Korean Speakers’ Knowledge of Telicity of Directional Prepositions in English
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Following their aspectual properties, directional PPs in English are classified into two: telic PPs with a bounded path and atelic PPs with a unbounded path. Telic PPs such as to and out of can shift the aspect to telic (Alex swam (*in/for an hour). vs. Alex swam to the beach (in/*for an hour)). In contrast, atelic PPs such as towards and along do not have the same effect. Such a distinction has linguistic consequences. Telic and atelic PPs behave differently with respect to the in/for time adverbial test, the acceptability of halfway and almost modification, event cancellation and imperfective paradox interaction test. With this backdrop, this study examined Korean speakers’ awareness of the telic-atelic PP distinction exploiting the aforementioned five diagnostics. Results showed that the advanced learners reliably made the distinction across the five diagnostics whereas intermediate learners exhibited fluctuating judgments, being target-like only for the two diagnostics. We argued that the advanced learners are fully aware of the distinction, successfully constructing the right semantics of the directional PPs whereas the intermediate learners are still developing their sensitivity to the distinction. These results are quite striking considering fundamentally different roles played by adpositions in English and Korean. Furthermore, novel data from individual analyses revealed that among the prepositions tested, out of and along were represented as the most typical telic and atelic PPs, respectively in their mental grammar. We also addressed the reasons behind such individual results.
Abstract
Following their aspectual properties, directional PPs in English are classified into two: telic PPs with a bounded path and atelic PPs with a unbounded path. Telic PPs such as to and out of can shift the aspect to telic (Alex swam (*in/for an hour). vs. Alex swam to the beach (in/*for an hour)). In contrast, atelic PPs such as towards and along do not have the same effect. Such a distinction has linguistic consequences. Telic and atelic PPs behave differently with respect to the in/for time adverbial test, the acceptability of halfway and almost modification, event cancellation and imperfective paradox interaction test. With this backdrop, this study examined Korean speakers’ awareness of the telic-atelic PP distinction exploiting the aforementioned five diagnostics. Results showed that the advanced learners reliably made the distinction across the five diagnostics whereas intermediate learners exhibited fluctuating judgments, being target-like only for the two diagnostics. We argued that the advanced learners are fully aware of the distinction, successfully constructing the right semantics of the directional PPs whereas the intermediate learners are still developing their sensitivity to the distinction. These results are quite striking considering fundamentally different roles played by adpositions in English and Korean. Furthermore, novel data from individual analyses revealed that among the prepositions tested, out of and along were represented as the most typical telic and atelic PPs, respectively in their mental grammar. We also addressed the reasons behind such individual results.
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