Formality and Syntactic Dependency in the L2 Acquisition of Preposition Stranding and Pied-piping by Korean College EFL Learners

Abstract

Yoon, Junghyoe, Shin, Eun Young, & Chung, Taegoo. 2015. Formality and Syntactic Dependency in the L2 Acquisition of Preposition Stranding and Pied-piping by Korean College EFL Learners. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 40-3, 451-474. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the acquisition of preposition stranding (PS) and preposition pied-piping (PP) in relative clauses by Korean learners of English. These alternating constructions have been reported to be restricted by the level of formality and the syntactic dependency of a prepositional phrase on the predicate verb (Hoffman 2005; Ko 2009). The current study investigates whether the Korean EFL learners can recognize formality and dependency and appropriately use the alternating patterns compared to native English speakers. The findings of the present study showed that the learners' grammatical and pragmatic knowledge was not complete in that they failed to associate syntactic dependency with obligatory stranding or pied-piping constructions and their pragmatic sensitivity to formality was not always mapped onto a proper structure. (Korea University)