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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.579-592
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Jan 2022
Received 09 May 2022 Revised 18 Jun 2022 Accepted 30 Jun 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.22..202206.579

The Role of Verbal Root in Completion Entailment of English Accomplishment Predicates

Jihyun Kim ; Wooseung Lee
(1st author) Lecturer, Department of English Education, Korea University jihyunkim@korea.ac.kr
(corresponding author) Professor, Department of English Education, Konkuk University wlee6@konkuk.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

It has been observed that Korean learners of English have difficulty in deriving completion entailment of English accomplishment predicates because the entailment pattern in English differs from that of their L1. However, the present study suggests that not all English accomplishment predicates will be equally problematic to L2 learners because English accomplishments differ in their verbal roots (i.e., a verb’s root may focus on a manner or a result) (Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2010). To see the effects of verbal root on completion entailment, we conduct a completion entailment test on 123 Korean learners of English and 50 English native speakers. The results show that not only L1 Korean learners but also L1 English speakers show bimodal pattern among English accomplishment predicates. Both L1 Korean learners and L1 English speakers are better at deriving completion entailment of accomplishment predicates with result root (e.g., remove the sticker) rather than those with manner root (e.g., drink the beer). That is, L1 Korean learners did not fail to derive completion entailment for all accomplishment predicates, and L1 English speakers did not derive completion entailment for all accomplishment predicates either. Though the gap between the types of verbal roots was greater in L1 Korean learners than L1 English speakers, the variation observed in both language groups suggests that the types of verbal roots play a key role in completion entailment of English accomplishment predicates.

Keywords:

telicity, completion entailment, accomplishment predicates, types of verbal roots

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. All errors are our responsibility.

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