This study aims to investigate how L1 Chinese speakers of Korean acquire Korean embedded clauses with wh-expressions. Korean embedding verbs tutta ‘listen’ (Propositional-selecting predicate class) and kwungkumhata ‘wonder’ (Question-selecting predicate class) subcategorize for different types of complements which are defined by declarative complementizer ta or interrogative complementizer nunci. Tutta takes declarative or interrogative clauses and kwungkumhata can take only interrogatives. Experimental stimuli consisted of 12 embedding clauses by tutta (6 ta complementizer items and nunci complementizer items) and 12 embedding clauses by kwungkumhata(6 ta complementizer items and nunci complementizer items). Sixty three intermediate and advanced Chinese speakers of Korean(CK) participated in the study and 40 Korean native speakers(NK) participated as a control group. CK subjects were divided into 31 CK high group and 32 CK low group according to the participants’ Korean proficiency. The acceptability judgment among 3 groups were significantly different in the tutta-nunci condition and kwungkumhata-ta condition. The result showed that different learning principles were applied depending on the proficiency of learners. CK high group accepted the wh-embedding sentences in accordance with the semantic meaning of matrix verbs and type of wh-embedding clauses. However CK low group were not sensitive enough to discern the different linguistic context of wh-embedding sentences and rather accepted most of the given sentences.

By using the methodological framework of conversation analysis, this study combines a grounded study of interactional linguistics focusing on L2 speakers' interactional competence in the use of Korean sentence-ending suffix -ketun. Based on the previous studies which examined the use of -ketun in L1 Korean speakers’ conversation, this study analyzes data taken from different levels of Korean language classroom interactions, with close attention to the learner's usage of the target suffix in formulating a dispreferred response. The findings of the study demonstrate that the L2 advanced students' use of -ketun is much closer to that for L1 speakers in constituting a dispreferred response while claiming epistemic primacy. On the other hand, extremely low frequency in the use of -ketun is a distinctive linguistic-pragmatic features that characterizes use of -ketun by L2 speakers at lower levels of competence. The advanced students' diversification may be an indicator of their more adaptive, context-sensitive conduct, suggesting an increased interactional competence. Close scrutiny of the use of -ketun in this study aids to reveal whether and to what extent its interactional use by L2 speakers of different proficiency levels approaches that of L1 speakers.

We investigated the possibility of whether there is a post-vocalic ‘r’ in phonological representations of Korean L2 English speakers and the extent to which they exploit their knowledge of mapping graphemes onto phonemes within each correspondence between orthography and phonemes. First, the results obtained in the pseudohomophone task showed that R-items were responded to with higher accuracy and shorter RT than Non-R items. It suggests that there is no post-vocalic ‘r’ in phonological representations of Korean L2 speakers unlike Australian native English speakers and that Korean L2 learners are truly non-rhotic speakers. Another striking finding is that accuracy and RT for visual lexical access varied depending on the transparency between orthography and its corresponding phonemes. This indicates that Korean L2 speakers’ knowledge about the association of graphemes and phonemes varies depending on each type of correspondence between spellings and phonemes. Finally, it was found that the frequency of the base words also affected the retrieval of words along with the orthographic depth in grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences.

This study examines whether formulaic sequences might be stored and retrieved as wholes in a holistic fashion rather than analytically. Another goal is to see whether the processing of L2 sequences is affected by L2 proficiency, grammaticality and length of expressions. Grammaticality judgment task was conducted and data was collected from Korean L2 English learners of low- and intermediate-level of proficiency. First, results showed that formulaic sequences were responded more rapidly and accurately than nonformulaic sequences. This provides additional support for the claim that formulaic sequences are stored and processed as single lexical units even in L2 speakers' mental lexicon. Second, the formulaicity effect was constant at both levels, indicating that formulaic sequences are acquired and processed from the early stage of L2 development. Finally, it was found that grammatical sequences were processed more quickly and accurately than ungrammatical ones and that shorter expressions were judged faster and more accurately than longer ones, implying more efficient processing and less memory load for shorter and grammatical expressions. Building on the results in the present study, we propose a formal account for the quicker and accurate processing of formulaic sequences with reference to psycholinguistic model and processing constraints.