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August 2016 - April 2017
Education
March 2011 - February 2013
March 2000 - February 2007
Publications
Publications (81)
This study investigated how second language (L2) learners process the Korean numeral quan-tifier construction by using transferable and nontransferable information. For Chinese-speaking learners of Korean (Chinese group), agreement between an honorific numeral quantifier and a noun in Korean constitutes transferable information in the canonical str...
Based on usage-based approaches to language learning, this study investigated how second language (L2) writers use verbs and argument structure constructions across different genres, while also exploring how this genre effect interacts with L2 writing proficiency. We analyzed five previously established usage-based indices using a learner corpus co...
This study investigates how second language (L2) learners engage in prediction based on their processing goals. While prediction is a prominent feature of human sentence comprehension in first-language speakers, it remains less understood when and how L2 learners engage in predictive processing. By conducting a visual-world eye-tracking experiment...
This study investigates L2 learners' sensitivity to conventional and unconventional dative constructions in English. Experiment 1 focused on measuring EFL learners' acceptability judgment and real-time processing of sentences containing both types of constructions. Experiment 2, involving ESL learners, aimed to explore the modulating effects of L2...
Based on usage-based constructionist approaches, this study investigates verb cohesion in second language (L2) production through a semantic network analysis of written and spoken modalities. Focusing on four argument structure constructions of varying complexities, we examine the extent of semantic cohesion of verbs within these constructions acro...
While verbs and argument structure constructions are essential for deriving sentence meaning, their roles in sentence processing remains less known. To address this issue, the present study explored how a verb's lexical properties and the strength of verb-construction associations influence second language (L2) sentence processing. In two self-pace...
This study explores the effects of second language (L2) proficiency and the extent of exposure to the L2 on how L2 learners process nonlocal subject-verb agreement in English. A group of 61 adult Tagalog-English bilinguals, who began learning English before the age of 11, and a control group of 23 native speakers of English completed acceptability...
It is well-established that comprehenders rapidly integrate incoming information incrementally during sentence processing. While extensive research has explored this phenomenon in Indo-European languages, the processing dynamics in typologically distinct languages, particularly those with head-final structures like Korean, remain underexplored. To...
Microteaching is a pedagogical approach that allows educators to enhance their teaching techniques through practice and feedback in controlled, classroom-like environments. This study uses multimodal conversation analysis to investigate how pre-service teachers at a Korean university, with English as their second language, manage student participat...
This study investigated the effect of pronominal reference on the integration of syntactic and semantic information in second language (L2) processing. We conducted a self-paced reading task involving 60 adult Korean-speaking learners of English and 44 native English speakers. The experiment manipulated the semantic congruity between a subject and...
This study investigated the extent to which second language (L2) learners experience difficulties when integrating multiple sources of information at internal and external interfaces, and how their first language (L1) influences this integration process. Two groups of L2 Korean learners, including Chinese and Japanese speakers, as well as native Ko...
Given the lack of computational tools available for assessing second language (L2) production in Korean, this study introduces a novel automated tool called the Korean Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (KOSCA) for measuring syntactic complexity in L2 Korean production. As an open-source graphic user interface (GUI) developed in Python, KOSCA provides s...
The current study investigates whether first language (L1) transfer persists among second language (L2) learners with advanced proficiency. Specifically, the study examines the differences in interpretation of the Korean reflexives caki and caki-casin in bi-clausal sentences between adults with L1 backgrounds in Chinese and Azerbaijani, both of who...
The present study introduces a novel instructional approach to teaching a Chinese construction to college students in a foreign language classroom. Based on the framework of the construction-grammar approach to language acquisition, this study tested the effect of construction-based teaching, which integrates formal and semantic aspects of language...
Plural marking differs across languages. Some must mark plurality using an overt morpheme (e.g. English, Russian), while others mark it optionally (e.g. Korean) or lack an explicit plural morpheme (e.g. Chinese). This crosslinguistic difference in plural marking has received much attention in research exploring language transfer in the context of L...
It remains an open question whether second language (L2) learners can process linguistic properties at the syntax–discourse interface. This study examines this issue in the context of the L2 processing of Korean dative sentences under different information structure requirements. Given that discourse constraints associated with information structur...
It has been demonstrated that structural priming affects ambiguity resolution. However, whether structural priming affects the processing of silent ambiguous structures has not been discussed in depth. This study investigates the impact of structural priming on the comprehension of silent ambiguous structures, focusing on null object constructions...
The present study investigated the effects of two usage-related factors-modality (written vs. spoken) and language learning contexts (EFL vs. ESL)-on lexical sophistication in second language (L2) production. We measured 14 features of lexical sophistication in written and spoken texts produced by EFL and ESL learners with matched proficiency. The...
This study investigates whether child second language (L2) learners can use syntactic information during the processing of sentences involving unbounded dependencies and how their processing patterns compare to those of child monolinguals and adult L2 learners. Through a self-paced reading experiment involving the numeral quantifier (NQ) constructi...
Despite the vast body of literature concerning automatic analyses of L2 production, there is limited research on L2 spoken production. Furthermore, investigations into L2 sentence production abilities have predominantly been centered around sentence length. To provide more sophisticated descriptions of L2 syntactic sophistication, this study examin...
There are two major approaches to Korean null objects: one is the argument ellipsis analysis, and the other is the null pronoun analysis. These two approaches make different predictions regarding the reading preference among two possible interpretations (strict reading vs. sloppy reading). However, there has been limited quantitative research condu...
Sentences involving negation and quantifiers can introduce ambiguity, and speakers from different languages often exhibit varying preferences for scope interpretation. This study investigated to what extent Chinese- and Russian-speaking children, who learned Korean as a second language (L2), demonstrate native-like scope interpretations. Additional...
Based on usage-based constructionist approaches to language development, this study investigates the validity of constructional complexity as a predictor of writing proficiency of Korean EFL learners. We analyzed argumentative essays produced by Korean EFL learners and compared a prediction model that uses English argument structure constructions w...
Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: Previous studies show conflicting findings regarding bilingual processing of target information not instantiated in learners’ first language. The current study addresses this issue by investigating whether Chinese speakers can integrate case-marking information, which is unique to Korean, with locativ...
This study explores how input-driven activity through extensive reading leads to syntactic growth in young students' written production. Twenty-six young students learning English as a foreign language participated in extensive reading as an additional activity after school for a month (ER group), and their syntactic development was inspected by an...
This study examines tutor-initiated error-correction sequences in one-to-one consultations for second language (L2) writing. Using conversation analysis (CA), the paper presents three examples illustrating what the tutor does to help tutees come up with solutions to grammar problems in their essays. The detailed analysis demonstrates how the tutor'...
Although syntactic complexity features both length-based syntactic complexity and syntactic sophistication, previous research has predominantly focused on length-based complexity. Against this background, this study aimed to test the validity of syntactic sophistication including usage-based indices in explaining L2 writing proficiency, in comparis...
One of the important components in second language (L2) development is to produce clause-level units of form-meaning pairings or argument structure constructions. Based on the usage-based constructionist approach that language development entails an ability to use more diverse, more complex, and less frequent constructions, this study tested whethe...
There is little consensus as to whether the use of implicit causal biases is driven exclusively by verb semantics or mediated by an interaction of verb semantics and other information sources. We tested whether the topic status of a subject modulates Korean speakers’ referential choices and processing in the interpretation of implicit consequential...
It remains an open question whether second language (L2) learners can process linguistic properties at the syntax–discourse interface. This study examines this issue in the context of the L2 processing of Korean dative sentences under different information structure requirements. Given that discourse constraints associated with information structur...
Two theoretical viewpoints provide different explanations about how people extract statistical regularities from input to assess the felicity of verb usage in a sentence. The lexical approach emphasizes the role of verb frequency in determining a verb’s distributional bias within a sentence, whereas the entrenchment hypothesis highlights the conjoi...
This study tested the effect of topicality information encoded in a topic-marked subject in Korean speakers' predictive processing of implicit consequentiality sentences when topicality and implicit consequentiality create biases in opposite directions. Findings from a visual world eye-tracking experiment showed Korean speakers' predictive looks to...
This study explores how input-focused implicit learning through extensive reading (ER) facilitates construction development in Korean-speaking young EFL students. Twenty-four EFL students, 10–13 years old, participated in ER as an after-school activity for four weeks (ER group). Their construction development in writing was assessed using seven arg...
This study investigated the effects of cross-linguistic influence in Japanese speakers’ integration of morphological and syntactic information during the processing of Korean transitive causative constructions. We examined whether Japanese speakers would process two types of Korean causative constructions as efficiently as native speakers: (a) when...
This study investigated the role of cross-linguistic influence in L2 learners' integration of a verb and a construction during online English sentence processing. In a self-paced reading task, L1-English speakers and Chinese-L1 learners of English read the English double-object and prepositional dative constructions with verbs whose Chinese transla...
This study investigated the unresolved issue of potential sources of heritage language attrition. To test contributing effects of three learner variables-age of second language acquisition, length of residence, and language input-on heritage children's lexical retrieval accuracy and speed, we conducted a real-time word naming task with 68 children...
Extending previous findings on adult L2 learners' integration of verbal and constructional information, this study investigated how child learners of English as a foreign language produce verbs in target constructions and whether (a) receptive skills and (b) the specific production modality (spoken versus written) modulate the integration process....
How strongly a verb is associated with a construction plays a crucial role in the learning of argument structure constructions. We examined the effect of verb–construction association strength on second language (L2) constructional generalization by analysing L2 learners’ production and comprehension of two complex constructions (i.e. ditransitive...
This study tested the validity of a computer-based picture-naming tool, the HALA task, to measure the effect of bilingual children's language exposure in their word retrieval skills. We used this task to address an unresolved issue of whether a relative amount of language input is more strongly associated with a relative versus an absolute language...
This study investigated whether Chinese speakers can acquire features associated with the embedded wh-phrase in Korean. Researchers have made different predictions regarding L2 parameter resetting. Some approaches claim that L1 parameter values can be successfully reset to L2-specific values, whereas others predict consistent difficulty in L2 param...
This study investigates how speakers of English and Korean, two typologically distinct languages, derive information from a verb and a construction to achieve sentence comprehension. In a sentence-sorting task, we manipulated verb semantics (real versus nonce) in each language. The results showed that participants from both languages were less incl...
The present study investigated the effects of construction-based instruction on Korean English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' production of the English argument structure constructions. Within the theoretical framework of construction grammar (Goldberg, 1995), the authors presented college students with English constructions in a hierarchica...
Attraction effects arise when a comprehender erroneously retrieves a distractor instead of a target item during memory retrieval operations. In Korean, considerable processing difficulties occur in the agreement relation checking between a subject and an honorific-marked predicate when an intervening distractor carries a non-honorific feature. We i...
Languages differ in the preferences for the interpretation of the scope relation between negation and a quantifier. This study investigates the understudied issue of how interpretive preferences associated with a quantifier scope in learners’ L1 and L2 affect their scope interpretations in L3 acquisition. Based on the current models of L3 acquisiti...
Implicit causality (IC) is a well-known phenomenon whereby certain verbs appear to create biases to remention either their subject or object in a causal dependent clause. This study investigated to what extent Korean learners of English made use of IC information for predictive processing at a discourse level, and whether L2 proficiency played a mod...
This study investigated the effects of construction types on Korean-L1 English-L2 learners' verb-construction integration in online processing by presenting the ditransitive and prepositional dative constructions and manipulating the verb's association strength within these constructions. Results of a self-paced reading experiment showed that the L...
The low input saliency of English personal pronouns causes persistent difficulties in second language acquisition despite their highly frequent nature. The present study aims to examine how different types of input-based instruction improve the learning of English personal pronouns in young learners. Grounded on the main tenets of the formal and fu...
Learner corpus studies using syntactic complexity as a construct for characterizing learner proficiency have found that higher proficiency permits learners to produce more complex syntactic structures. However, the majority of previous studies have focused on writing, almost exclusively with adult L2 learners. Given the fundamentally different mech...
The present study explores how the manifestation of modernity identity via English mixing in Korean TV commercials has changed over the last 13 years. Since Lee’s (2006) analysis of Korean TV commercials broadcast in 2002, there has been changes in the English education system, and the number of proficient bilinguals has greatly increased in Korea....
The constructionist approach holds that an argument structure construction, a conventionalized form–meaning correspondence of a sentence, allows language users to efficiently access sentential information. This study investigated whether increased sensitivity to constructional information would enable second language learners to efficiently fuse info...
This study investigates whether the usage patterns of resultative constructions (e.g., The lake froze solid; Tom painted the wall white) in argumentative essays written by Korean-speaking learners of English follow the usage-based principles influencing first language acquisition. Specific research questions addressed in this study are: a) whether...
This study investigates how the strength of referential biases associated with implicit vs explicit causality predicates in Korean affects Korean-speaking learners' reference choices in English. Sentence-completion experiments with Korean (Experiment 1a) and English (1b) native speakers showed that Korean speakers referred to the subject more follo...
The current study investigates effects of cross-linguistic activation of referential bias in bilingual processing of English implicit causality verbs in offline and online processing. Specifically, it provides evidence of the influence of cross-language activation at a word level on biases in subsequent sentence interpretation in offline but not on...
This study investigated whether Chinese-speaking L2 learners of Korean can acquire Korean causa-tive constructions (i.e. morphological and analytic causatives) and make use of the relevant knowledge in real-time sentence comprehension. Korean morphological causatives allow the causee to be marked by an accusative case, but not by a nominative case....
Effects of cross-linguistic activation in L2 learners have been demonstrated abundantly at the word level (e.g., Dijkstra, 2005; Prior, Degani, Awawdy, Yassin & Korem, 2017; Van Assche, Duyck & Brysbaert, 2013), yet less is known about the consequences of cross-language activation at the word level on processing at the sentence and discourse levels...
Visual-world eye-tracking study on L2 learners' use of remention bias(implicit causality) information
This study investigated whether Chinese–Korean bilinguals can use structure-based information to interpret Korean sentences containing floating numeral quantifiers during online processing. A numeral quantifier in Korean can be stranded from its modified noun through scrambling as long as the quantifier forms a constituent with the noun. For Chines...
A usage-based constructional approach views language development as a gradual accumulation of abstract constructional knowledge through exposure to language in use [1][2][3] [4]. This study tested this account in second language (L2) acquisition by investigating the extent to which frequency of Argument Structure Constructions (ASCs) and Verb-Const...
This study investigated offline and online comprehension of Korean locative alternation by Chinese-speaking second language (L2) learners of Korean. An acceptability judgment task and an online self-paced reading task were conducted with Chinese learners of Korean at higher-and lower-proficiency levels along with a control group of native Korean sp...
Rah, Yangon & Kim, Hyunwoo (2018). Construction-based approach to teaching the English resultative construction to Korean EFL learners. System, 72(1), 1–12.
This study investigates the extent to which young EFL students rely on path-breaking verbs in the comprehension and production of English argument structure constructions. In a sentence-sorting task, Korean EFL learners in grades 7 and 10 sorted English sentences, which were created by crossing four verbs with four constructions, into same groups a...
This study tested two hypotheses about bilingual sentence processing. The shallow structure hypothesis claims that (morpho)syntactic representations in bilinguals are defective, making it difficult for bilinguals to engage in structure-based processing[1]. Other perspectives maintain that achieving high proficiency in a target language (TL) can ena...
Acknowledgments We appreciate William O'Grady for sharpening the idea of this research project and improving the poster, the UH Language Acquisition Reading Group for insightful feedback, and Haerim Hwang for suggesting ideas on poster design. We are also grateful to Language Beyond Classroom at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa.
There is considerable debate as to whether advanced L2ers can (come to) process sentences in a native-like manner [1], [2] . Pliatsikas and Marinis (P&M) [3] argued that native-like L2 syntactic processing may depend on substantial naturalistic exposure to the Target Language (TL): They found that in the processing of long-distance wh-dependencies...
There is a broad consensus that different types of discourse referents (e.g., reflexives, pronouns, referential expressions) give rise to different degrees of accessibility in the course of referential processing. For example, several studies have shown that pronouns are more highly accessible and thus easier to process relative to other referent t...
This study investigates the production patterns of English phrasal verbs (PV) by Korean-speaking foreign language learners of English, with a special focus placed on two structural features of PVs, namely, transitivity and particle placement. It offers a developmental perspective by analysing the production performance of PVs for three learner corp...
This study investigates the influence of the semantic heaviness of verbs (i.e., heavy or light verbs) and language proficiency on second language (L2) learners' use of constructional information in a sentence-sorting task and a corpus analysis. Previous studies employing a sentence-sorting task demonstrated that advanced L2 learners sorted English...
The bilingual mental lexicon contains representations that are at least partially shared at multiple levels (semantic, form) between languages, as seen in non-selective activation, cross- language interaction, and translation priming effects (Dijkstra&vanHeuven2002; DuñabeitiaEtAl 2010; GollanEtAl1997). These effects have been demonstrated abundant...
Verb-based implicit causality information is used to resolve reference (e.g., Garvey & Caramazza, 1974). Implicit causality verbs allow for inferences about the causality of an event, thus making some referents more likely for subsequent mention. For example, the verbs frighten and annoy imply the subject as the underlying cause of the ‘frighten/an...
This study investigates whether intermediate-level Chinese L2ers of Japanese use structure-based information to interpret Japanese sentences containing floating numeral quantifiers (NQs). The linear approach predicts that the learners will connect floating NQs with linearly closest noun phrases (NPs), whereas the structural approach predicts the le...
The present study investigated advanced Korean-speaking L2 learners’ acquisition of English unaccusative verbs in comparison with unergatives and transitives from a processing point of view. Despite the fact that L2 acquisition should be seen as a manifestation of the learners’ implicit knowledge, little empirical study has investigated the direct...
The present study aims to explore developmental patterns of constructional knowledge of Korean EFL learners. The study asked 120 Korean learners of English to carry out a sentence sorting and a translation task, and investigated how the participants at three different proficiency levels use their constructional knowledge to comprehend English sente...