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영어

This paper examines Korean speakers' knowledge of semantic computation of telicity in English. Precisely, it addresses the question of whether Korean learners are aware that telicity in English is encoded by the cardinality of objects. To this end, six different types of object NPs were used: eat an apple/the apple/two apples/a piece of cake/apples/cake. Only the first four objects of specified cardinality make a predicate telic. Results of a temporal modification test show that Korean learners have largely acquired that telicity in English relies on the cardinality of objects; crucially, they were able to accept the telic predicates but to reject the atelic predicates with the in X time adverbial. However, they failed to make the telic-atelic distinction regarding the event cancellation test, incorrectly accepting the telic predicates with the continuation denoting the cancelled event. It is argued that this fluctuation is attributable to L1 transfer. The transferred properties of Korean perfectives (i.e., partial completion interpretations) overrode their developing knowledge of telicity in English.