Interpretation of scope ambiguity has long been studied by many linguists. While Ioup (1975) suggested that the grammatical relations and the quantifier hierarchies influence the scope interpretation of quantifiers within a clause, Fodor (1982) and O... Interpretation of scope ambiguity has long been studied by many linguists. While Ioup (1975) suggested that the grammatical relations and the quantifier hierarchies influence the scope interpretation of quantifiers within a clause, Fodor (1982) and O'Grady et al. (2009) argued for the immediate assignment of NP interpretation during sentence processing. More recently, these claims have been put to test in experimental studies (Kurtzman & MacDonald, 1993; Su, 2001; Anderson, 2004; Filik et al, 2004). The purpose of the present study is to investigate the scope interpretation of English double object and dative constructions by native English () and Korean undergraduate students. Depending on level of their English proficiency, the latter speakers were assigned into two groups: the AL (advanced level) and IL (intermediate level). The study focused on four types of combinations (namely, ‘every-a’, ‘a-every’, ‘two-every’, and ‘every-two’) in double object and dative constructions, respectively. The research questions investigated in the present study are as follows. First, what is the difference between the preferred scope interpretation between native English and Korean speakers of English? Second, is there any difference in the preferred scope interpretation among the Korean speakers of English with different levels of English proficiency? Third, is there any difference in the preferred scope interpretation between 'a-every' and 'two-every' combinations in the two groups? The results of our experiment suggest that the group significantly differed in the scope interpretation among the eight sentence types tested in the study. In both ‘a-every’ and ‘two-every’ combinations, the wide-scope reading of indefinites was strongly preferred in the sentences with indefinite indirect objects. The subjects also preferred the universal wide-scope reading in the double object sentences whose indirect object was ‘every’. However, the group did not prefer any scope interpretation in the dative sentences whose indirect object was ‘every’. The AL (advanced level) and the IL (intermediate level) Korean speakers of English preferred the wide-scope reading of indefinites in all types of the target sentences. The AL group showed a significant difference in the scope interpretation among the sentence types in ‘two-every’ combination but not in ‘a-every’ combination. The difference pattern in scope interpretation between the sentence types was similar to that of the group. Furthermore, their scope interpretation of ‘two-every’ double object and dative sentences showed a statistical difference as well. The IL group showed a strong preference for the wide-scope reading of indefinites in all types of the target sentences, but no statistically significant differences were observed. The present study also analyzed the statistical differences in the scope interpretation of eight sentence types to establish whether 'a' and ‘every’ are interchangeable, and thus belong to the same category. The results suggest that the group showed a significant difference between the sentences in which indirect objects were ‘a’ in ‘a-every’ combination, as well as in which indirect objects were ‘every’ in ‘two-every’ combination. There was also a statistically significant difference between ‘every-a’ double object sentences whose indirect objects were ‘every’ and the sentences in which indirect objects were ‘two’ in ‘two-every’ combination. The AL group showed a difference only between ‘every-a’ double object and ‘two-every’ double object sentences whose statistical difference was the largest. All the eight sentence types had no significant difference in the IL group. That is, all tested sentence types represented the same statistical result even when ‘a’ and ‘two’ were switched in each group. Thus, ‘a’ and ‘two’ can be considered as belonging to the same category, which influences the scope interpretation. This study accounted for the experimental results based on grammatical and quantifier hierarchies from Ioup (1975) and referential interpretation of indefinites from Fodor (1982). Our results suggest that competition between various principles affects the scope interpretation by native English speakers. In Korean speakers of English, however, the preference for the wide-scope reading of indefinites, regardless of the sentence types, was observed, which can explained in terms of cardinal and presuppositional readings of the Korean non-floating quantifiers. ，韩语论文，韩语论文范文 |
