The L2 Acquisition of Semantico-Pragmatic Properties of Korean Topic and Focus Particles

This study characterizes four Korean particles (-i/ka ‘NOM,’ -(l)ul ‘ACC,’ -(n)un ‘TOP,’ and –to ‘also/even’) appealing to various semantico-pragmatic properties and hypothesizes that a different amount of computational load induced by such properties affects the second language (L2) acquisition of the particles. In the experiment, a total of 80 participants (52 English-speaking learners at two proficiency levels and 28 native Korean-speaking controls) performed the forced-choice task. The results indicated that the particles marking a topic or focus NP were more challenging for the learners than the particles simply marking a subject or object NP, supporting the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace, 2011). Furthermore, the results showed that the particles associated with the property like [anaphoric] or [alternatives] were more difficult; the particle marking anaphoric topic NPs was more challenging than other topic or focus particles; the particles marking focus NPs were more challenging than the particle marking generic topic NPs, which do not induce any alternatives. This may suggest that those properties cause more difficulty because they demand a heavy computational load. The computational load seems to increase the most with the property [anaphoric], followed by the property [alternative]. The study sheds light on the nature of the L2 learning problems with respect to the four Korean particles.