Syntactic and Prosodic Constraints on Focus Identification in Language Acquisition (초점사의 통사론적, 운율적 제약에 관한 한국인 영어 학습자의 지식 연구)

Kim, Soyoung (김소영)

Syntactic and Prosodic Constraints on Focus Identification in Language Acquisition

인문논총
2017, 44(), pp.187-212
Publisher : Institute for Human studies, Kyungnam University
Research Area : Humanities > Other Humanities
Published : October 31, 2017

Kim, Soyoung ¹

¹동명대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The study aims to investigate how Korean learners of English identify focus in a dative construction (subject+verb+NP+PP) containing only(located between a verb and direct object NP) constrained by syntactic and prosodic information. Focus identification in sentences containing only has been claimed to be constrained by the c-command principle, that is, the constituents in the c-commanding domain of only can be focused. Prosodic information such as pitch accents, stress, intonation is also said to be integrated into the process of focus determination. In contrast to active previous studies that explored how 4- to 6-year-old English-speaking children used such syntactic and prosodic information in focus determination, there has been little research from L2 acquisition perspectives. To fill the gap, the current study attempted to reveal intermediate knowledge of Korean learners of English on syntactic and prosodic constraints, using three types of experimental sentences; sentence type 1 with postverbal only before NP+PP; sentence type 2 with a stress on PP; sentence type 3 with postverbal only and a stress on PP. In a sentence verification task, the Korean learners of English were found to consistently make use of a syntactic cue of only, thus associating it with NP. It also revealed that they were able to use prosodic information to make a stressed PP as a focused constituent. Lastly, they were found to prefer to use the syntactic constraint although prosodic information was apparently provided. It indicates that the c-command constraint plays an important role in their process of focus identification. The results can be further discussed in relation to L2 acquisition processing and English education.

KEYWORDS

focus identification, c-command, prosodic constraint, stress, L1 acquisition, L2 acquisition

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

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