Verb Bias Preferences in PP Attachment Ambiguityby Korean L2 Learners of English

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study examined Korean L2 learners’ attachment preferences for the ambiguous PP construction (V-NP-PP) and compared them to those of monolingual English speakers. Fifty Korean L2 learners of English completed a written sentence production and translation task designed to probe PP attachment preference for 50 English verbs allowing both VP and NP attachment. The test sentences were sentence-initial fragments consisting of ‘NP1-V-NP2-with’, which participants were asked to complete. The results indicated that both the monolingual English speakers and the Korean L2 learners of English exhibited an overall preference for VP attachment over NP attachment, which was consistent with previous studies. However, the proportion of VP or NP attachment preference for each specific verb varied, reflecting differences in the strength of verb bias even among verbs in the same attachment category. Further analysis revealed that the L2 learners’ PP attachment preferences for each verb were significantly correlated with L1 attachment preferences. The results suggest that L2 learners are sensitive to graded differences in PP attachment preferences of individual verbs in English and that they are able to consider lexical factors in addition to structural factors in the resolution of PP attachment ambiguity.