Statistical preemption and Korean learners of English

Abstract

When speakers use familiar verbs in a novel construction, an important question is where we could draw the line of what is acceptable and what is not. Robenalt & Goldberg (2016) concludes that native speakers base their acceptability judgments on statistical preemption while nonnative speakers fail to do so. The current study explores the same question with a pool of Korean participants living in Korea. Although there exists variation in each individuals language experience, the result is the same that they do not learn from the nonoccurrence of formulations in the same way as native speakers.