This study examined how Korean speakers regulate the use of the demonstrative ku to maintain discourse coherence across anaphoric and bridging contexts. Framed by the tension between speaker-oriented economy and hearer-oriented clarity, we investigated how discourse-level factors, specifically reference type and contextual adequacy, shape the choice between bare and demonstrative forms in Korean referential marking. Two experiments were conducted using experimental items derived directly from Korean speakers’ authentic essays, completion task (Study 1) and rating task (Study 2). Across both, ku was most frequently used in bridging contexts involving semantically less transparent relations, Circumstantial and Attributive references, and least in Thematic relations, where referents were readily inferable through argument structure. Bare noun phrases predominated when discourse support was strong, regardless of reference type. The results suggest that anaphoric marking in Korean is contextually adaptive, allowing speakers to balance economy and clarity by integrating semantic-relational complexity with contextual cues. While the findings are largely consistent with speaker-oriented economy predictions, they also reveal exploratory evidence that semantic accessibility modulates referential form choice, an issue warranting further empirical refinement. This study deepens our understanding of demonstrative use in Korean and contributes to broader discussions of anaphora, pragmatic economy, and accessibility in discourse.

This study examines how readers process evidential dependencies in Korean, a language where marking the source of information is morphologically encoded but often optional. Using a combination of offline and online measures, we investigated the extent to which readers adhere to evidential consistency during incremental processing. Our findings indicate that while readers generate probabilistic expectations based on early cues, these expectations are distinctly modulated by semantic compatibility. The observation that evidential mismatches are frequently accommodated suggests that evidentiality in Korean functions as a soft constraint to prevent communication breakdown. We conclude that evidential processing is not driven by rigid grammatical algorithms but is a flexible mechanism that balances probabilistic expectation with semantic congruence.

Human behavioral studies have consistently indicated a preference for subject-extracted relative clauses (SRCs) over object-extracted relative clauses (ORCs) in sentence production and comprehension. Some studies have further shown that this preference can be influenced by the semantic properties of head nouns, particularly animacy. In this study, we use AI language models, specifically GPT-2 and ChatGPT 3.5, to simulate human sentence generation. Our primary goal is to evaluate the extent to which these language models replicate human behaviors in sentence production and identify any divergences. We tasked the models with completing sentence fragments structured as 'the,' followed by a head noun and 'that' (The reporter that ...). We varied the semantic property of head nouns such that they are all animate (the secretary that ... ) in Study 1 and are either animate or inanimate (the musician/book that ... ) in Study 2. Our findings reveal that in Study 1, both GPT models exhibited a robust SRC bias, replicating human-like behavior in relative clause production. However, in Study 2, we observed divergent behavior between the models when head nouns were inanimate, while consistency was maintained when head nouns were animate. Specifically, ChatGTP 3.5 generated more ORCs than SRCs in the presence of inanimate head nouns. These results, particularly those from ChatGPT 3.5, closely mirror human relative clause production patterns. Our study highlights the potential of language generative language models as efficient and versatile corpus simulators. Furthermore, our findings contribute to the evolving field of AI linguistics, shedding light on the capacity of AI generative systems to emulate human-like linguistic patterns in sentence production.

Readers' active use of linguistic cues from a given context elicits anticipatory processing of yet-to-be-encountered information. In this study, we aimed to examine whether the patterns of anticipatory comprehension would systematically differ by the degree of readers' working memory capacity. Readers' evoked responses potentials (ERPs) in response to words were recorded in the processing of Korean dative sentences (i.e., subject+[recipient+theme]/[theme-recipient]+adverb+verb) in which the presentation order of arguments (i.e., role predictability) and the likelihood corresponding to argument role fillers (i.e., word predictability) were manipulated. We found quantitative and qualitative differences in ERPs among readers during sentence comprehension. The N400 emerged in the integration of unpredictable words, and it occurred more frequently among readers with low working memory. Of our interest, we observed the asymmetrical distribution of the negativity and the positivity, attributable to the differences in readers' working memory, at adverbs and verbs in which readers were busy with integrating previously-presented arguments into sentences and processing incoming words. Our results suggested that readers with low working memory are more involved in the lexical retrieval process, whereas those with high working memory are more attentive to the structural or semantic integration process. In short, we argued that the lack of working memory capacity could make readers fall behind in using lexical and structural information during sentence processing, particularly for argument integration.

Specification of information sources in human speech – evidentiality – prevents misunderstandings and allows listeners to assess the validity of the information communicated. Some of the same linguistic forms used for evidentiality, including grammatical markers and lexical items, are also reported to have a 'mirative' function, and can be used by speakers to express their surprise. Importantly, languages differ in the type of forms they typically use for evidentiality. For instance, corpus analyses suggest that German uses lexical items, while Korean typically encodes evidentiality via grammaticalized sentence-ending (SE) markers. Little is known, however, about the extent to which such linguistic differences are reflected in speakers' use of these forms in verbal interaction. To fill this gap, we carried out an experimental study in which Korean and German speakers were presented with events in audio and/or visual modalities and asked to describe them verbally as well as to rate their degree of surprise about the events. The results revealed several major differences between the two languages. Korean speakers used a high frequency of evidential SE markers, particularly the hearsay marker -tay, while German speakers, who relied on lexical items, encoded evidentiality much less frequently. In Korean, grammatical markers of evidentiality showed pragmatic extensions: The hearsay marker -tay carried an overtone of mirativity. Korean speakers seldom used markers having to do with perception, -te(la) and -ney; instead, it was the neutral marker -e that correlated with the salience of the visual evidence. In contrast, German speakers encoded hearsay and visual perception with lexical verbs in comparable frequencies, slightly prioritizing visual evidence. In German, lexical expressions (sagen/hören 'say/hear', sehen 'see') did not show pragmatic extension, and unmarked sentences did not imply a visual information source. These and other findings offer important insight into the lexical-grammatical continuum in evidentiality and the relationship between language and cognition in general.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the grammatical and structural patterns of code-switches that Korean-English bilinguals have produced. We collected the Korean-English and English-Korean code-switching utterances produced by 60 Korean-speaking participants, and analyzed them under the grammatical constraints regulated by Poplack’s model and Myers-Scotton’s model. The results revealed several points in accounting for the grammatical and structural characteristics of the bilinguals’ code-switching utterances. We further discuss our results in terms of bilinguals’grammatical encoding based on Block and Levelt’s production model.

Previous studies have reported that there were cross-linguistic differences in resolving the attachment ambiguity of relative clauses (RC) to noun phrases (NP) with two antecedents. Attaching RCs to low NPs (i.e., NP₂ in [[NP₁ of NP₂] RC]), known as low attachment (LA), is preferred in languages like English, whereas attachment to high NPs (i.e., NP₁ in [[NP₁ of NP₂] RC]), known as high attachment(HA), is favored in languages like Spanish. In Korean, findings are biased to HA preference (i.e, NP₂ in [RC [NP₁ of NP₂]]) but are not fully conclusive. We reinvestigated Korean attachment preferences using a force-choice task, where both or specific antecedents were valid as an attachment site, with and without the presence of honorific-markers. HA preference was found only in the ambiguous condition. However, the attachment preference varied as a function of the morpho-syntactic information: 1) The attachment preference was changed from HA to LA when honorific markers indexed to attach RCs to low antecedents. 2) The HA preference became stronger when the honorific agreement information forced an attachment of RCs to high antecedents. We discuss our results in the view of constraint-based approach in psycholinguistics.

Code switching is a common linguistic phenomenon that multiple languages are combined together in bilinguals’ utterances within or across sentences. In this paper, we review previous bilingual studies under the psycholinguistic perspectives as a way to overcome the explanatory validity of existing theories on code switches. In line with the activation-based psycholinguistic approaches, we propose to conduct three-way comparisons of code switching across typologically-same-and-different languages (i.e., Korean-to-Chinese, Koreanto-English, and Korean-to-Japanese). These multi-dimensional systematic testings will provide empirical evidence to investigate underlying linguistic and cognitive processes that are engaged in bilinguals’ minds. The lack of actual experimental data is the limitation of the current proposal.

The study aimed to extend the existing discussion on assessment literacy by focusing on English teachers' ability to implement it in South Korea where a new assessment policy was implemented as part of educational reform.Scholars have pointed out a lack of teachers' assessment knowledge and gaps in their ability to conduct the appropriate assessment for effective instruction.Thus, the scope of teacher assessment literacy needs to include teachers' ability to implement it appropriately in given contexts.Grounding our study in the notion of teacher-based assessment as a guiding framework and using a mixed-methods design, we examined how Korean teachers perceived performance assessment emphasized in the reform and how they put it into practice.One hundred and twenty-seven teachers participated in survey questionnaires and 15 teachers were interviewed as a follow-up.The findings of the study showed that there were discrepancies between the teachers' perceptions of assessment and their assessment practice and that the teachers showed diverse reactions toward teacher-based assessment from being capable to feeling powerless depending on their assessment knowledge and contextual constraints.The study suggests the importance of teachers' agency in assessment literacy as a prerequisite for teacher-based assessment.

Korean uses grammatical markers to express evidentiality which refers to the source of information of an event indicating whether speakers directly witness the event, indirectly infer the source from general knowledge or perceptual cues, or are told about the event. Many studies have explored linguistic systems for Korean evidential types. However, little has been investigated about how well speakers’ intention on expressing the source of information has delivered to listeners. In this study, we attempted to quantify the degree of listeners’ perceptual sensitivity on speakers’ linguistic cues representing whether speakers witness expressed events. Manipulating eight sentence-ending markers (i.e., -e, -ta, -ci, -canha, -ney, -te-, -kwuna, -tay) of event statements, we asked Seoul and Yanbian dialect users to rate the likelihood of speakers’ witnessing expressed events from 1 (least likely) to 5 (most likely). Our results showed that event statements ended with -e marker were scored the highest rates (speakers were highly likely to witness the events), whereas event statements ended with -tay marker were scored the lowest rates (speakers were least likely to witness the events). We discuss that the source of information cued by grammatical markers is not always perceived to listeners in a way that the marker grammar defines.

Two long-standing and interrelated questions have been central to language and cognition. The first question is whether shared or separate mechanisms subserve language learning versus language processing. The second question is whether shared or separate mechanisms underlie processing in a first versus second language. Using an individual differences paradigm, we sought evidence for common mechanisms by probing implicit statistical learning (SL) skills and online reading in a second language. We found that individuals with better statistical learning skills more efficiently incorporate word-level statistical regularities while reading in their second language, making them more efficient L2 readers. In addition, sensitivity to forward and backward lexical predictability reduced reading times. Thus, sensitivity to statistical sequential structure may be a common mechanism of implicit learning as well as processing of language.

This study aimed to examine the processing benefits of frequency information associated with the case marker -eykey in comprehending Korean declarative sentences. By using a picture description task in which pictures ambiguously illustrated either a giving event (-eykeyREC … cwuta ‘give … to’) or a receiving event (-eykeySOURCE … patta ‘receive … from’), we found that giving events were predominantly preferred to receiving events. The results of the online sentence comprehension study revealed that 1) give-type verbs were integrated into sentences faster than receive-type verbs overall and 2) the reading-time differences between the verb types were significant when role NPs were canonically ordered (NP-eykey … NP-(l)ul) but not when they were noncanonically presented (NP-(l)ul … NP-eykey). We claim that structural and semantic frequency bias associated with -eykey facilitates readers’ anticipatory processing in the integration of upcoming information. We further discuss how the processing differences in giving and receiving events might attribute to the argument-adjunct distinction between recipients and sources.

The immediate use of the contextual information to predict the upcoming information during sentence comprehension may vary depending on the aspects of the linguistic and world knowledge and the cognitive ability of readers. In this study, we investigated how well older readers employ their linguistic and world knowledge to develop the expectation for the upcoming information during sentence comprehension. In two offline tasks (cloze and listing), older and young readers were asked to complete sentence fragments (when agents and recipients were given or when agents and patients were given). The responses were used to compute predictability measurements (structural and lexical predictability). We found no aging effect in the production of likely structural choices and likely lexical choices, meaning that the most predictable ones to older readers were also the most predictable to young readers. Significant aging effect emerged in the production of unlikely choices; older readers were more predictable to unlikely structures but less predictable to unlikely words. We discuss the contextual sensitivity of older readers in formulating their knowledge representation for what is coming up next.

Because of the importance of early interventions in cognitive decline, cognitive training using electronic devices is becoming popular. However, its effectiveness is not clear. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of smartphone cognitive training on cognitive function and brain connectivity. Six patients with mild cognitive impairments and one patient with early dementia performed smartphone-based cognitive training twice a week for four weeks. The cognitive training occurred in four cognitive domains (sensory perception, attention, working memory, and reasoning). Language and visual functions were utilized in every domain through the smartphone-based design. Before and after the cognitive training, the patients’ cognitive functions were tested, and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging was performed. The results were then compared. In the analysis of the group containing all seven participants, cognitive function did not improve in any domain after the training. However, the individuals with mild cognitive impairments showed post-training improvements in attention, language function, visuospatial function, verbal and spatial memory, naming ability, and executive function. The resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging results showed increased activation after the training in several networks responsible for language function, attention, and executive function.

abstractWe investigate how German and Korean speakers describe everyday spatial/motion events, such as putting a cup on the table. In these motion events, the moving object (e.g., cup) and the non-moving reference object (e.g., table) take on the roles of Figure and Ground, respectively. Figure(F) and Ground(G) thus have distinct perceptual properties and assume conceptually asymmetric roles (entity moving along a trajectory vs. stationary reference frame). We examine the degrees to which speakers distinguish between F and G semantically (spatial/Path terms, e.g., on, in) and syntactically (grammatical roles, e.g., subject, object). Participants described events involving two objects that switched their F-G roles (put cup(F) on board(G) and put board(F) under cup(G)). German speakers use distinct Path terms (e.g., auf, in) for differential F-G relations, thus encoding the F-G asymmetry. In contrast, Korean speakers use the same terms (e.g., kkita ‘fit.tightly’) and the same syntactic constructions regardless of switches in F-G roles. These cross-linguistic differences are evident for Non-typical events (Put board(F) under cup(G)), showing that the encoding of the asymmetry interacts with speakers’ everyday experiences of motion events. We argue that the differences reflect the interactions between the Path lexicon and spatial syntax, and language-specific viewpoints of the F-G relation.

This study has two goals. First, we present much-needed empirical linguistic data and systematic analyses on the spatial semantic systems in English and Korean, two languages that have been extensively compared to date in the debate on spatial language and spatial cognition. We conduct our linguistic investigation comprehensively, encompassing the domains of tight- and loose-fit as well as containment and support relations. The current analysis reveals both cross-linguistic commonalities and differences: From a common set of spatial features, each language highlights a subset of those features for its principal categorization, and those primary features are importantly different between English and Korean: English speakers categorize events predominantly by containment and support relations (and do so with prepositions), whereas Korean speakers categorize them by tight-fit and loose-fit relations (and do so with verbs), with a further distinction of containment and support within the loose-fit relation. The analysis also shows that the tight-fit domain is more cross-linguistically diverse in categorization than is the loose-fit domain. Second, we test the language data against the nonlinguistic categorization results reported in Choi and Hattrup (2012). The results show a remarkable degree of convergence between the patterns predicted from the current linguistic analysis and those found in C&H's nonlinguistic study and thus provide empirical and strong evidence for an influence of language on nonlinguistic spatial cognition. At the same time, the study reveals areas where the two systems closely interact with each other as well as those where one is independent from the other. Taking both parts of the study together, we identify the specific roles that language and spatial perception/cognition play in spatial categorization.