한국언어과학회

This study explores Korean plural marking on nouns with animacy distinctions by Chinese L2 Korean learners. Korean nouns are classified according to ± animacy and animacy hierarchy, and animate nouns are more likely to be marked by ‘-tul’ than inanimate ones to represent a plural meaning. Considering that Chinese plural marking involving ‘们’ has more restrictions in realization than Korean, this study investigated whether Chinese learners with low and high Korean proficiency levels as well as Korean adults speakers as a control group exhibit different plural marking on animate nouns referring to a person or an animal; and inanimate ones referring to a thing or abstract notion. In an elicitation task where participants were instructed to fill in the blank with a noun that matches plural contents of the picture presented, they were allowed to produce either a marked or an unmarked noun to encode plurality. The results showed that the low proficiency group tended to use an unmarked noun regardless of noun animacy, while the high proficiency group, like the control group, attached ‘-tul’ to animate nouns more than inanimate ones. These results are discussed in conjunction with L1 transfer.