ACQUISITION OF INFORMATION STRUCTURE IN KOREAN : A PERCEPTION-BASED APPROACH
| dc.contributor.advisor | O’Grady, William | |
| dc.contributor.author | Lee, Yuri | |
| dc.contributor.department | Linguistics | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-02-20T22:36:39Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-02-20T22:36:39Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024 | |
| dc.description.degree | Ph.D. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10125/110186 | |
| dc.subject | Linguistics | |
| dc.title | ACQUISITION OF INFORMATION STRUCTURE IN KOREAN : A PERCEPTION-BASED APPROACH | |
| dc.type | Thesis | |
| dcterms.abstract | This dissertation investigates the perception of information structure in Korean, focusing on how adults and children perceive and process focus and topic marking. The study is organized into four experiments that examine different strategies for marking focus on direct objects and topic on subjects. Experiments 1 and 2 examine how Korean speakers use accusative case markers, prosodic cues, and null marking to indicate focus on direct objects. The results reveal that adults prefer prosodic cues over case marking, while six-year-olds show delayed development in focus perception. By age ten, children’s abilities begin to align more closely with adult patterns, although challenges remain in processing non-focused elements and deaccentuation. Experiments 3 and 4 explore topic marking on subjects, analyzing participants' preferences for using the topic marker -(n)un versus the nominative marker -i/ka across different types of topics. Adults and ten-year-olds generally favor the topic marker for anaphoric, generic, and contrastive topics, while using the nominative marker for broad focus. However, ten-year-olds show some differences from adults in the frequency of using markers for contrastive topics, indicating ongoing development. Six-year-olds exhibit even less consistent preferences, particularly in their selection of markers for contrastive topics and broad focus, highlighting their developing understanding of topic marking. The findings suggest that the acquisition of topic marking precedes focus marking, with children mastering non-contrastive topics before developing the ability to handle contrastive topics and focus on direct objects. This sequence reflects broader cognitive and linguistic development, where simpler, more general categories are acquired before more complex, specific ones. This research contributes to the understanding of language acquisition in Korean, emphasizing the gradual and multifaceted nature of developing information structure. It highlights the interplay between prosodic, morphological, and syntactic cues in marking focus and topic, and it underscores the challenges children face in achieving adult-like proficiency in these areas. | |
| dcterms.extent | 173 pages | |
| dcterms.language | en | |
| dcterms.publisher | University of Hawai'i at Manoa | |
| dcterms.rights | All UHM dissertations and theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission from the copyright owner. | |
| dcterms.type | Text | |
| local.identifier.alturi | http://dissertations.umi.com/hawii:12364 |
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