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Theoretical implications of complement structure acquisition in Korean*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Young-Joo Kim
Young-Joo Kim*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
*
Department of Linguistics, Grays Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
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Abstract

The Acquisition Of Complement Phrasal Constructions In Korean Is Examined In Spontaneous Speech Data From Two Children, Who Were Observed From One And A Half To Three Years Of Age. In Spite Of Typological Differences Between English And Korean, Both Syntactic And Semantic Characteristics are found to be shared by children acquiring complement constructions in the two languages. however, certain language-specific features of korean complement structures make it possible to address theoretical points concerning the structure of infinitival complements which cannot be resolved with the acquisition data on English. The error pattern in the acquisition of certain ‘subject-equi’ verbs in Korean poses problems both for LEG and GB accounts of the constituent structure of infinitival complements and the acquisition of those constructions. On the basis of the Korean data, I propose that base-generated VP complements are acquired first, with semantically motivated reanalysis of previously acquired infinitival complement structures occurring at a later stage.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , October 1989 , pp. 573 - 598
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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Footnotes

*

I am greatly indebted to Patricia Clancy, Susumu Kuno, Steven Pinker and Catherine Snow for many insightful comments and invaluable suggestions. Special thanks go to Donna Gerdts, Becky Kennedy, Ross King, John Whitman, and two anonymous reviewers who have read an earlier version of this paper and have given me helpful suggestions, both on content and exposition. I am very grateful to Patricia Clancy for generously sharing her transcripts of two children with me, and to my mother Sunkyung Lee for collecting data while Polam was in Korea.

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