A Corpus Study of L2 Korean Relative Clause Development

Abstract

The current study examines whether L2 development patterns of Korean relative clauses (RCs) are in accordance with the natural acquisition order observed in L1 children and the RC acquisition order predicted by the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (NPAH, Keenan & Comrie, 1977). The Study used CHILDES to analyze a learner corpus containing task-based interactions between 38 adult KSL/KFL learners and a native speaker interlocutor. A total of 1,731 oral productions of Korean RCs were identified in the corpus. The findings suggest that, unlike L1 children acquiring Korean in natural settings, adult L2 learners produce head-external RCs from the beginning rather than going through headless or head-internal RC stages, which is in line with the instructional order for Korean RCs in L2 classrooms. In addition, among the head-external RCs, the learners produced subject RCs more frequently and accurately than direct object RCs, and direct object RCs more frequently than oblique RCs, confirming the NPAH.