earticle

영어

This study investigates the use of relative clauses (RCs) by Chinese migrant workers who learned Korean in a naturalistic setting via everyday interaction with Korean native speakers. An analysis of the spoken data collected from 30 participants through semi-structured interviews revealed the following: 1) The learners at the low and intermediate levels did not produce many RCs, indicating that acquisition of forms and functions of RCs is not an easy task without formal instruction. 2) The learners’ RCs exhibited a gradual development with the following stages: compounding of two clauses, RCs without the head noun, internally headed RCs, and externally headed RCs. 3) At the low level, the relativization of the object was more common than that of the subject, which is not consistent with the prediction of the NPAH. 4) The animacy of the head noun interacted with the type of RCs; an animate head noun had a higher tendency to occur with a subject RC, while an inanimate head noun with an object RC. It is hoped that this study contributes to enhancing our understanding of the development of RCs in learner language. Further study with learners of more diverse L1 backgrounds should complement the result of the current study.