대한언어학회 전자저널

Choe, Jinsun. (2015). Linking Problem in the L2 Acquisition of English Raising. The Linguistic Association of Korea Journal 23(4), 115-130. This study investigates whether Korean learners of English comprehend English constructions that involve raising over an experiencer (e.g., John seems to Mary to be happy). Such constructions exhibit a non-canonical mapping on the surface, which violates the Thematic Hierarchy, as the theme NP John maps to the higher syntactic position than the experiencer NP Mary. A Truth-Value Judgment Task was employed to test thirty Korean L2ers of English, whose English proficiency was measured via a C-test, and thirty-five native English speakers. The results revealed that L2ers have difficulty comprehending raising structures with an experiencer, and that more advanced learners exhibit higher levels of competence. As English raising over an experiencer is a cross-linguistically highly marked phenomenon, these findings suggest that L2ers have a tendency to follow a canonical mapping rule that links experiencers to the subject position, when they are faced with a structure that is illicit in their L1. Finally, these results are considered in relation to the previous findings on L2 acquisition of English psych verbs.

# raising # experiencer # psych verbs # linking problem # second language acquisition

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