ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

The purpose of this study paper aims to provide empirical evidence to support the Constructionism view incorporating the Minimalist Program (MP) notion by Chomsky (1995) in order to account for the phenomenon of the optional use of verbal inflectional morphemes. The results from both productive and receptive data obtained by Korean EFL learners in the context of verb-raising and adverb placement verify that L2 learners have universal syntactic knowledge on the Tense Phrase (TP) projection. However, the findings of this study reject the interpretation from the existing views of Universal Grammar (UG) because the earlier UG-based approach focuses on the initial and final states with no mention of the intermediate states. The current study argues that as for the inconsistent use of uninflected verbs, the Constructionism model (Herschensohn, 2000) provides an explanatory account reflecting L2 learners’ ongoing process of constructing L2 grammar. From the Constructionism view, it is assumed that L2 learners have difficulties in realization of morpholexical features due to incomplete mastery of the L2 lexicon despite intact TP projection and a feature-checking mechanism in L2 syntax.

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