Second language acquisition of Korean progressive

This dissertation examines second language (L2) acquisition of the Korean progressive by native English speakers and native Japanese speakers. We investigate first language (L1) transfer and form-to-meaning mapping, focusing on the acquisition of two possible interpretations of the Korean progressive.;In English, Japanese and Korean, the progressives interact differently with the lexical aspect of the verb. The English progressive encodes the ongoing interpretation, whereas the Japanese and Korean progressives encode not only the resultative interpretation but also the ongoing interpretation. Based on these crosslinguistic differences, we assume that learners start with their L1 in acquiring aspectual semantics and predict that L1-English learners and L1-Japanese learners show different acquisitional patterns. Furthermore, we predict that L1-English learners restructure native form-to-meaning mapping based on positive input. This dissertation investigates these issues by testing adult English speakers and Japanese speakers of various proficiency levels. In the experiments two main tasks were used: the Story Completion Task and the Truth Value Judgment Task.;The results of the tasks revealed that L1-English learners acquire the ongoing interpretation of the progressive -ko iss earlier than the resultative interpretation. However, L1-Japanese learners performed similarly on the ongoing interpretation of the progressive -ko iss and the resultative interpretation. The results suggest L1 transfer effects in acquiring the progressive, ruling out the universal developmental order, that is, prototype-based explanation. The results of the study of L1-English learners indicate that L2 learners could restructure form-to-meaning mapping based on positive input. However, acquisition of the resultative interpretation gradually occurred with individual variations.