earticle

영어

This study aims to investigate not only a degree of linguistic knowledge and its utility but also the process of processing English long-distance wh-dependencies. Forty-eight Korean learners proficient in English participated in two experiments: an offline task and a self-paced reading task. The results of these two experiments show that first, Korean learners have a high degree of syntactic knowledge, and the ability to process long-distance wh-dependencies similar to native English speakers'. Second, Korean learners, using the active filler strategy instead of the intermediate gap, appeared to attempt to link the wh-filler to the object gap position behind the potential verb to assign the thematic role rather than waiting for the object gap position behind the subcategoring verb to establish the dependency. These findings do not support the shallow structure hypothesis.