extended to its “sports player” or “professional” sense through the metonymy HAND FOR PERSON and to its “move of go-game stone” sense through the metonymy SOURCE FOR PATH/GOAL. Then, its “path” sense is linked to its “manner” sense through event structure metaphors such as STATES ARE LOCATIONS, CHANGES ARE MOTIONS, or MANNERS ARE PATHS, and the “manner” sense leads to its modal senses such as “capability,” “possibility,” “likeliness,” or “guess” through INFERENCE IS JOURNEY, KNOWLEDGE OF MANNER FOR CAPABILITY, or CAPABILITY FOR LIKELINESS metaphors.

한국어 듣기 교육에서의 화용적 추론의 유형 연구

강민석 고려대학교 한국언어문화학술확산연구소 2019 Journal of Korean Culture Vol.45 No.-

The purpose of this study is to examine types of pragmatic inference and to provide examples of listening texts and activities for practicing pragmatic inference skills in teaching Korean listening. Pragmatic inference is an inference made based on the context of the utterance or the background knowledge of the listener, which enables a listener to determine a meaning that the speaker intended from a sentence meaning. Considering the nature of listening, which is relatively more influenced by the context which is surrounding the discourse, it is obvious that the pragmatic inference should be emphasized in KSL listening. However, based on the analysis of listening textbooks, the result shows that it is difficult to find listening activities for practicing pragmatic inference in Korean listening textbooks. In this study, we examine the constituents of the context that are related to the meaning of an utterance, and summarize the types of practicing pragmatic inference. Specifically, we provide 5 types of ‘inferencing of discourse participants’, 4 types of ‘inferencing discourse situation’, and an ‘inferencing utterance meaning’ with example texts and activities which can be used for teaching and testing pragmatic inference. 이 연구는 듣기에서 수행되는 화용적 추론의 개념을 고찰하고, 이를 통해 한국어 듣기 교육에서 활용할 수 있는 화용적 추론의 유형과 그 예시를 제시하는 것을 목적으로 한다. 화용적 추론은 발화의 맥락이나 청자의 배경지식을 토대로 이루어지는 추론으로서, 청자로 하여금 발화의 문자적 의미로부터 화자가 의도한 의미를 알아낼 수 있도록 해 준다. 담화를 둘러싼 맥락의 영향을 상대적으로 더 많이 받는 듣기의 특성을 고려하였을 때 화용적 추론 기술은 듣기 교육에 있어서 강조되어야 하는 것이 당연하지만, 본고에서 이루어진 교재 분석을 통해 나타난 결과에서는 한국어 듣기 교재에 화용적 추론 기술에 대한 연습이 절대적으로 부족한 것으로 나타났다. 이에 본 연구에서는 발화의 의미에 관여하는 맥락의 요소를 살펴보고, 각 맥락의 요소들을 추론의 대상으로 하는 화용적 추론의 유형을 정리하였다. 구체적으로는 5개의 담화 참여자에 대한 추론, 4개의 담화 상황에 대한 추론, 그리고 발화 의미에 대한 추론 유형을 실제 한국어교육 현장에서 듣기 교육과 평가에 활용할 수 있도록 예시와 함께 제시하였다.

소설 『혼불』의 담화에 나타난 화용론적 추론의 양상

박길수 ( Park Kil-soo ) 대한영어영문학회 2005 영어영문학연구 Vol.31 No.1

The present paper aims to see in what ways a set of written discourses makes and conveys indirect discursive meaning in a novel that draws on pragmatically salient linguistic expressions to successfully reach its readers. For this purpose such key concepts as presupposition, conversational implicature, and verbal irony are examined in order that they may provide a frame of reference to the ensuing discourse analysis. The results of the analysis indicate that most of the utterances are appreciably context-sensitive while they construct an opposite, non-veridical, alternative relationship between what is uttered and what is pragmatically intended. The meaning-making mechanism the author of the novel Honpul utilizes is the one that enables her to share the knowledge of the discourse world with her readers via the exploitation of a wide variety of semantic and/or pragmatic inferences, by means of which she seems to have achieved a competent way of literary communication. Additionally, all the utterances subjected to the analysis have been found to be pragmatically well-formed, so the meaning-making of Korean fictional discourses are hardly deemed to be different from that of the English language. (Anyang University)

한국어 초점사에 대한 언어습득 연구

김소영(Kim So young) 부경대학교 인문사회과학연구소 2015 인문사회과학연구 Vol.16 No.4

본 연구는 한국어를 모국어로 사용하는 유아 (5세-6세)의 한국어 초점사 -만 ‘only’에 대한 이해와 발달에 관한 것이다. 심리언어학적 관점에서 초점사 -만은 문장 내에서 초점성분을 결정하고 그것에 대한 대조적 정보를 문맥에서 유추하도록 한다. 본 연구는 한국어 유아들이 -만의 정확한 이해를 위하여 필요 되는 대조적 정보 유추 능력을 조사하기 위하여 오프라인과 온라인 실험을 실시하였다. 진리 가치판단 (Truth Value Judgment) 오프라인 실험을 통하여 한국인 유아들은 화용적 정보를 활용하여 -만에 대한 대조적 정보를 성공적으로 유추함을 보였다. 이 결과는 온라인 실험 결과와의 일치를 보였다. DIY 아이 트랙커를 사용하여 실시된 온라인 실험 결과 유아는 초점사 -만을 들은 후 대조적 정보를 나타내는 개체에 눈멈춤 비율이 높게 나타난 것으로 관찰되었다. 이 연구 결과들을 통하여 5~6세의 한국인 유아들이 -만을 포함한 문장을 처리할 때 어떠한 처리 체계를 갖추고 있는지를 밝혀내는데 기여를 하였다. 유아의 문장 이해 ‘과정’을 실시간으로 관찰할 수 있는 온라인 실험을 통해서 그들의 인지능력에 대한 새로운 통찰력을 제시한 점이 주목할 만하다. This study attempts to investigate how Korean-speaking children aged from 5 to 6 comprehend sentences containing -man ‘only’. From psycholinguistic perspectives, the comprehension of a sentence with -man is a process of determining what is in focus and the costly computation of a contrast set with regard to the focused constituent. The current experimental investigation into whether they are able to compute a contrast set provides off-line and on-line evidence of their pragmatic inferencing required for the correct interpretation of -man. In the Truth Value Judgment Task combined with DIY eye-tracking paradigm(Crain and Thornton, 1998; Shin, 2007), children’s responses to target sentences with -man attached to subject constituents or -man to object constituents are analyzed along with eye movements and fixations. The off-line result obtained shows that children correctly respond to sentences -man. And the on-line data provides more conclusive evidence that this correct interpretation of -man derives from the computation of contrast sets. There is a high proportion of eye fixations on subject-contrast sets for subject-focused sentences and object contrast sets for object-focused sentences. It indicates that children are adult-like in inferring the contrast information, which contributes to charting children’s processing mechanism of Korean focus particle -man.

The Interpretation of Scalar Implicature: The Acquisition of even

( So Young Kim ) 한국외국어대학교 언어연구소 2012 언어와 언어학 Vol.0 No.54

Despite the active discussion on the pragmatic feature of even from theoretical perspectives, there has been no experimental investigation into children’s sensitivity to scalar implicature in sentences with even. This study aims to investigate how English-speaking children aged from 4 to 5 derive scalar implicature of even. To examine children’s calculation of implicature, a guessing task was created. The results suggest that, unlike adults, preschoolers are unaware of the scalar implicature that the focus particle even induces. a general picture emerged of two child groups with different capabilities for computing scalar implicature. The first group consistently failed for both sentence types with even; the second group consistently succeeded for both sentence types with even.

The Contextual Effect on the Comprehension of the English Focus Particle only

( So Young Kim ) 대한언어학회 2011 언어학 Vol.19 No.1

The Linguistic Association of Korea Journal. 19(1). 117-136. Using a Truth-Value Judgment task (Crain & Thornton, 1998), this study investigates how English-speaking children (4 and 5 years old) understand only with the help of a context that facilitates construction of a contrast set. In order to investigate the role of context, children received (1) neutral contexts that do not contain the discoursal connector but, and therefore do not provide any contrast information, and (2) contrast contexts coordinated by but, which builds a discourse relation of contrast, thus guiding children to establish the contrast between a focus and a set of alternatives. The results reveal that in the neutral context condition, English-speaking children made errors by failing to restrict the scope of only (Crain et al., 1994) than failing to generate information (Paterson et al., 2003). Furthermore, they showed different levels of difficulty with scope assignment depending on the syntactic position of only. However, children were significantly better with respect to scope assignment when there was a contrastive context involving but.

The Online Processing of Ambiguous Sentences with a Focus Particle only

( So Young Kim ) 대한언어학회 2012 언어학 Vol.20 No.1

This study investigates how English-speaking children (5-6 years old) interpret, in real time, scope ambiguous sentences with a preverbal only as in Charlie is only walking the dog. → Charlie is walking [only the dog] (NP Scope) → Charlie is [only walking the dog] (VP Scope). Prior research suggests adults favor NP scope while children prefer VP scope (Crain et al. 1994). An eye-movement-during-listening paradigm was employed in which participants heard a description of a picture and their eye movements were video-recorded. Also the task used a context-based methodology in which contextual information was provided to help children compute contrast information. The results show that like adults capable of accessing NP scope interpretation, children exhibit a NP scope interpretation. In contrast to previous reports of children`s failure to use contrast information (Paterson et al. 2003), the present study found that children employed contrast information and resolve focus ambiguity by assigning NP scope. This suggests that children, despite presumably less-developed pragmatic knowledge, have the ability to mentally compute a contrast set for sentences with only and access an NP scope interpretation in an adult-like way with the help of contexts.

The Online Processing of Ambiguous Sentences with a Focus Particle only

김소영 대한언어학회 2012 언어학 Vol.20 No.1

This study investigates how English-speaking children (5-6 years old) interpret, in real time, scope ambiguous sentences with a preverbal only as in Charlie is only walking the dog. → Charlie is walking [only the dog] (NP Scope)→ Charlie is [only walking the dog] (VP Scope). Prior research suggests adults favor NP scope while children prefer VP scope (Crain et al. 1994). An eye-movement-during-listening paradigm was employed in which participants heard a description of a picture and their eye movements were video-recorded. Also the task used a context-based methodology in which contextual information was provided to help children compute contrast information. The results show that like adults capable of accessing NP scope interpretation, children exhibit a NP scope interpretation. In contrast to previous reports of children’s failure to use contrast information (Paterson et al. 2003), the present study found that children employed contrast information and resolve focus ambiguity by assigning NP scope. This suggests that children, despite presumably less-developed pragmatic knowledge, have the ability to mentally compute a contrast set for sentences with only and access an NP scope interpretation in an adult-like way with the help of contexts.

Semantic Interpretation of Korean Focus Particle -man "only" in Language Acquisition

So Young Kim 언어과학회 2011 언어과학연구 Vol.57 No.-

This study investigates how Korean-speaking children understand sentence containing a focus particle -man. In Experiment 1, children aged from 4-6 years and adults compared sentences with -man in different syntactic positions against pictures that matched or mismatched events described by the sentence. I found that children predominantly made errors by failing to use syntactic information to restrict the scope of -man to the following constituents rather than errors in which they failed to contrast information. However, in Experiment 2, with the help of context that facilitates construction of a contrast set, children are better with respect both to scope assignment and computation of an alternative set. These results indicate that discourse factors are at work in the developmental stage and can enable children to be adult-like in the comprehension of a sentence with -man.