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영어

The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between text formats and an ambiguous question about time in English and Korean. All of the studies about the ambiguous time question on different days of the week (Monday or Friday) for Korean participants rely on paragraph text for presenting the text materials. Thus, it is necessary to compare spoken and written formats and investigate effects of the text format itself. The experiment investigates whether text format differences in spoken in person and paragraph text formats contribute to Koreans’ interpretation of the ambiguous question about time. In the experiment, participants are asked the question that produces different responses depending on the metaphor participants adopt in spoken and written formats. The results of the experiment indicate that Korean participants have a baseline preference for the time-moving metaphor, with a stronger preference in spoken rather than written format in both English and Korean and the Korean condition yields more Monday responses. In a natural communicative state, Korean speakers are more likely to make use of the time-moving metaphor, understanding time as moving forward towards the ego. The results provide new evidence of the effects of the text format itself on the interpretation of the ambiguous time question in English and Korean.