Development of Aspect Morphology in Korean
Abstract
The present study
examined the development of aspect marking in Korean with a focus on -ko
iss- and –a iss- imperfective markers, compared with progressive and
perfective markers. First, we examined the comprehension accuracy of
3-4-year-old Korean-learning children, while observing their online
interpretation patterns via their eye-fixation. Second, 3-4-year-olds’ production
of aspect markers was elicited, using pictures/videos that portrayed various
aspects of events. Both groups of children comprehended progressive meanings
better than the perfective/resultative meanings. Accuracy between the
imperfective markers didn’t differ but 4-year-olds were more accurate than
3-year-olds. In production, 4-year-olds were more accurate in producing -ko
iss- than -a iss-, while 3-year-olds were less accurate in using both markers.
Eye-gaze patterns showed that children were faster in identifying the
resultative -ko iss- than -a iss- event. Taken together, these results suggest
that Korean children may begin extending the progressive -ko iss- form into
the result state before they fully acquire a new resultative form, indicating
polysemous extension of the existing form as the acquisition mechanism of
aspect morphology.
Type
Journal articlePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/19664Collections
More Info
Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Hae-Young Kim
Professor of the Practice of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Her research and teaching interests include bilingualism and translanguaging, second
and heritage Korean language development, and content-based language instruction with
focus on history, literature and cultural studies. She has published on topics such
as discourse reference forms, tense/aspect morphology and relative clause construction
in L2 Korean, heritage language learners and motivations, and content-driven and socially-engaging
language instruction. Her current research focuses on const

Articles written by Duke faculty are made available through the campus open access policy. For more information see: Duke Open Access Policy
Rights for Collection: Scholarly Articles
Works are deposited here by their authors, and represent their research and opinions, not that of Duke University. Some materials and descriptions may include offensive content. More info