The present paper addresses Korean EFL learners’ acquisition of psych-verb and unaccusative constructions from a processing point of view. Korean learners’ interlanguage psych-verb constructions and unaccusative constructions are marked by underpassivization and overpassivization, respectively. While both kinds of errors are observed in Korean learners’ data, the processing account of language acquisition predicts that learners will commit underpassivization errors more frequently than overpassivization errors because passivization requires more processing. In order to see if the acquisition of psych-verb and unaccusative constructions is affected by the processing complexity of passivization, the present study compared learners’ performance on psych-verb and unaccusative constructions. Ninety six university students performed a timed grammaticality judgment task on the two types of constructions. The comparison of the learner performances between psych-verb and unaccusative constructions revealed that the learners were more accurate with psych-verb constructions than with unaccusative constructions. The learners’ accuracy with psych-verb constructions increased faster than unaccusative constructions, with the increase of the overall proficiency. The findings suggest that while processibility might be a major issue for low-level learners, there are other factors such as L1 transfer that exert a pervasive influence on the acquisition of psych-verb and unaccusative constructions.

This study investigated which type of corrective feedback, direct feedback or indirect feedback, would be more effective for reducing the targeted errors−verb, noun, and determiner errors−in L2 writing. The 20 Korean EFL college students were divided into two feedback conditions: direct feedback and indirect coded feedback. The results of the study showed that only the errors in the noun category, not the other two categories, showed a significant decrease over time. There were no significant differences in the effect of the differential feedback. The post surveys and interviews revealed that the students in both groups had difficulty in understanding their errors and feedback on them, and they wanted to receive a more detailed explanation about their errors in order to fully understand them. The overall findings indicate that different types of corrective feedback need to be combined with other methods such as a one-to-one conference or mini-lesson for further helping students understand their errors and reduce other errors in the future. This study provides L2 teachers with valuable information on how to respond more effectively to the needs of L2 learners.

This study explores the morpho-syntactic properties of the ‘overgenerated be’ that appears between a subject and a thematic verb (e.g., she is go home) produced by Korean-speaking English learners, and discusses how the overgenerated be reflects L2 inflection development. I argue that the overgenerated be initially functions as a topic marker, but then develops into a verbal inflection. A total of 377 writings of 23 first-year Korean middle school students were examined for the study. The students were divided into three groups based on their English proficiency. The overgenerated be was found mostly in the two lowest proficiency groups: the lowest proficiency group used the overgenerated be as a topic marker, while the medium proficiency group used the ‘overgenerated be’ as a verbal inflection to mark tense.

翻訳という作業は母語とターゲットランギジとのミュチュアル·コンビネーション作用(mutual combination working)によって行われる行為と言える。翻訳には母語からターゲットランギジとその逆方向があり得るが、本稿では前者のことに焦点を当てることにした。本研究では、一般的に翻訳からやさしいと思われている一対一の対応が割りとはっきりする名詞の件について韓国語から日本語への転換において起こる問題と、ふつう一対一の対応が難しいと言われている韓国語の副詞、修飾語としての役割を担当している形容詞の問題主に取り上げることにした。本稿では、韓国文学作品の日本語翻訳に見える表現の多義性(ambiguity)に対し、翻訳専門家グループの翻訳文を通して照明を省てることにより、翻訳に現れる数々の判断に関わる事項を調査分析した。その一つとして、主語の扱いが翻訳者によって文脈を考慮した苦択に強いられることが多々あることである。主語は時には省略された形で現れることもあった。韓日翻訳においてはテンスとアスペクトの問題も対応に注目する必要があった。韓国での「-ㅆ다」は単純過去を表す機能を持っている。しかし、日本語文では「-た」形を用いることがあれば、時制が「現在」に置き換えられることもある。ナイダは、翻訳を「Formal Equivalence」と「Dynamic Equivalence」で分けている。本稿を通して良い翻訳とは何かについても枠を広げてみたい。