• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.35-56
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• 2007

The English language has developed from a language with optional subjecthood Into a language with obligatory subjecthood due to a general reduction of inflections. Two types of subject omission, pro-drop and conjunction reduction, have been reported in the history of English. Old English with rich inflections had both referential pro-drop and conjunction reduction. Middle English with much lesser inflections still witnessed pro-drop and conjunction reduction, but in such a decreasing way that modern English with a loss of inflections developed from Middle English hardly has either pro-drop or conjunction reduction. This paper explores both the phenomena relating to optional subjecthood in Old, Middle, and Modern English in light of the cognitive processes of the universal, hierarchical constraints that are assumed to be inherent in English speakers' cognitive fatuity. It is found that optional subjecthood in Old, Middle, and Modern English is correctly raptured in terms of the distinct rankings of the proposed constraints, and that it is closely related to whether each of Old, Middle, and Modern English has rich inflections.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.117-149
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• 2004

The paper is to argue against the asymmetric CP-V2 analysis of Old English, according to which finite verbs invariably undergo movement into a clause-final T within subordinate clauses and reach the functional head C within main clauses. The asymmetric CP-V2 analysis, first of all, faces difficulty in explaining a wide range of post-verbal elements within subordinate clauses. To resolve the problem, the analysis has to abandon the obligatoriness of V-to-T movement or introduce various types of extraposition whose status is dubious as a legitimate syntactic operation. Obligatory V-to-T movement in Old English lacks conceptual justification as well. Crosslinguistic evidence reveals that morphological richness in verbal inflection cannot entail overt verb movement. Moreover, the operation is always string-vacuous under the asymmetric CP- V2 analysis and has no effect at the interfaces, in violation of the principle of economy. The distribution of Old English finite verbs in main clauses also undermines the asymmetric CP-V2 analysis. Conceptually speaking, a proper syntactic trigger cannot be confirmed to motivate obligatory verb movement to C. The operation not only gets little support from nominative Case marking, the distribution of expletives, or complementizer agreement but also requires the unconvincing stipulation that expletives as well as sentence-initial subjects result from string-vacuous topicalization. Finally, textual evidence testifies that Old English sometimes permits non-V2 ordering patterns, many of which remain unexplained under the asymmetric CP-V2 analysis.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.719-744
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• 2009

This paper aims to reexamine Homorganic Cluster Lengthening in Late Old English whereby OE short vowels became lengthened before specific consonant clusters such as /-ld, -nd, -mb, -rd, -rð, -ng, -rz/. As for the motivation for this apparently odd-looking sound change, I propose that it was the result of phonologization of the phonetic lengthening of syllables containing resonants homorganic with a following voiced obstruent. Adopting Luick's (1898) view of "resonant+voiced homorganic obstruent" phonologically as a single coda, I show that Homorganic Cluster Lengthening is in fact a natural sound change that can be explained with the proper postulation of a few quantity-related universal constraints within the framework of the Optimality Theory. The fact that the constraints and their ranking as posited in this paper can also account for Pre-Cluster Shortening points to the validity of my approach in the analysis of other quantity changes in Middle English.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.509-536
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• 2001

The traditional typology of English poetic meters makes a binary division between strong-stress (or accentual) meters and accentual-syllabic (or syllable-stress or syllable-accent) meters. According to this typology, Old and Middle English alliterative poetry was composed in strong-stress meter; the iambic pentameter from Chaucer to Yeats and on to the present has been an accentual-syllabic meter. Intersecting with this literary typology is a linguistic typology that classifies languages of the world as stress-timed or syllable-timed or some mix of the two. English is a clear example of a stress-timed language. Whereas most descriptions of strong-stress meter focus on the counting of stresses, the present study focuses on the patterns of unstressed syllables between the stresses (possibly at isochronous intervals). The implications of this analysis suggest a new typology in which certain forms of English verse follow strict grammatical stress (mainly Old and Middle English, but for reasons different from “strong-stress” expectations) and other forms are shaped by a compromise of grammatical stress and the metrical template. Within this later group, iambic pentameter contrasts with trochaic, anapestic, and dipodic meters in lending itself more readily to modulation. Some of this modulation comes from an easy incorporation into iambic pentameter of elements associated with Old and Middle English meters.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.6
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• pp.1043-1065
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• 2011

This study investigates i-umlaut which occurred in the period of pre Old English (OE) in two aspects: what motivates i-umlaut in OE and how the phenomenon can be analyzed within the framework of OT. Unlike root-controlled vowel harmony, i-umlaut in OE is triggered by the suffixal i or j in the unstressed syllable whereby a stressed root vowel becomes fronted or raised. In this study, it is proposed that i-umlaut in OE is driven by the weak trigger i or j to improve its poor perception: I-umlaut improves the poor perceptibility of the weak trigger by extending its feature-either [-back] or [-low]-onto the vowel in the stressed syllable. This study provides an OT-theoretic analysis utilizing the licensing account to vowel harmony proposed by Walker (2004, 2005). The licensing constraints, IDENT-IO(F) and the locally conjoined constraints are proposed and their interaction correctly captures the pattern of i-umlaut in OE. Also, it is shown that the licensing account proposed in this paper is superior to the previous analyses as well as the nonlicensing approaches in that it can provide a perceptual motivation couched in i-umlaut in OE.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.47-61
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• 2007

The purpose of this paper is to survey the major elements that have changed English from a synthetic language to an analytic one. Therefore, this paper has looked at the differences between synthetic languages and analytic ones. In synthetic languages, the relation of words in a sentence is synthetically determined by means of inflections, while in analytic languages, the functions of words in a sentence are analytically determined by means of word order and function words. Thus, Old English with full inflectional systems shows the synthetic nature. However, in the course of time, Old English inflections came to be lost by phonetic changes and operation, which made English dependent on word order and function words to signal the relation of words in a sentence. The major phonetic changes that have shifted English are the change of final /m/ to /n/, the leveling of unstressed vowels, the loss of final /n/, and the decay of schwa in final syllables. These changes led to reduction of inflections of English as well as the loss of grammatical gender. The operation of analogy, the tendency of language to follow certain patterns and to adapt a less common form to a more familiar one, has also played an important role in changing English.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2004

This study investigated the relations of children's age, intelligence, and the concept of conservation to their learning of English. Ten 4-year-old children from 1 child-care center and 13 7-year-old children from 1 elementary school were tested after completion of 8 sessions of experimental English classes. Children's intelligence was measured by K-WPPSI for 4-year olds and K-WISC for 7-year-olds. Children were tested for number and liquid conservations. A Korean teacher with 11 years of experience of teaching children at American elementary schools taught the 2 groups with the same subjects and methods. Data were analysed by independent samples t-test, Mann-Whitney U test, and Pearson's r. The results showed that children's age and the concept of conservation were related to English learning. No statistically significant relationship with IQ was found.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.57-81
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• 2010

The purpose of this study is to examine the balanced English approach program on five-year-old children's English reading and writing ability. For this study, two classes consisting of five-year-old children in HATBEAT kindergarten in D city were selected. One class was designated as the experimental group and the other as the control group. The balanced English approach program was performed on the experimental group but not on the control group. The balanced English approach program was carried out for 8 weeks. The experimental procedures were in the order of pre-test, the experimental treatment, and post-test. The result of the experiment was evaluated by comparing the pre-test and post-test results. Analysis of data was performed by ANCOVA. The result of the study are as follows. First, in the English reading ability, the experimental group was more enhanced than the control group. Also, for sub-factors of English reading such as alphabet and English word reading ability, the experimental group was more enhanced than the control group. However, in the English book reading ability as a sub- factor of the English reading, there was not much difference in the result between the experimental group and the control group. Second, in the English writing ability, the experimental group were more enhanced than the control group.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.201-228
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• 2013

The research goal of this study is to investigate the realities and difficulties of English education for young children of North Korean refugee mothers. The subjects of this study were 201 North Korean refugee mothers of 3-5-year-old children. They were surveyed and some of them were interviewed on their children's English education. The results of the study are as follows. First, most of the North Korean refugee mothers in this study provided their children with English education since their children were 3 years old. The major reason for the English education was their children's peer group who received English education early in their lives. Their educational interaction periods with their children were less than 10 minutes, and they had their young children study English alone, focusing solely on their assignment. Next, North Korean refugee mothers claimed that the biggest difficulties for teaching English to their children were cost, lack of information, lack of time to teach English, and unsatisfactory English education. They expressed that the cost for English education was a burden on the family to some extent.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.211-231
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• 2003

The study of English words in terms of etymology has a long history, going back over 110 years since Murray et al. (1884). Scholars have therefore had lots of time to gather all kind of information on the origin of English words. In fact, Modern English is the product of a long and complex process of historical developments from a great diversity of sources. The origins and development of English words meaning ‘a vessel for washing, a bath or a toilet’ are traced from Old English to the twentieth century in this paper in terms of the semantic and/or conceptual categories of the words with their particular senses. We conclude this paper with a brief discussion of how the teaching of English words can give some feedback to both teachers and students under the circumstances of English education in Korea and/or how we come to a better understanding of this charming field of English etymology in its own right.