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Article published In: Review of Cognitive Linguistics
Vol. 19:2 (2021) ► pp.332–362

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Roles of verb and construction cues

Cross-language comparisons between English and Korean sentence comprehension

 | Palacký University Olomouc
 | Yonsei University
Published online: 11 October 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00087.shi
Abstract
This study investigates how speakers of English and Korean, two typologically distinct languages, derive information from a verb and a construction to achieve sentence comprehension. In a sentence-sorting task, we manipulated verb semantics (real versus nonce) in each language. The results showed that participants from both languages were less inclined to sort sentences by a verb cue when the lexical-semantic information about a verb was obscured (i.e., nonce verb). In addition, the Korean-speaking participants were less likely affected by the verb semantics conditions than the English-speaking participants. These findings suggest the role of an argument structure construction in sentence comprehension as a co-contributor of sentence meaning, supporting the constructionist approach. The findings also imply language-specific mechanisms of sentence comprehension, contingent upon the varied impact of a verb on sentence meaning in English and Korean.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Lexical approach
    • 2.2Constructionist approach
    • 2.3Typological differences between English and Korean
  • 3.Present study
  • 4.Methods
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Stimuli
    • 4.3Procedure
    • 4.4Data coding and analysis
    • 4.5Predictions
  • 5.Results
  • 6.Discussion
  • Note
  • References
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