A Study of Early Subject Acquisition in Korean

Lee, Hee Ran

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2004;9(2): 19-32.

Hee Ran Lee^`

이희란(Hee Ran Lee)

ABSTRACT

The present study was designed to investigate the acquisition of four Korean semantic particles and features of overt and null subjects/topics using longitudinal data from two, two-year-old, Korean children. Data were collected every two weeks from the age of 24 to 34 months(2;0 - 2;10) at the children’s home with their mother. The results suggested that the Korean children produce the subjects as a bare nominal, as a null subject, and as a subject with particles in the early acquisition stage(from the age of 2;0). The major findings of this study indicate that the contrastive marker ‘n(un)’ is used more often than the discourse-topic marker ‘n(un)’ in accordance with their respective mother’s input. The discourse-pragmatics hypothesis assumes that the child’s null arguments stem from pragmatics features of discourse. It is also proposed that the discourse-pragmatic features such as contrast information are a potential explanation in addition to given information for the production of subject arguments in early language acquisition in Korean.