The present study examines the interpretation of Korean relative clauses (RC) by English speakers of L2 Korean. The purpose of the study is to see if these learners employ the same parsing strategy as native Korean speakers in the processing of a complex NP followed by a RC. Processing strategies were investigated with two different conditions, which were distinguished from each other by animacy presence in the second NP of a complex NP (e.g., chayk-ul ilk-nun apeci-uy atul ‘the son of the father who is reading a book’: [+ani, +ani] condition vs. kyosil-ey iss-nun haksayng-uy chayk ‘the book of the student who is in the classroom’: [+ani, -ani] condition). Korean speakers showed equal preference in the [+ani, +ani] condition, while they showed low attachment (LA) preference in the [+ani, -ani] condition. On the other hand, English speakers showed LA preference in both conditions. We assume that this LA preference by the English speakers might have been due to either the universal processing principle (recency) or influence from their L1, both of which make the same attachment site. The source of the Korean speakers diverging behavior is discussed on the basis of difference in verb meaning used in each condition. The discrepancy between the two language groups leads us to propose that English speakers do not rely on the same processing strategies as Korean speakers.

This paper investigates a unified semantic treatment of the variation in the interpretation arising from would-conditional constructions within Kratzer’s (1991) framework of modality. According to Kratzer’s framework, the modal base and the ordering source are two important parameters that are involved in disambiguating modalized expressions. However, this paper argues that the ordering sources, rather than the modal base, play a crucial role in disambiguating the different interpretations of would-conditionals. Establishing different ordering sources for the different interpretations can resolve the ambiguity of wouldconditionals. In conjunction with this, this paper proposes a unified semantic treatment of would-conditionals with a change of the ordering sources. On the basis of this, this paper shows that the variation in the interpretation can be analyzed in a uniform way by making would-conditionals quantify over different possible worlds, depending on which interpretation is preferable. We can account for how they quantify over different worlds by positing the different ordering sources, but not the modal base.