Boonjoo Park, University of Arizona
Cross linguistic study of Syntactic persistence in Korean-English bilinguals
Syntactic persistence is the phenomenon in which syntactic structures are carried over when subjects produce sentences after reading aloud or repeating just-heard sentences. A number of studies (e.g. Bock, 1986, 1989; Bock & Loebell, 1990; Hartsuiker & Kolk, 1998a, 1998b) demonstrated that syntactic structure is persistent whereas other concepts such as lexical items, conceptual meanings, thematic roles, and prosodic information are not persistent. However, cross-linguistic studies showed different results. Spanish-English bilinguals (e.g.Hartsuiker et al., 2004) showed significant syntactic priming in both passive and dative structure. Spanish-English bilinguals tend to process English passive sentences more often following a Spanish passive sentences than following a Spanish intransitive or active sentences. On the other hand, English-German bilinguals (e.g. Loebell & Bock, 2003) showed syntactic priming in dative structure, but the priming effect in passive structures was not significant. The cross linguistic differences have been considered to affect syntactic persistence (Hartsuiker et al., 2004;Loebell& Bock, 2003). However, no research has been conducted in Korean-English bilinguals, whose languages have dissimilar syntactic structures mainly in word-order and case marking systems.
The purpose of this study is to investigate syntactic persistence between Korean and English. Two experiments are conducted in two different contexts: 1) producing Korean sentences from English priming sentences, 2) producing English sentences from Korean priming sentences. In experiment 1, the subjects are 15 English native speakers who are at the advanced level of Korean language study. The materials consisted of two types of priming sentences (active vs. passives, double object datives vs. prepositional datives (English), object-dative order vs. dative-object order (Korean)), target pictures, and filler sentences and pictures. The subjects repeat aloud the priming sentences in their first language (English) and describe pictures in their second language (Korean). In experiment 2, the subjects are 15 Korean native speakers who speak English as a second language. The picture materials and procedures are the same as in experiment 1 except the languages for priming sentences and describing pictures, which are reversed. The results of the first and second experiments showed significant syntactic priming with datives, but not significant with passives. In terms of direction, syntactic priming occurs more in the direction of Korean to English, rather than English to Korean. The results indicate the cross linguistic differences affect syntactic persistence in language production. The differences of word order and its flexibility also seem to play roles in syntactic persistence between two different languages.
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