Asymmetries in L2 functional morphology: The Korean learner of English

Abstract

Variability in the production of L2 functional morphology has long been recognised as a pervasive and entrenched characteristic of interlanguage development. As Trenkic (2007, p. 292) suggests, a potentially fruitful way of identifying the sources of this behaviour is to compare the rates at which a given morpheme (e.g., past tense) is omitted, substituted or oversupplied in two (or more) distinct contexts. The present thesis adds to earlier work exploring certain patterns of this type, while also seeking to address some of the main limitations of these studies. Using a combined elicited-imitation and story-recall task adapted from Snape (2006), I examine the production of various types of functional morpheme by Korean learners of English. Three experiments were conducted. In the first of these, I predicted asymmetries in the omission or substitution of definite articles in first- and second-mention DPs based on the effects of non-target form-meaning relationships plus communicative redundancy. The second experiment examined past tense, agreement and plural morphology, and investigated the claim that differences in stem length and (for tense inflection only) verb class would give rise to contrasting patterns of inflectional omission. The third experiment focused on various kinds of QP, and manipulated the effects of contrasts in quantifier type and syntactic structure on the omission of plural inflection in these phrases. The predictions of experiment 1 were not supported, while those of experiment 2 were not supported for tense inflection; however, I am able to suggest reasons for these unexpected results. The overall results of the thesis confirm that by systematically investigating asymmetries in the production of a given functional morpheme, we stand to gain an insight into the underlying causes of L2 variability.