This study explores English L1 speakers‘ acquisition of Korean demonstratives through an investigation of how they are used in various linguistic contexts. The research on the semantic functions of Korean demonstratives is the main topic of this wo...
This study explores English L1 speakers‘ acquisition of Korean demonstratives through an investigation of how they are used in various linguistic contexts. The research on the semantic functions of Korean demonstratives is the main topic of this work. There has yet to be sufficient research on this topic.
This study explains the relationship between Korean demonstratives and their semantic functions, which are used in the learners' interlanguage process. For this purpose, the use of demonstratives in English L1 learners are investigated in regards to two major differences; one, between Korean L1 and L2 speakers, and two, among two groups at dissimilar levels of Korean proficiency. The structure and the main content of this study are as follows.
In addition to explaining the purpose of this study, Chapter I reviews previous research on learners' variation in linguistic context, the acquisition of the demonstrative function as well as the semantic function of Korean demonstratives.
Chapter Ⅱ and Chapter Ⅲ serve as the theoretical background for this study. Chapter Ⅱ discusses the interlanguage variation in linguistic context and chapter Ⅲ discusses the structuralization of the semantic functions of Korean demonstratives to capture the interlanguage variation in the linguistic context in a more systematic manner.
The semantic functions of the Korean demonstratives have already been individually mentioned by the strata of deictic use, textual use and conceptual use but I try to organize these functions in terms of distributional markedness and semantic markedness.
Distributional markedness is used to differentiate between demonstrative functions which can be divided into two categories of shared and non-shared domains between the speaker and the listener of a discourse. Semantic markedness is used to divide the semantic functions of demonstratives into semantically unmarked functions and marked functions. In the deictic use stratum, the unmarked semantic functions are related to the physical judgment based on the physical distance between the discourse participants and the objects to which are referred, as well as the unmarked semantic functions related to the psychological judgment based on the speaker's personal relationships or the emotional attitude toward the objects. The textual uses are divided into the marked semantic function, which are in turn used to refer to the previously mentioned, and the unmarked semantic function, which are used to express special and added effects in reference to the previously mentioned.
Chapter Ⅳ sets out the research methodology and decides on the method of collecting the demonstrative choices and the reasoning behind them from the learners' interlanguage. For this study, I used the questionnaire to sample the participants' demonstratives choices and the Think-aloud protocol to grasp the reasons for their choices.
In Chapter Ⅴ, two groups of English L1 learners' demonstrative uses are compared to that of Korean native speakers. The results of the analysis are interpreted as the difference in the demonstrative use of Korean native speakers and that of learners, and between the learners and the differences of learners' Korean proficiency as seen in chapter Ⅵ.
The demonstrative use of learners can be summarized based upon the frame of structural relationships among the semantic functions of demonstratives as seen in the analysis within this study. The learners of Korean demonstratives show variation according to the strata of demonstrative use. Compared to the principles used by Korean native speakers which differentiate the demonstrative forms, the principles used by learners show differences in abstraction within the demonstrative use domain.
The principle used for dividing the discourse and conceptual domain is abstracted from the principle which is used for dividing the physical domain of deictic use by speaker and listener. In contrast, the intermediate learners of Korean expand the use of the principle for dividing the physical domain into the textual domain and the conceptual use of demonstratives which leads to a difference from the use among Korean native speakers. The demonstrative use of the learners demonstrated a difference from that of Korean native speakers in a distributionally marked linguistic context. The learners use the demonstratives upon the unmarked semantic function in a distributional marked linguistic context and as a result, the use of distributional markedness by the opposition of the speaker and listener area is not found in the demonstrative use of the learners. The learners show a tendency to use the unmarked semantic functions in semantically marked linguistic contexts in their use of demonstratives.
I also find that there is a difference in the learners' demonstrative uses depending on their Korean proficiency, which can be verified in two aspects of demonstrative choices and the use of the semantic function of the demonstrative.
On the demonstrative choices of the learners, the intermediate learners show free variation in a given context but the advanced learners show comparatively systematic variation which is within the range of the demonstratives choices found among Korean native speakers.
However, the demonstratives use of the advanced learners approximates that of the Korean native speakers but they still have a gap between the use of the target language norms and the richness found among Korean native speakers.
The number of the advanced learners' choices and the semantic functions of Korean demonstratives are smaller than those of Korean native speakers and also the characteristics of the semantic functions are inclined toward the semantically unmarked ones.
Through these observations, this study explains the L2 acquisition process of the demonstrative semantic functions as well as the limitations of it. The acquisition of demonstrative semantic functions is initiated on the basis of demonstrative stratum/levels. It gradually moves toward the systematic variation phase of the demonstrative use via the free variation phase of demonstrative use. However the advanced learners who have more settled and systematic phases compared to their lower proficiency counterparts, yet still cannot improve upon their range of demonstrative level and the semantic functions which were introduced at the early stage of acquisition.
I argued for the need to intensify and expand research upon information surrounding the demonstratives' semantic functions which are introduced in current Korean textbooks. The introduction of demonstratives in the current Korean textbooks should be expanded so that the range of demonstrative strata from the deictic use which are based on the physical distance and the textual use include stratum/level to the conceptual use, and also the marked semantic functions in a rich way. This study has the meaning in that it explores second languge acquisition on the semantic meanings of demonstratives which have not been previously studied in depth and gained mainstream attention.
In addition, it captures the learners' demonstrative use based upon differentiating strata of demonstratives and dividing the semantic meanings of these by semantic and distributional markedness. This can lead to research on the learners' language variation in linguistic context.
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