A Korean noun Eojeol (e.g., hakkyo'ei) is a combination of a noun (e.g., hakkyo) and a particle (e.g., ei). Previous studies suggested that a noun Eojeol was decomposed into a noun and a particle at the earliest stage in the processing of Eojeols. The...
A Korean noun Eojeol (e.g., hakkyo'ei) is a combination of a noun (e.g., hakkyo) and a particle (e.g., ei). Previous studies suggested that a noun Eojeol was decomposed into a noun and a particle at the earliest stage in the processing of Eojeols. The present study investigated the processing of Eojeols using a variety of experimental tasks.
In chapter 2, the research focus was placed on the differences of Eojeol and word. In Experiment 1 using the free recall task, Eojeols were recalled worse than words. Most recall errors were related to difficulties in retrieving particles. The results suggested that Eojeols are not represented in the memory as a single unit like words. In Experiment 2 using the word association task, participants produced more phrases and sentences as responses to Eojeol stimuli, whereas they produced more nouns to noun stimuli, indicating that Eojeols activate propositional networks in the long-term memory, but words activate lexical networks.
In chapter 3, the roles of noun and particle in the processing of Eojeols were examined. In Experiment 3, response times to Eojeols with high-frequency noun in them were shorter than those with low-frequency noun, suggesting decomposition of Eojeols into noun and particle. In Experiment 4, a regression design was adopted with lengths and frequecies of Eojeol, noun and particle as predictors for Eojeol decision times. Each of the five predictors―length of noun, length of particle, frequency of particle, frequency of Eojeol, and frequency of noun―except for length of Eojeol explained significant amount of variance. The results from the Experiments 3 and 4 implied that separate processing of both nouns and particles is necessary to understand Eojeols.
In chapter 4, the time course that noun, particle, and Eojeol were represented and utilized was investigated using the priming paradigm. Response times to targets (words for Experiment 5 and Eojeols for Experiment 6) were measured. It was found that masked Eojeol primes (e.g., kai'in'ui) could facilitate responses to noun targets when the latter shared the same noun (e.g., kai'in) with the primes. Similar facilitations were also obtained when masked primes and visual targets were the same (e.g., kai'in'ui). These results support the idea that decomposition and activation of noun would take place at the earliest stage in the processing of Eojeols. In the condition of masked priming in Experiment 7, almost the same facilitative effects were observed for pairs sharing the same Eojeol (e.g., kakyek'ul—kakyek'ul) and pairs sharing only noun (e.g., kakyek'i—kakyek'ul), but in the SOA 200 ㎳ condition, priming effects were significantly larger for the same Eojeol pairs than for the same noun pairs. The result of masked priming suggests that there might be no pre-existing store for Eojeol and the SOA 200 ms result indicates that an Eojeol representation is constructed at a later stage. In Experiment 8, the role of particle in the processing of Eojeols was examined. For particle pairs (e.g., chongchi'wa—nongsa'wa) in which primes and targets have the same particles in common, priming effects were obtained in the conditions of masked priming and SOA 600 ㎳. The result from the masked priming condition suggests that particles seem to be decomposed from Eojeols in the earliest stage. The result from the SOA 600 ㎳ indicates that the influence of particle on the processing of Eojeols is long-lasting.
As a conclusion, a model was proposed that the processing of Eojeols would be achieved through three stages. In the first stage, Eojeols are decomposed into nouns and particles. The decomposition is automatic and obligatory. In the second stage, the stored information related to decomposed nouns and particles is retrieved or activated from the mental lexicon and 'the mental dictionary of particles'. Knowledge about spelling, phonology, word class, and meaning of words would be retrieved from the mental lexicon, and knowledge about grammatical case and procedure would be retrieved from the 'mental dictionary of particles'. In the third stage, all the information about each noun and particle would be combined into an Eojeol representation. Representations of Eojeol are first available in this stage.