• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
• /
• v.2 no.3
• /
• pp.373-401
• /
• 2002

It is often observed that Korean migrant students overseas experience various kinds of anxieties learning English as a second language although they are in an English-speaking country like New Zealand. The context of learning English as a second language is explored by examining language anxieties experienced by recent Korean migrant students in New Zealand. 177 students were surveyed using questionnaires asking their anxieties over various contexts of English learning processes. The three stages of language anxiety of Input, Processing, and Output showed that there were some degrees of anxiety among the students at each stage depending on their ages, age at migration, and duration of residence, in particular. Students tended to experience more language anxiety in school than outside the school. It was also clear that students were experiencing more anxieties with English than with Korean in the four language skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing. Writing was commonly found in English and Korean to be the most frequent source of anxiety among the four language skills. Some implications from the results are suggested for parents, teachers, and students.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
• /
• v.2 no.3
• /
• pp.403-430
• /
• 2002

With a view to providing a unitary interpretation of a lexical item, even, this paper proposes that even be understood as a quantifier. To countenance this idea, the quantifier theories will be evaluated against the implicature accounts on the basis of conceptual and empirical evidence. With the help of Bach (1999), the quantifier theories of even are regarded as most viable and plausible. On the other hand, from among different quantifier approaches even will be viewed as a quasi-universal quantifier, which means that even is similar to the universal quantifier but still it is different from it. That is, even introduces a comparison set that is context-dependent and only the salient members of this comparison set will be taken into account when an even-sentence is to be uttered. This observation is based on the formal representation for a universal quantifier in general on the one hand and the truth-conditional contribution of even to the sentence containing it.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
• /
• v.2 no.3
• /
• pp.431-469
• /
• 2002

The main purpose of this paper is to present data about schm constructions in English and to examine them within the framework of Optimality Theory. American people sometimes reduplicate a word in deprecation using a prefix schm- or shm-, as in fancy-shmancy, and old-shmold. In these data, reduplicants surface as a copy of the whole word except the onset of the first syllable, which is replaced with schm. My data include some examples where the onset of the second syllable, not the first syllable, within the word reduplication is deleted and replaced with fixed segmentism schm, which seems to be infix rather than prefix. Above all, this study presents concrete evidence for the existence and function of ‘syllable’ and ‘foot’ known as prosodic categories by examining schm reduplication. Such extensions of schm-reduplcation also make predictions about types of outputs corresponding to their inputs.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
• /
• v.3 no.1
• /
• pp.55-88
• /
• 2003

In this paper, I will review two main theories on presupposition projection and point out their problems, and suggest the directions of a better analysis. Satisfaction theory is based on the single idea that presuppositions must be satisfied in the local context for the interpretation of a sentence. Problems occur because the theory makes only a minimal requirement on the input context for interpretation. They include the problems of weak presuppositions, unmotivated local accommodation, and projection of satisfied presuppositions. Binding theory assumes that presuppositions are anaphoric elements which can be accommodated. I will show that the syntactic notion of binding is not motivated, and claim that presupposition projection is a matter of information. Finally, I suggest the directions for a better analysis.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
• /
• v.3 no.2
• /
• pp.255-280
• /
• 2003

The present paper will argue what can be considered to be principled elements of the initial state S/sub 0/ of the Faculty of Language, which are called the Interface Condition (IC), and how far we can take the strongest minimalist thesis (SMT), which aims to offer principled explanation of language in terms of IC and the principle of efficient computation, to linguistic analysis. We will discuss implications of label-free phrase structures, required by the strong version of the Inclusiveness Condition, and possibilities of crash-free syntax, required by the condition of efficient computation. I will point out problems of Chomsky's assumption that an externally Merged expletive there is a head, which, as a probe, undergoes agreement with the goal T. I will present several advantages we obtain if we maintain A and A' distinction, and assume that wh-movement to the outer [SPEC, υ] is an A'-movement like wh-movement to [SPEC, C].

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
• /
• v.3 no.2
• /
• pp.157-180
• /
• 2003

Why should quantifiers float\ulcorner This is the question that this paper sets out to answer. In the past, research concentrated on how the theory should account for the non-constituency of a quantificational determiner and the NP it quantifies over. Successful as they might have been, those theories have little, if anything to offer as an answer to the question why quantifiers would float. Here we sketch a theory that puts the scopal properties of FQs (already observed by Dowty and Brodie, 1984) in the center of their properties. We construct a theory in which FQs are simple scope markers and float when differential scope needs to be marked.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
• /
• v.4 no.1
• /
• pp.103-116
• /
• 2004

Chomsky (2001) and Kitahara's (2002) suggestion that object shift occurs prior to movement of the νP-subject to SPEC-T is not on the right track with respect to the Merge operation. According to the Merge operation, TP is necessarily created earlier than CP. Chomsky (2001) suggests that the probe-goal relation between T and SUBJ is evaluated in the CP after it is known whether the position of as has become a trace losing its phonological content. However, the FocP is not a phase (CP). So, Chomsky (2001) and Kitahara's (2002) suggestion is not correct in the case of the movement of OBJ to the spec of Foc in English, either. The aim of this paper is to show that the νP-subject must move to SPEC- T prior to the consecutive movement of the wh-object to SPEC-C via object shift in English. This derivation obeys Chomsky's (2001) so-called probe-goal matching condition.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
• /
• v.4 no.1
• /
• pp.33-60
• /
• 2004

This study was an attempt to present an appropriate way of interpreting L2 learners' linguistic behavior within Universal Grammar (UG) framework. Based on the Korean EFL adult learners' performance on the Subjacency violation sentences, the study suggested that the EFL learners are able to acquire subtle knowledge of target grammar and their linguistic behavior should be interpreted with the most recent version of UG theory, the Minimalist Program (MP) notion. The MP notion seems more plausible to accommodate incomplete L2 grammar while acknowledging UG-constrained interlanguage which the previous version, Principles and Parameters (P&P) approach, could not explain very well. The study observed no age-effects among the Korean EFL learners in their linguistic competence measured by the performance on the UG-constraint violation sentences. Having suggested that the MP notion can be a more reasonable tool to explain the EFL learners' linguistic behavior, the study introduced comprehensive hypotheses such as Constructionist Model (CM) and the Ontogeny Phylogeny Model (OPM).

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
• /
• v.4 no.1
• /
• pp.61-81
• /
• 2004

This paper will look at some grammatical phenomena which will illustrate some of the questions that can be addressed with a corpus-based approach. We will use this approach to investigate the following subjects in English grammar: number ambiguity, subject-verb concord, concord with measure expressions, and (reflexive) pronoun choice in coordinated noun phrases. We will emphasize the distinctive features of the corpus-based approach, particularly its strengths in investigating language use, as opposed to traditional descriptions or prescriptions of structure in English grammar. This paper will show that a corpus-based approach has made it possible to conduct new kinds of investigations into grammar in use and to expand the scope of earlier investigations. Native speakers rarely have accurate information about frequency of use. A large representative corpus (i.e., The British National Corpus) is one of the most reliable sources of frequency information. It is important to base an analysis of language on real data rather than intuition. Any description of grammar is more complete and accurate if it is based on a body of real data.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
• /
• v.1 no.2
• /
• pp.211-225
• /
• 2001

The prepositional object (PO) of an active sentence in English can sometimes be passivized, becoming the subject of the corresponding passive sentence. In particular, the verb (V) and preposition (P) in the English prepositional passive (P-Passive) are assumed to be reanalyzed to form a single structural unit, giving the status of a verbal object to the PO to be passivized. However, not every V+P sequence can undergo reanalysis, permitting the passivization of POs. Thus, we have to explain what licenses the reanalysis of V and p. resulting in an acceptable P-Passive sentence. In this paper, I will identify the factors which determine the passivization possibilities of POs and explain how they interact with one another. The results of this study will illustrate how formal and functional factors work together to form a major syntactic construction and to determine its grammaticality and acceptability.