한국인 영어학습자의 영어 관계절 부착 선호도

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that RC attachment preferences are different across languages: English shows low attachment (LA) preference while Korean high attachment (HA) preference, for example. The present study examines which attachment preference Korean EFL learners show for English relative clauses (RC) preceded by a complex NP. Sixty Korean learners of English (30 university students of an intermediate level and 30 university students of an advance level) participated in a self-paced reading test (online test: Experiment 1) and a written survey test (offline test: Experiment 2). Test sentences were of two types according to the animacy of the complex NP: an AA type ([+ani, +ani], e.g., ‘the daughter of the woman who is dancing’) and an IA type ([-ani, +ani], e.g., ‘the book of the student that is in the classroom’). The results show that the participants consistently prefer HA for English RC sentences, regardless of their proficiency level, the animacy of the complex NP and the test methods. These results are consistent with previous findings that Korean native speakers prefer the HA for Korean RC sentences, and thus could imply the first language influence on the RC attachment in a second language.