Grammaticality Judgment by Korean-Speaking Children: Detection of Erroneous Case-Markers

Hwang, Mina; Jeong, Miran

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2007;12(2): 139-159.

Mina Hwang^` , and Miran Jeong^`

황민아(Mina Hwang)| 정미란(Miran Jeong)

ABSTRACT

Grammaticality judgment is widely used to reflect the development of metalinguistic awareness of children. In this study, grammaticality judgment skills of Korean- speaking children and adults were investigated.
Methods
The participants were normally developing children ranging from 5-7 years old and college students. Their task was to judge the grammatical correctness of 48 short sentences, half of which contained incorrect case-markers and the other half were grammatically correct. In addition to the accuracy of responses, reaction times (RTs) of the participants’ decisions were measured. Four types of case-markers, including nominatives “i/ga”, accusatives “ul/lul”, a locative “e,” and an instrumental “ro,” were systematically changed to generate the grammatically incorrect sentences.
Results
The participants’ sensitivity to grammatical errors was enhanced with age while their RTs decreased with age. They were most sensitive to errors of case-markers in nominative positions, followed by locative, instrumental and accusative positions. Errors in nominative positions had the shortest RTs while errors in accusative positions had the longest.
Discussion & Conclusion
In terms of the patterns of response accuracy across the four types of erroneous case markers, the children 5-7 years old were similar to the adults. In terms of RTs, only the 7-year-old children were similar to the adults. The results’ implications are discussed on the basis of the acquisition of case-markers in Korean.