The purpose of this study is to investigate the acquisition of Korean tense morphemes of Thai learners. Various contrastive analysis studies on tense in Korean and tense in Thai have been conducted steadily; however, only some of them target Thai lear...
The purpose of this study is to investigate the acquisition of Korean tense morphemes of Thai learners. Various contrastive analysis studies on tense in Korean and tense in Thai have been conducted steadily; however, only some of them target Thai learners of Korean. More importantly, the study on Korean tense morphemes with Thai learners as the subjects has yet to be executed.
Thai as an isolated language is different from Korean in term of word order, resulting in different range of tense morphemes. Therefore, it is easy for Thai learners of Korean to face difficulty in learning Korean tense morphemes. And the lack of the understanding in tense can cause trouble in communication. In order to find an effective way to educate Thai learners on tense morphemes, we need to understand the learners’ acquisition aspect of Korean tense morphemes. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine how Thai learners acquire Korean tense morphemes.
Chapter I explains the objective of this study as well as the advanced research on tense in Korean and tense in Thai. The research problems include the followings: first, what are the differences between Thai learners of Korean and Korean native speakers in using tense in Korean? Second, does proficiency level of Thai learners of Korean have an influence on the acquisition of tense in Korean?
Chapter II suggests the theoretical background. Here, the semantic characteristics of tense in Korean and tense in Thai, in addition to the comparison of tense systems of the two languages, are brought into consideration.
Consequently, chapter III explains the tool used in this research. A grammaticality judgment test was developed as a measure to examine the acquisition aspect of tense in Korean of Thai learners. The experiment participants were a total of 100 participants: 25 beginning Thai-speaking learners, 25 intermediate Thai-speaking learners, and 50 Korean native speakers.
Chapter IV describes the results of the experiment using the tool suggested in Chapter III. The results include the following: firstly, statistically significant differences between Thai learners of Korean’s and Korean native speakers’ aspects of tense use in almost all semantic functions. The results of the grammaticality judgment test show the highest percentage of correct answers to the lowest in this order: ‘simultaneous indication of present point of time and past point of time’, ‘planned action in the future’, ‘future action’, ‘action that took place at a point of time in the past’, ‘an attribute of thing or personality of a person’, ‘general fact’, ‘situation that progressed in a certain period of time in the past’, ‘supposition of conditional future situation’, ‘intention’, ‘action that took place repeatedly in the past’, ‘present state of things, feelings’, ‘situation that was completed in a particular point of time’, ‘present progressive’, ‘a habit in the present, repetition’, ‘past condition or feelings’, ‘supposition or prediction’, ‘a situation that is completed in the present’, ‘present condition’, ‘action that took place in the past and has progressed up to the present’, and ‘action that takes place in the present or to be completed soon’. Excluding ‘simultaneous indication of present point of time and past point of time’, the rest of the list displays statistically meaningful differences between Thai learners of Korean and native Korean speakers.
Secondly, when Thai speaking participants were classified into more advanced learners and beginning learners, both groups of learners showed statistically meaningful differences in using Korean tense according to semantic characteristics in five semantic functions, which were ‘past condition or feelings’, ‘situation that is completed in the present’, ‘situation that was completed in a particular point of time’, ‘supposition or prediction’, and ‘supposition of conditional future situation’. As a result, it was confirmed that level of proficiency is one of the factors of these differences.
The average scores of the advanced learners for each semantic function turned out high. However, the average scores of both groups of learners in terms of three following semantic functions: ‘action that takes place in the present or to be completed soon’, ‘present condition’, and ‘action that took place in the past and has progressed up to the present’, turned out low. The reason is that the usages of these three semantic functions are classified differently in Thai. Moreover, the fact that one’s tongue has an influence on the acquisition of tense in Korean has been assured.
Last but not least, the results and significance of this study, as well as its limitations are shown in Chapter V. In this chapter, an analysis of Thai learners of Korean’s acquisition of semantic characteristics of tense in Korean is demonstrated. However, up to the present, there has been no research on the acquisition of tense in Korean that targets Thai learners of Korean. Therefore, this research can be counted as a significant one as it is the first on this topic. Through this research, the difficulty that Thai learners of Korean face in acquiring tense in Korean was revealed. There is a hope that the results of this research will be helpful in educating Thai learners on Korean tense.
One of the limitations of this research is that the test failed to include questions of various forms. Through the questionnaire, present tense, past tense, and future tense can be defined totally 20 semantic functions only according to semantic characteristics. However, an excessive amount of questions in the grammaticality judgment test can impair the concentration of the learners. Thus, only 3 questions of each function were carried into the test. And because this research focuses on only ‘-eoyo’, ‘-eoseoyo’, and ‘-eu geoyeyo’ forms, it is necessary to conduct further research on more various forms.
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