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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 22, No. 0, pp.246-264
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Jan 2022
Received 25 Jan 2022 Revised 18 Mar 2022 Accepted 29 Mar 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.22..202203.246

An Experimental Study of Lexical Encoding and Grouping in L1 and L2 Production of Sentences Describing Motion Events

Ji-Hyun Kim ; Mun-Hong Choe
(1st author) Student, Chonnam Nat’l Univ jihyunss78@hanmail.net
(corresponding author) Professor, Chonnam Nat’l Univ, Tel: 062-530-2435 munhong@jnu.ac.kr


© 2022 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This study investigated the implicit processes that English L1 speakers and Korean learners of L2 English undergo when they produce sentences describing motion events. On the basis of Talmy’s (2000a, 2000b) crosslinguistic typology of lexicalization patterns, it was hypothesized that Korean L1 speakers would use the strategy of conflating the path morpheme into a motion verb or having it adjoined to a ground reference rather than encoding it separately. Experimental data were collected from 62 Korean learners of L2 English at different proficiency levels and 11 English L1 speakers. They were presented with motion-related words or word groups in various sequences and asked to assemble them orally into complete sentences. The results indicated that L1 lexicalization patterns did influence L2 sentence production, with L2 proficiency as a moderating variable. Korean learners of L2 English responded more quickly when a motion verb and a path satellite were presented in pairs than when they were presented as discrete units. This tendency, however, was strong only among lower-intermediate learners, while more advanced learners showed a similar pattern to that of English L1 speakers, suggesting that L1 transfer occurs at the level of morphological processing as well as at lexical selection, though its extent is limited.

Keywords:

motion event, lexicalization pattern, semantic components, thinking for speaking, L1 transfer

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