본문 바로가기
  • Home

Young Children’s Acquisition of Epistemic Modality in Korean: A Longitudinal Approach.

Chang, Kyung hee 1 Kim Tae-kyung 1 박샛별 1

1한양대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

The use of modality markers is concerned with cognitive processes such as knowing and thinking. This study investigate the developmental sequence of Korean epistemic modality markers and the contextual properties of them in the utterances of young children. 4 children aged 2 years were observed in interaction with their mothers for one year. Results show that even though children may master the modality markers at different ages, the order of their acquisition is very similar. In general, children learn modality markers in such order; ‘-지’, ‘-네’ > ‘-구나’ > ‘-겠-’ > ‘-더-’. The order of morpheme acquisition seems to depend on syntactic and semantic complexity as well as frequency of exposure. And learning modality has stages from a simple expression in certain contexts to more complex expression in the contexts including perception of an event or inference.

Citation status

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