Heejeong Ko

Asymmetries in Scrambling and Cyclic Linearization

I argue that linear order in constructions with scrambling is constrained by Cyclic Linearization of syntactic structure at the interface, and I show that this proposal provides a unified account for a variety of asymmetries in scrambling. Arguments in this article establish novel evidence for the thesis that the architecture of grammar requires linearization in phonology to be cyclically determined by the syntax. The article also sheds light on the distribution of floating quantifiers, possessor-raising constructions, and formal properties of scrambling.

That’s not so different from the: Definite and demonstrative descriptions in second language acquisition:

This article investigates how adult Korean-speaking learners of English interpret English definite descriptions (the book, the books) and demonstrative descriptions (that book, those books). Korean lacks articles, but has demonstratives, and it is hypothesized that transfer leads learners to (initially) equate definites with demonstratives. Following J Hawkins (1991), Roberts (2002) and Wolter (2006), it is assumed that definite and demonstrative descriptions have the same central semantics of uniqueness, but differ in the domain relative to which uniqueness is computed: while the book denotes the unique book in the discourse, that book denotes the unique book in the immediately salient situation. A written elicited production task and a picture-based comprehension task are used to examine whether Korean-speaking learners of English are aware of this distinction. The results indicate that learners distinguish definites and demonstratives, but not as strongly as native English speakers; low-proficiency learners are particularly likely to interpret definite descriptions analogously to demonstrative descriptions, in both tasks. These results pose interesting conceptual and methodological questions for further research into the second language acquisition of article semantics.

The Role of Presuppositionality in the Second Language Acquisition of English Articles

This article investigates the role of presuppositionality (defined as the presupposition of existence) in the second language (L2) acquisition of English articles. Building upon the proposal in Wexler 2003 that young English-acquiring children overuse the with presuppositional indefinites, this article proposes that presuppositionality also influences article (mis)use in adult L2 acquisition. This proposal is supported by experimental results from the L2 English of adult speakers of Korean, a language with no articles. The experimental findings indicate that presuppositional indefinite contexts trigger overuse of the with indefinites in adult L2 acquisition, as in child L1 acquisition (cf. Wexler 2003). The effects of presuppositionality are teased apart from the effects of other semantic factors previously examined in acquisition, such as scope (Schaeffer and Matthewson 2005) and specificity (Ionin, Ko, and Wexler 2004). The results provide evidence that overuse of the in L2 acquisition is a semantic rather than pragmatic phenomenon. Implications of these findings for overuse of the in L1 acquisition are discussed. This article also has implications for the study of access to Universal Grammar in L2 acquisition, as well as for the number and type of semantic universals underlying article choice crosslinguistically.

Optional Scrambling Is Not Random: Evidence from English-Ukrainian Acquisition

In this chapter, we investigate the role of specificity in the acquisition of a ‘free-word-order’, article-less language – Ukrainian. Particularly, we are interested in the acquisition of direct object scrambling as a means to encode the feature [+specific] on the scrambled direct object DP. An elicited production study is used to show that bilingual English-Ukrainian children have the knowledge of specificity in their grammar, and they are able to match it with appropriate syntactic movement in Ukrainian. We argue that the high rate of optionality in child scrambling can be better accounted for with syntax-semantics notions, contrary to discourse-pragmatic approaches to the phenomenon. We show that children do not overuse scrambled constructions with non-specific objects, and argue that the optionality of scrambling in children’s utterances is unlikely to be due to a pragmatic deficit.

Edges in syntax : scrambling and cyclic linearization

Introduction 1. Edges in cyclic syntax 2. Edges of primary predication 3. Syntactic edges and two types of floating quantification 4. Edges of complement predication 5. Edges of adjunct and secondary predication 6. Concluding remarks