The Modularity of Morphosyntax: Mentally Retarded Children’s Production of Conjugated Predicates in Korean

• 발행기관: 경희대학교 언어정보연구소
• 저자명: Jong Sup Jun
• 간행물 정보: 『언어연구』제29권 제2호, 381~402쪽, 전체 22쪽
• 주제분류: 인문학 > 언어학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2012.08.31

영문 초록

In this paper, we investigate whether mentally retarded (=MR) Korean children’s production of conjugated predicates follows the same generalization that has been reported for normal children’s language performance. For this, we elicited narratives from 15 MR children, and analyzed their production of conjugated predicates. We cross-classified the conjugation patterns in terms of four categorical variables: morphological class, (morpho-)syntactic conjugation, semantic class, and age. Results from the log-linear regression analysis show that MR children’s use of predicate conjugation is constrained by the same generalization that determines the distribution of normal children’s conjugation patterns. That is, both MR and normal children’s production of conjugated predicates is nicely predicted by the interaction between the morphological and semantic classes of each predicate, and by the main effect of conjugation type. The overall finding supports the modularity view of language in terms of morphosyntax; i.e. the language capacity is dissociated from the general cognition.

목차

1. Introduction

2. Cognitive Deficits and Language

3. Methods, Procedures and the Cross-tabulation

4. Log-linear Models for MR Children’s Production of Conjugated Predicates in Korean

5. Discussion and Conclusion

References

키워드

modularity Korean morphology conjugation narrative frog story log-linear regression