Preposition Stranding in the EFL Acquisition of Embedded Wh-questions

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study investigates the acquisition of preposition stranding in the syntactic contexts, such as elliptical wh-questions and non-elliptical ones, by Korean speakers learning English. An acceptability judgment task was conducted to examine the effects of clause types (non-elliptical vs. elliptical), preposition placement (preposition stranding vs. preposition pied-piping), and the V-P dependency (Dependent vs. Independent vs. Irrelevant). The results showed that preposition stranding was rejected in elliptical wh-questions while preposition fronting was favored over preposition stranding in non-elliptical wh-questions. Though the results were seemingly contradictory to the saliency hypothesis proposed by Bardovi-Harlig (1987), the study will provide an Optimality-theoretic analysis for the learners’ interlanguage grammars by adopting the constraint ranking proposed by Choi (2008).

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Abstract
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Previous Studies
• 2.1 Acquisition of Preposition Placement
• 2.2 Analyses of Alternation between P-stranding and P-fronting
• 2.3 Embedded Wh-questions: Elliptical and Non-elliptical Questions
• 3. The Study
• 3.1 Research Questions
• 3.2 Participants
• 3.3 Tasks and Procedure
• 3.4 Material Designs
• 4. Results
• 5. Discussion
• 5.1 Developmental Path and OT-Analysis
• 5.2 L1 Influence
• 6. Conclusion
• References