earticle

영어

This study investigates how Korean learners resolve prepositional phrase attachment ambiguities in English verb phrase-noun phrase-prepositional phrase(VP-NP-PP) sequences. In the methodological approach of study, there is difference between previous studies and this study. Previous studies focused on linguistic performance through the on-line task, whereas this study focuses on linguistic competence by the off-line task. However, task sentences are similar to those by previous studies. The findings indicate that to resolve prepositional phrase attachment ambiguities, Korean learners in this study show different processing mechanisms with respect to argument status(argument/adjunct). When prepositional phrases are arguments, Korean learners use processing strategy based on lexical information, which supports the theory of argument preference strategy. However, when prepositional phrases are adjuncts, they depend on language-specific recency strategy. Generally, attachments as argument are preferred to attachments as adjunct.