5 or 7 : Is the Choice So Important in Acceptability Judgment Testing?

Sanghoun Song,Eunjeong Oh 한국언어학회 2016 언어 Vol.41 No.3

Song, Sanghoun and Oh, Eunjeong. 2016. 5 or 7: Is the Choice So Important in Acceptability Judgment Testing? Korean Journal of Linguistics, 41-3, 449-480. This article concerns whether two different numbers of points on a Likert scale task produces different results in acceptability judgment testing. The most popular numbers of points on response scales are 5 and 7, and there seems to be no clear consensus about which of the two is better and why. As the same goes for experimental syntax studies, the choice of the numbers of points on the scales still remains questionable, though the Likert scale task has been widely employed in acceptability judgment testing. The present study compares two experimental data sets using the same stimuli sentences but with different point scales (5 and 7). It includes 46,356 data points and 506 Korean native speakers participated in the study. The comparison between the 5- and 7-point scale data is made in terms of (a) variance of data points, (b) convergence between the linguists’ judgments and the participants’ judgments, and (c) response time. The comparative analysis reveals that the two different point scales do not yield significantly different results. Yet, it is also observed that there exist pros and cons to both sides. The 7-point scale is more demanding than the 5-point scale to the extent that the middle point is rather scarcely used. On the other hand, the 5-point scale is sloppier than the 7-point scale to the extent that the latter captures the variation in acceptability judgments across the participants slightly better. (Incheon National University & Sangmyung University)

Deproteinization with ZnSO4–Ba(OH)2 reduces the photodegradation of montelukast during plasma sample preparation for HPLC analysis

Shin, Eunjeong,Oh, Ju-Hee,Lee, Joo Hyun,Lee, Young-Joo Marcel Dekker 2016 JOURNAL OF LIQUID CHROMATOGRAPHY AND RELATED TECHN Vol.39 No.11

<P>Montelukast (MKT), a leukotriene receptor antagonist, degrades when it is exposed to light. The analysis of MKT content in blood plasma by high-pressure liquid chromatography requires several sample preparation steps including deproteinization. This study aimed to evaluate MKT photodegradation in blood plasma samples and optimize a deproteinization method to reduce MKT photodegradation, and thereby improve analytical quality. We evaluated the stability of MKT in water and plasma in real time using high-pressure liquid chromatography and optimized a sample deproteinization procedure by comparing the effectiveness of several deproteinization methods. When exposed to light, MKT photodegraded quickly. Although MKT photodegradation was slightly slower than that in water, a half portion (55%) of the MKT in plasma degraded within 2h when exposed to light. The rate of MKT photodegradation was dramatically reduced by sample deproteinization using ZnSO4-Ba(OH)(2), but it was accelerated by deproteinization through precipitation using methanol or acetonitrile. These results suggest that precautions should be taken when preparing plasma samples for the analysis of MKT, and that deproteinization of such samples using ZnSO4-Ba(OH)(2) can reduce the risk of analytical error arising from MKT photodegradation. [GRAPHICS] .</P>

Korean Speakers’ Sensitivity to Temporal-aspectual Prototypes in English

( Eunjeong Oh ) 21세기영어영문학회 2018 영어영문학21 Vol.31 No.1

The early production of temporal-aspectual features in English-speaking children is typically biased; they prefer telic perfective past combinations and atelic imperfective present combinations. Wagner (2009) replicated this finding with adult native English speakers. The current study explored the question of whether such a preference for these prototypes would persist into second language acquisition with Korean speakers. Given that the tense-aspect system is part of semantic universals shared by all languages, it was predicted that Korean speakers would show an influence of such prototypes. Korean speakers indeed judged prototypical temporal-aspectual combinations to be better than non-prototypical ones. Along the lines of Wagner (2009), we argue that the driving force for the preference for prototypes is information processing demands: The prototypes are favored because they are easier to compute and process.

Syntactic Bootstrapping in Korean Speakers` Acquisition of Telicity in English: Link between Transitivity and Telicity

( Eunjeong Oh ) 21세기영어영문학회 2015 영어영문학21 Vol.28 No.3

This paper explores the transitivity bootstrapping hypothesis as a guide for determining telicity in English with Korean speakers. It hypothesizes that telic interpretations are linked to transitive frames and atelic ones to intransitive frames. The predicted pattern of acquisition is that the Korean participants would make errors with atelic transitives and telic intransitives since they are not supported by the hypothesis. The results show that they made the relevant distinction between telic and atelic items for three out of the four transitivity-telicity pairs, failing to do so for telic intransitives. These mistakes with telic intransitives are precisely the pattern predicted by the hypothesis. It confirms that the syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis is part of the acquisition toolkit exploited by L2 learners. As for the puzzle of why telic intransitives, but not atelic transitives, were particularly vulnerable to transitivity bias, it is argued to be best explained by the Surface Generalization Hypothesis and prototypicality of telic transitive frames for telicity.

An Experimental Study of English Perfective Interpretation by Korean Speakers

Eunjeong Oh 고려대학교 언어정보연구소 2014 언어정보 Vol.18 No.-

English perfectives describe fully-completed events, whereas Korean perfectives describeboth partially- and fully-completed events. The capacity of perfectives to denotepartial completion interpretations is called the incompleteness effect which ariseonly for accomplishments with incremental themes. This paper examines Koreanspeakers' interpretations of English perfectives, precisely, whether they are ableto reject English perfectives with incomplete events, and whether their patternsvary across predicate types (accomplishments vs. achievements). The results showthat partially-completed events yield differences across predicate types. Unlikecontrols who rejected both predicates, Korean learners tended to rejectachievements but to accept accomplishments, as descriptions ofpartially-completed events. This paper explores the role of semantic and contextualfactors in interpreting response patterns found in the study.

On Knowledge of the Incompleteness Effect in Korean L1 Acquisition

Eunjeong Oh 한국중원언어학회 2019 언어학연구 Vol.0 No.50

Not only fully-completed events, accomplishment predicates with incremental themes in Korean can also describe partially-completed events, which is called the Incompleteness Effect (in short, the IE). Given the phenomenon, this experimental study examined two questions with 16 L1-Korean adult and 47 L1-Korean child speakers: (1) whether the validity of the IE can be empirically verified and (2) when children acquire the IE. The results showed that the 7-year-olds and adults could reliably link accomplishments to incomplete events but the 5- and 6-year-olds could not. They demonstrated full completion bias. The results suggest that children do not seem to be fully aware of the IE until as late as 6 years of age. This study argues that the pattern of data presented by the younger children is best explained by the Subset Principle, which states that children start out with the most restricted grammar compatible with input unless there is evidence to the contrary (i.e., full completion interpretations).

The Lexical-Based Account of L2 Acquisition of English Double Objects and Their CorrespondingPassives by Korean Speakers

Eunjeong Oh 한국응용언어학회 2009 응용 언어학 Vol.25 No.1

Constructionists have claimed that seemingly homogeneous goals and benefactives in English are grammatically different and that such divergence is attributed to grammatical differences between the two that goal verbs are inherently ditransitive verbs whereas benefactive verbs are transitive verbs and in this regard, goal constructions are more typical than benefactive constructions. This paper examines implications of such a claim with Korean speakers, using the Magnitude Estimation. The lexical-based account advanced by the constructionists falls short of accounting for the results. This paper shows that the results are best explained by the L1 transfer-based account.

The Incompleteness Effect : Interplay between Semantic and Contextual Factors

Eunjeong Oh 고려대학교 언어정보연구소 2014 언어정보 Vol.19 No.-

This experimental study compares event completion construals of change-of-state predicates in English by L1 English and L1 Korean speakers. The Incompleteness Effect (henceforth, IE) refers to the phenomenon in which the change-of-state predicates typically entailing event completion describe incomplete events. The semantic account for IE argues that IE arises only for accomplishments, leading to the division between accomplishments and achievements. IE is attested to in Korean but not in English. Given that difference, this paper is concerned with two questions: (1) whether Korean L1 speakers are aware that accomplishments are incompatible with incomplete events in English and (2) whether contextual factors other than the semantic one are relevant to IE. The results indicate that Korean speakers are insensitive to the absence of IE in English, which is best explained by L1 transfer. The results, moreover, showed that contextual factors are relevant to IE but in a selective way. Accomplishments but not achievements were influenced by contextual factors. Lastly, the results revealed there is an intricate interplay between semantic and contextual factors: the former plays a main role while the latter plays a supplementary role.

Acquisition of Unaccusativity in L2 Korean by Japanese and Chinese Speakers

Eunjeong Oh 한국응용언어학회 2010 응용 언어학 Vol.26 No.4

This paper examines the acquisition of unaccusativity in L2 Korean by Japanese and Chinese speakers to establish whether L2 learners are sensitive to the unaccusative-unergative distinction in Korean. Two diagnostics were used to gauge the learners’ knowledge of the relevant distinction: the resultative -a/e iss- and quantifier floating. The two constructions are available exclusively with unaccusatives. Results show that both groups of learners discriminated between unaccusatives and unergatives regarding the quantifier floating but they failed to do so regarding the resultative. It is argued that this failure is attributable to divergence between the L1 and L2, either in part or in whole. This paper also examines the validity of the claim that the verb ci- is a morphosyntactic reflex of unaccusativity in Korean.

Victims Twice Over: Return Narratives of Ethnic Korean Atomic Bomb Survivors

( Oh Eunjeong ) 서울대학교 사회과학대학 인류학과 2022 Korean Anthropology Review Vol.6 No.-

After World War II, more than two million people returned to their homeland, Korea, from Japan, Manchukuo, and the battlefields in the Asian Pacific area. Among them, it was reported that over ten thousand migrants were repatriated from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the liberated Korean Peninsula. While preceding studies of Korean atomic bomb survivors have focused on their experience of victimization, their historical migration experiences were rarely given attention by social scientists. As the new national governance was reordered following the collapse of Imperial Japan, the returnees were represented as natural members to be incorporated into the new nation. From a sociocultural perspective on Korean atomic bomb survivors’ return migration experiences and based on family registries and life history interviews, this paper traces how their identities and sentiments toward the homeland were intertwined with their life experiences and sociocultural networks they had built in colonial Japan. In spite of national integration propaganda, the returnees from Japan were often discriminated against as pro-Japanese, and were sometimes excluded from sociocultural reintegration at the community level because of anti-Japanese nationalistic sentiment. This paper concludes that Korea’s liberation in 1945 needs to be studied more critically and ethnographically, not as an integrated space of nationalistic purity to be taken for granted but as a differentiated, subtle place in which sociocultural identities conflict.