Training English Word-final Palatals to Korean Speakers of English

Yeon 2008

Trained Korean ESL students who came to the US after critical period in ending syllables in "sh" and "ch." FOund that intensive training and focused learning helped production and perception.

1. The article is based on a connectionist theory of SLA. Yeon based his or her treatment on the assumption that repeated exposure to the target forms and frequent practice with perceiving and producing these forms might improve the learners; production and production of the forms. While Yeon does not mention the neural networks which might be strengthened by the training, the underlying assumption is that frequent and intensive practice is necessary for the acquisition of rule-governed behavior.

2. The article addresses transition theory, as it attempts to identify classroom tasks that can aid in listening and speaking activities for Korean English language learners.

3. The most significant aspect of this study is that all the learners “had come to the US after critical period” (53) and yet benefitted from the intensive perception training. Yeon has found not only that the critical period is not necessarily the “cut-off for language learning,” but also has identified a classroom activity for Korean ELLs that can eradicate this common error.

The Language of Women in Korean and English

by sung-yun park

This article was very influenced by Lakoff.

Like English, Korean females are considered to speak more politely. Stereotypical female speech will use more -yo and less plain verb forms, very weak curses, more adverbs of degree, and a more varied intonation.

Checking Theory and the Dative Subject Constructions in Japanese and Korean

hiroyuki ura

Goes over how dative constructions display subjecthood, and also how in some respects they do not seem to be subjects.

He (or she?) refers to Chomsky often. He never conclusively says whether or not dative subject constructions are really dative subjects or not.

Korean dative experiencers: The evidence for their status as surface subjects

gerdts and youn respond back to moore and perlmutter. They say that the Korean data does not yield the same result as Russian. They say that Korean datives obey all 5 tests for subjecthood.

Korean Psych Constructions: Advancement or retreat?

Gerdts and Youn said that “Advancement—not Retreat—is the preferred analysis of Korean Psych constructions.”

Christian Fundamentalism and Prominent Sociopolitical Values among College Students in a South-Korean University

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2007/2007-25.html

Eun Jung Oh, Stacy L. Bliss, and Robert L. Williams

The authors gave about 200 South Korean students a survey to see if their sociopolitical beliefs and religious affiliations had any correlation with American sociopolitical and religious beliefs, specifically that fundamentalist Christians are less tolerant of dissent than other religions and more nationalistic.

The students were Protestant, Catholic, Buddhist, and agnostic/atheist.

Protestant students in South Korea do not exhibit the same blind patriotism and disrespect for civil liberties as American fundamentalists. Dr. Seig: We worship different gods! Christianity in the two countries are not the same Christianity.

"One possibility strongly suggested by the comparison of the Korean sample with the previously studied American sample is that Christian fundamentalism may be associated with a different worldview in South Korea than in the U.S. It appears that Christian fundamentalism has become less negatively linked to such notions as respect for civil liberties and tolerance of dissent in South Korea than in the U.S. Thus, there appears to be less tension between Christian fundamentalism and democratic principles (e.g., respect for civil liberties and tolerance of dissent) in South Korea than in the U.S. 35"

"The current findings suggest that South-Korean Christians may be less inclined to use their Christian beliefs to restrict the personal and legal rights of individuals within a society than appears to be the case for American Christians having a fundamentalist perspective."

Subject and Topic: A New Typology of Language

charles n. li and sandra a. thompson
1975

subject-prominent lanaguges: English
Topic-Prominent Languages: Chinese
Subject-Prominent and Topic-Prominent Langauges: Japanese, Korean
Neither Subject nor Topic Prominent Languages: Tagalog

Mandarin (TP):
"here very hot
'It is hot in here.'

possible this-CLASS war will soon end aspect
'It is possible that this war will soon end.'"

double subject constructions:
Japanese:
"fish-TOPIC red snapper SUBJ delicious
'Fish (topic), red snapper is delicious

Korean:
airplane-top. 747-subj. big-stative
'Airplanes (topic), the 747 is big.'

Mandarin:
that tree leaves big
'That tree (topic) the leaves are big.'"

the acquisition of relative clauses in relation to language typology

bernard comrie

noun phrase accessibility hierarchy (NPAH)
subject>direct object>other object>genitive/possessor

"...for native speakers of European languages learning japanese or korean as a second lanaguge (L2), the articles in this collection suggest surprisingly little transfer..."

"RCS in Japanese and Korean are so different structurally form their European translation equivalents...that learners simply treat them as a new strcture to be learned rather than as variants of any structure familar to them form their native language."

"Each position on the NPAH is justified empirically by the existence of at least one languge that relativizes on that position but on no lower position."

Are Emotions UNiversal or Culture-Specific?

Anna Wierzbicka

"According to Izard and Buechler (1980:168), the fundamental emotions are 1. interest 2 joy 3 surprise 4 sadness 5 anger 6 disgust 7 contempt 8 fear 9 shame/shyness and 10 guilt."

"English terms of emotion constitute a folk taxonomy, not an objective, culture-free analytical framework, so obviously we cannot assume that English words such as disgust, fear, or shame are clues to universal human concepts or to basic psychological realities. Yet words such as these are usually treated as if they were objective, culture-free 'natural kinds'."

Polish words tesknota and teskknic:

"X teskni do Y -->

X thinks something like this:
I am far away from Y
when I was with Y I felt something good
I want to be with Y now
if I were with Y now I would feel something good
I cannot be with Y now
because of this, X feels something bad.
"Several English words may come to mind as potential translation equivalents of the Polish word (homesick, long, miss, pine, nostalgia) but they all differ from another and from the Polish term as well."

"Both everyday speech and psychologically sensitive literature are full of attempts, often highly successful, to convey feelings for which there is no simple word."

"What is really important, I think, is that the feelings of lek and of tesknota are not sufficently salient in our American culture to have merited lexicalization...lexical differences between lek and guilt, or between tesknic and miss, may not only reflect but also encourage different, culture-specific, modes of hinking and feeling.
Are there any emotion concepts which have been lexically recognized as distinct and identifiable in all languages of the world?
The evidence available suggests that there are no such emotions."

Comparison of the English disgust and the French degout:

Izard (1969) reports that French and American children show very similar patterns of growth of recognition of individual emotions with age. He notes, however, that with respect to disgust there is an unexpected difference: the French slightly exceed the Americans at most age levels. Izard tries to explain this puzzling fact in terms of greater emphasis placed on the culinary art in French culture:"

"...the English word disgust encodes a feeling caused by 'bad and ugly' human actions (or their results), not by food as such. This is not to deny that the English concept 'disgust' contains a reference to 'something like bad taste and an impulse to get something out of one's mouth', but in 'disgust' this reference serves only as a simile."

"From an ENglish speaker's point of view, shame and fear are two different emotions. But form the point of view of speakers of Gidjingali, apparentky they are not, because both are seen in terms of the same impulse to retreat."

"Many languages of the world (for example, Korean, Ewe in West Africa, and JKuman in Papua) don't lexically distinguish shame and embarrassment. In fact, the same word also seems to be applied to situations in which English would use the word shy rather than either embarrassed or ashamed."

"...some tests showed that pre-literate subjects in New Guinea failed to distinguish between fear and surprise."