Some Linguistic and Pedagogical Implications for Subject- Verb Agreement in English

강승만 대한영어영문학회 2005 영어영문학연구 Vol.31 No.2

English is shown to exhibit some unique aspects and properties with respect to number agreement between the subject and the verb. As these aspects are not quite straightforward, we encounter a lot of variation in the judgment of the number of the subject NP among and across NEs and NNEs. We also encounter a huge divergence between NEs and NNEs as they rest on their implicit and explicit grammar knowledge, respectively, for their judgment on number. Here arise some linguistic and pedagogical implications for teaching grammar to EFL learners: how to teach English number agreement, developing linguistic competence, and how to help them get implicit knowledge, leading to communicative competence.

Connected Speech in Listening and Speaking

강승만 언어과학회 2017 언어과학연구 Vol.0 No.80

This paper delves into some interesting aspects of connected speech created in casual speech, centering around such features as linking, reduction, foot, and rhythm, all of which are taken to arise from stress in English. I conducted a survey among two groups of college students—15 first-year and 15 second-year English majors—to examine how such features are implemented in their aural perception and oral production. The findings of the survey are as follows. First, the two groups of subjects are shown to commit more errors in function words in terms of aural perception. Second, the group of 15 second-year students are shown to perform better in oral production in terms of stress-timed rhythm by putting less prominence on function words, as indicated in mean power measured by Praat, a software program for the analysis of speech. I argue that their performance is facilitated by explicit teaching and learning of the features in question.

On Verb-Plus-Particle Constructions in English

강승만 한국중앙영어영문학회 2012 영어영문학연구 Vol.54 No.2

This paper argues that Korean EFL learners avoid or underproduce English phrasal verbs due to their ignorance of them. Their ignorance culminates in figurative phrasal verbs in the spirit of Dagut and Laufer (1985), since their meaning is not easily predicted from their individual elements, the verb and the adverb. This is exhibited in the survey among Korean EFL learners, in which figurative phrasal verbs are apparently underproduced. I attribute this to the fact that most EFL learners are ignorant of English phrasal verbs, which are out of their vocabulary range, but not to the structural difference between their L1 and L2. The ignorance of phrasal verbs consequently leads them to use their equivalent one-word verbs. Native speakers, on the other hand, are seen to employ phrasal verbs freely in their casual speech, whether they are literal, completive, or figurative, as exemplified in the survey of this paper. Given that phrasal verbs are used more often in informal and colloquial language and that they are a very important part of everyday English (Hart, 2009), it is indispensible for the Korean EFL learners to master them for their personal communication with native speakers of English. Understanding syntactic and semantic properties of phrasal verbs in contrast with prepositional verbs is an essential part of mastering the so-called verb-plus-particle constructions in English.

A Study on Verbally Gifted Education

강승만 한국중앙영어영문학회 2007 영어영문학연구 Vol.49 No.4

Since the Gifted Education Promotion Law was proclaimed in 2001, gifted education has become a catchword among educators and school practitioners. Accordingly, math and science have been selected as two core curricula areas for gifted education. Compared to these core areas, language—especially English—fails to be valued as much. I attribute this to the following two facts. First, the government views verbal giftedness as less contributing to the country’s technological development than the two other areas. Second, it is also attributable to the general belief of educators and school practitioners that language is rarely endemic to giftedness. With respect to institutions for the gifted, there are three representative institutions for gifted education: gifted schools, gifted centers, and gifted classes. Verbally gifted education is, however, offered at the latter two types of institutions. This paper argues that verbally gifted education should be offered mainly in gifted classes for the following two reasons. First, it might be easier to implement regular and continuous language instruction in school classes, enabling more effective language acquisition. Second, offering regular gifted classes during school hours ensures that identified gifted students take only those classes, not both ordinary and gifted ones, consequently challenging the gifted's interest and level of ability.

Adverb Placement and Scope of Negation

강승만 한국중원언어학회 2018 언어학연구 Vol.0 No.46

This paper delves into some grammatical aspects of English adverbs and examines how Korean EFL learners perceive them in terms of modification and negation scope via a survey among 37 Korean EFL learners. The subjects were given two tasks. First, they were asked to place the four types of adverbs such as the S-, VP-, AP-, and AdvP-adverb into the appropriate position in 20 sentences and translate them into Korean. The latter two types of adverbs show rather higher accuracy rates than the former two types. This is attributable to their affinity to the pattern of modification in Korean, in which the modifier always precedes the modified. Second, the subjects were asked to translate 10 sentences with the adverb and the negator not in a relative scope relation. It is shown that the Neg>Adv type of negation shows an overwhelmingly low accuracy rate of 12.43%. This type of negation is not akin to the typical pattern of negation in Korean, in which the adverb always precedes the negator not. The findings of the survey suggest some significant implications for teaching the adverb with our focus on adverb placement and scope of negation.

How Conservative Should School Grammar Be?

강승만 한국중앙영어영문학회 2009 영어영문학연구 Vol.51 No.1

Since the advent of structural and generative linguistics in the 20th century, traditional school grammar has been attacked as being inadequate, illegitimate, and useless (Haussamen, 2000). Nevertheless, this traditional grammar has remained the basis for grammar instruction worldwide and is still being used as the primary method of English grammar instruction in Korea’s EFL classrooms. Recently, there have been hot debates on the integration of generative linguistics as a supplementary resource for grammar instruction (Bae, 2003; Kolln & Hancock, 2005; Park, 2009). This paper examines the perceptual pattern of SVOC constructions, an equivalent to the 5th predicate form in Onions (1932, 1971), through the survey among college students. The findings of the survey reveal that the analysis of those constructions within the traditional school grammar runs counter to the subjects’ perceptual pattern of them. Rather, it conforms to the analysis within the generative linguistic paradigm. I accordingly suggest the integration of some important concepts of generative linguistics within the main syllabus of traditional school grammar

A Dual Analysis of Arguments: Semantic and Syntactic

강승만 대한영어영문학회 2019 영어영문학연구 Vol.45 No.1

This paper delves into some aspects of arguments along with adjuncts, widely illustrated in terms of tests and criteria in the literature. I argue that they are largely syntactic in nature and posited to exhibit the syntactic well-formedness of sentences. It follows that this straightforward clarification of arguments often excludes some thematic adverbial phrases as an adjunct on the one hand and includes non-thematic phrases as an argument on the other. Accordingly, I suggest that we need to posit two types of arguments in this paper: semantic and syntactic. Semantic arguments, which are closely associated with the meaning of the predicate, are base-generated by Merge within VP (or AP) under the VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis (Fukui & Speas, 1986; Koopman & Sportiche, 1991) and receive a thematic role. On the contrary, syntactic arguments are those that are base-generated by Merge outside VP (or AP) or derived by movement to the so-called A-position for syntactic well-formedness, receiving a theta role. This dual analysis of arguments is argued to provide a more principled account of a variety of constructions such as expletive, passive, unaccusative, raising constructions, and so on.

On Modality in English

강승만 한국중앙영어영문학회 2011 영어영문학연구 Vol.53 No.2

This paper argues that modality should be recognized as an independent grammatical category, since it behaves separately from proposition in terms of time and negation. Modality in English is typically expressed by modal verbs, and they are divided into epistemic, deontic, and dynamic in the spirit of Palmer (1986, 1987). These three types of modals exhibit different behaviors in terms of time and negation. First, with epistemic modals only the proposition is marked for time, but either the modality or the proposition is marked for negation. Second, with deontic modals time cannot be marked either on the modality or on the proposition due to their performative disposition. For negation, only the modality is normally negated for possibility, but the proposition is negated for necessity. Finally, with dynamic modals only the modality is marked for time and negation in a straightforward manner. This complicated system of time and negation in English modals leads Korean EFL learners to commit a host of errors in their interpretation, and they should be taught modality and proposition separately in terms of time and negation.

Why English Relative Clauses Are Difficult To Teach and Learn

강승만 대한영어영문학회 2008 영어영문학연구 Vol.34 No.4

English relative clauses are treated as difficult among Korean EFL learners due to crosslinguistic differences between the two languages. Such crosslinguistic differences are the position of relative clauses, relative pronoun fronting, the existence of a relative pronoun, the morphological form of the relative pronoun, and so on. Evidently, they are important factors that cause the learners a variety of difficulties in their perception of the constructions. In addition to these crosslinguistic differences, I observe that the inability to discern between a relative pronoun and an interrogative pronoun constitutes another major factor that adds to such difficulties. I argue that this results from the lack of knowledge on syntactic and semantic subcategorization and markedness. I accordingly suggest that we should introduce such notions to our formal, explicit, and pedagogical school grammar instruction to enrich the learners’ understanding of English relative clause constructions.

Ergatives and Middles in Comparison and Contrast

강승만 현대영미어문학회 2016 현대영미어문학 Vol.34 No.1

This paper delves into some basic aspects of passive, ergative, and middle constructions in terms of transitivity, thematic relation, and syntactic derivation. Accordingly, I propose that, first of all, passives are transitive as the passive verb takes two arguments, an Agent external argument and a Theme internal argument. They are seen to be derived via NP-movement, in which the Theme internal object moves to subject position to get Case. Second, ergatives are also considered to be transitive in that they take the two arguments corresponding to those of passives. The external argument in ergatives, however, is argued to carry a non-human Causer, which is normally saturated and does not appear on the surface. The internal argument allegedly carrying a Theme theta-role is assumed to move to subject position to satisfy EPP. Finally, middles are argued to be intransitive, taking only a single internal argument with an Experiencer theta-role. The Experiencer internal argument moves into subject position to satisfy EPP and to place itself in a higher position than a Theme argument, subsequently conforming to Thematic Hierarchy, assumed in Larson (1988).