Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T14:20:50.928Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 16 - The Processing of a Long-Distance Dependency in Korean: An Overview

from Part III - Morphology and Syntax

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2022

By
Nayoung Kwon
Edited by
Sungdai Cho  and
John Whitman
Sungdai Cho
Affiliation:
Binghamton University, State University of New York
John Whitman
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Get access

Summary

Chapter 16 examines the processing of three types of long-distance dependencies: a forward syntactic dependency, a backward syntactic dependency, and a backward referential dependency. First, backward syntactic and referential dependencies show a processing asymmetry of subject/object gap sentences similar to that seen in forward syntactic dependencies, and they all elicit similar brain responses (Kwon 2008; Kwon et al. 2010, 2013). However, given that views among some typologists that backward dependencies are much more limited in distribution (Dryer 1992) and subject to more linguistic constraints (Lakoff 1968; Kuno 1972; Mittwoch 1983) than forward dependencies, processing of a backward dependency may be more difficult or less efficient (cf., Hawkins 1994, 1999, 2004). Likewise, the parser is “more cautious” in the processing of referential dependencies (Kwon and Sturt 2014). Finally, dependency formation may be affected by the relative importance of linguistic cues in a given language. In Korean, dependency formation is more strongly motivated by discourse context than in English (Kwon and Sturt 2013).

Keywords

long-distance dependencyforward dependencybackward dependencycataphorapredictive processingsyntactic dependencyreferential dependencyprodiscourse
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Korean Linguistics , pp. 458 - 486
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barkley, C., Kluender, R., and Kutas, M.. 2015. Referential processing in the human brain: An Event-Related Potential (ERP) study. Brain Research 1629: 143–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berwick, R., and Weinberg, A.. 1982. Parsing efficiency, computational complexity, and the evaluation of grammatical theories. Linguistic Inquiry 13: 165–91.Google Scholar
Bresnan, J. M., and Kaplan, R. M.. 1982. Introduction: Grammars as mental representations of language. In Bresnan, J., ed., The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cai, Z., Sturt, P., and Pickering, M.. 2013. The effect of non-adopted analyses on sentence processing. Language and Cognitive Processes 27: 1286–311.Google Scholar
Caplan, D., Alpert, N., and Waters, G.. 1998. Effects of syntactic structure and prepositional number on patterns of regional blood flow. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 10: 541–52.Google Scholar
Caplan, D., Alpert, N., and Waters, G.. 1999. PET studies of syntactic processing with auditory sentence presentation. NeuroImage 9: 343–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Caplan, D., Alpert, N., Waters, G., and Olivieri, A.. 2000. Activation of Broca’s area by syntactic processing under conditions of concurrent articulation. Human Brain Mapping 9: 65–71.Google Scholar
Carminati, M. N. 2002. The processing of Italian subject pronouns. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
Carminati, M. N. 2005. Processing reflexes of the feature hierarchy (Person > Number > Gender) and implications for linguistic theory. Lingua 115: 259–85.Google Scholar
Chen, B., Ning, A., Bi, H., and Dunlap, S.. 2008. Chinese subject-relative clauses are more difficult to process than the object relative clauses. Acta Psychologia 129: 61–5.Google Scholar
Chen, E., West, C., Waters, G., and Caplan, D.. 2006. Determinants of bold signal correlates of processing object-extracted relative clauses. Cortex 42: 591–604.Google Scholar
Choi, K. 2010. Subject honorification in Korean: In defense of Agr and head-spec agreement. Language Research 46: 59–82.Google Scholar
Choo, M. 1994. A unified account of null pronouns in Korean. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Hawaii, Manoa.Google Scholar
Chow, W. Y., Lewis, S., and Phillips, C.. 2014. Immediate sensitivity to structural constraints in pronoun resolution. Frontiers in Psychology 27.Google Scholar
Cohen, L., and Mehler, J.. 1996. Click monitoring revisited: An online study of sentence comprehension. Memory & Cognition 24: 94–102.Google Scholar
Constable, R. T., Pugh, K. R., Berroya, E., Mencl, W. E., Westerveld, M., Ni, W., and Shankweiler, D.. 2004. Sentence complexity and input modality effects in sentence comprehension: An fMRI study. NeuroImage 22: 11–21.Google Scholar
Cooke, A., Zurif, E. B., DeVita, C., Alsop, D., Koenig, P., Detre, J., Gee, J., Pinãngo, M., Balogh, J., and Grossman, M.. 2002. Neural basis for sentence comprehension: Grammatical and short-term memory components. Human Brain Mapping 15: 80–94.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Coulson, S., King, J. W., and Kutas, M.. 1998. Expect the unexpected: Event-related brain response to morphosyntactic violations. Language and Cognitive Processes 13: 21–58.Google Scholar
Culicover, P. W., and Jakendoff, R.. 2001. Control is not movement. Linguistic Inquiry 32: 493–512.Google Scholar
Culicover, P. W., and Jackendoff, R.. 2006. Turn over control to the semantics. Syntax 9: 131–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryer, M. S. 1992. The Greenbergian word order correlations. Language 68: 81–138.Google Scholar
Fiebach, C. J., Schlesewsky, M., and Friederici, A. D.. 2002. Separating syntactic memory costs and syntactic integration costs during parsing: The processing of German wh-questions. Journal of Memory and Language 47: 250–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. D. 1978. Parsing strategies and constraints on transformations. Linguistic Inquiry 9: 427–73.Google Scholar
Fraunfelder, U., Segui, J., and Mehler, J.. 1980. Monitoring around the relative clause. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 19: 328–37.Google Scholar
Frazier, L. 1987. Syntactic processing: Evidence from Dutch. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 5: 519–59.Google Scholar
Frazier, L., and Clifton, C.. 1989. Successive cyclicity in the grammar and the parser. Language and Cognitive Processes 4: 93–126.Google Scholar
Frazier, L., and Rayner, K.. 1982. Making and correcting errors during sentence comprehension: Eye movements in the analysis of structurally ambiguous sentences. Cognitive Psychology 14: 178–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gennari, S. P., and MacDonald, M. C.. 2008. Semantic indeterminacy in object relative clauses. Journal of Memory and Language 58: 161–87.Google Scholar
Gibson, E. 1998. Linguistic complexity: Locality of syntactic dependencies. Cognition 68: 1–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gibson, E. 2000. The dependency locality theory: A distance-based theory of linguistic complexity. In Marantz, A. P., Miyashita, Y., and O’Neil, W., eds., Image, Language, Brain: Papers from the First Mind Articulation Project Symposium. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 95–126.Google Scholar
Gibson, E., and Wu, I.. 2013. Processing Chinese relative clauses in context. Language and Cognitive Processes 28: 125–55.Google Scholar
Gibson, E., Desmet, T., Grodner, D., Watson, D., and Ko, K.. 2005. Reading relative clauses in English. Cognitive Linguistics 16: 313–54.Google Scholar
Gordon, P. C., Hendrick, R., and Johnson, M.. 2001. Memory interference during language processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 27: 1411–23.Google Scholar
Greenberg, J. H. 1963. Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In Greenberg, J. H., ed., Universals of Language. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 58–90.Google Scholar
Hale, J. 2001. A probabilistic Earley parser as a psycholinguistic model. Proceedings of the second meeting of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 159–66.Google Scholar
Hale, J. 2006. Uncertainty about the rest of the sentence. Cognitive Science 30: 609–42.Google Scholar
Han, C. H. 2013. On the syntax of relative clauses in Korean. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 58: 319–47.Google Scholar
Han, C. H., and Kim, J. B.. 2004. Are there “double relative clauses” in Korean? Linguistic Inquiry 35: 315–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. 1994. A Performance Theory of Order and Constituency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. 1999. Processing complexity and filler-gap dependencies across grammar. Language 75: 244–85.Google Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. 2004. Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Heider, P., Dery, J., and Roland, D.. 2014. The processing of object relative clauses: Evidence against a fine-grained frequency account. The Journal of Memory and Language 75: 58–76.Google Scholar
Holmes, V. M., and O’Regan, J. K.. 1981. Eye fixation patterns during the reading of relative clause sentences. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 20: 417–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hong, S. 1985. A and A’ binding in Korean and English: Government-binding parameters. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Connecticut.Google Scholar
Hornstein, N. 1999. Movement and control. Linguistic Inquiry 30: 69–96.Google Scholar
Hsiao, F., and Gibson, E.. 2003. Processing relative clauses in Chinese. Cognition 90: 3–27.Google Scholar
Huang, C-T. J. 1984. On the distribution and reference of empty pronouns. Linguistic Theory 15: 531–73.Google Scholar
Just, M. A., Carpenter, P. A., Keller, T. A., Eddy, W. F., and Thulborn, K. R.. 1996. Brain activation modulated by sentence comprehension. Science 274: 114–16.Google Scholar
Kang, Y. S. 1986. Korean syntax and universal grammar. Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Kaplan, T. I., and Whitman, J.. 1995. The category of relative clauses in Japanese, with reference to Korean. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 4: 29–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kazanina, N., Lau, E., Lieberman, M., Yoshida, M., and Phillips, C.. 2007. The effect of syntactic constraints on the processing of backwards anaphora. Journal of Memory and Language 56: 384–409.Google Scholar
Keenan, E. L., and Comrie, B.. 1977. Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 8: 63–99.Google Scholar
Kehler, A. 2002. Coherence, Reference, and the Theory of Grammar. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Kennison, S. M., Fernandez, E. C., and Bowers, J. M.. 2009. Processing differences for anaphoric and cataphoric pronouns: Implications for theories of discourse processing. Discourse Processes 46: 25–45.Google Scholar
Kidd, E., Brandt, S., Lieven, E., and Tomasello, M.. 2007. Object relatives made easy: A cross-linguistic comparison of the constraints influencing young children’s processing of relative clauses. Language and Cognitive Processes 22: 860–97.Google Scholar
Kim, J. B. 2015. Grammatical interfaces in Korean honorification: A constraint-based perspective. Language and Information 19: 19–36.Google Scholar
Kim, J. B., and Sells, P.. 2008. Korean honorification: A kind of expressive meaning. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 16: 303–36.Google Scholar
Kim, Y. J. 2000. Subject/object drop in the acquisition of Korean: A cross-linguistic comparison. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 9: 325–51.Google Scholar
King, J., and Just, M. A.. 1991. Individual differences in syntactic processing: The role of working memory. Journal of Memory and Language 30: 580–602.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, J., and Kutas, M.. 1995. Who did what and when? Using word- and clause-level ERPs to monitor working memory usage in reading. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 7: 376–95.Google Scholar
Kluender, R., and Kutas, M.. 1993a. Bridging the gap: Evidence from ERPs on the processing of unbound dependencies. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 5: 196–214.Google Scholar
Kluender, R., and Kutas, M.. 1993b. Subjacency as a processing phenomenon. Language and Cognitive Processes 8: 573–633.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuno, S. 1972. Sentence perspective: A case study from Japanese and English. Linguistic Inquiry 3: 269–320.Google Scholar
Kutas, M., and Hillyard, S. A.. 1983. Event-related brain potentials to grammatical errors and semantic anomalies. Memory & Cognition 11: 539–50.Google Scholar
Kwon, N. 2008. Processing of syntactic and anaphoric gap-filler dependencies in Korean: Evidence from self-paced reading time, ERP and eye-tracking experiments. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, San Diego.Google Scholar
Kwon, N., and Sturt, P.. 2013. Null pronominal (pro) resolution in Korean, a discourse-oriented language. Language and Cognitive Processes 28: 377–87.Google Scholar
Kwon, N., and Sturt, P.. 2014. The use of control information in dependency formation: An eye-tracking study. Journal of Memory and Language 73: 59–80.Google Scholar
Kwon, N., and Sturt, P.. 2016. Attraction effects in honorific agreement in Korean. Frontiers in Psychology 7: 1302. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01302 [last accessed September 24, 2020].Google Scholar
Kwon, N., Monahan, P., and Polinsky, M.. 2010. Object control in Korean: A backward control impostor. In Hornstein, Norbert and Polinsky, Maria, eds., Movement Theory of Control. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 299–328.Google Scholar
Kwon, N., Kluender, R., Kutas, M., and Polinsky, M.. 2013. Subject/object processing asymmetries in Korean relative clauses: Evidence from ERP data. Language 89: 537–85.Google Scholar
Kwon, N., Kluender, R., Polinsky, M., and Kutas, M.. (In preparation). The processing of syntactic vs. anaphoric referential dependencies in Korean: Evidence from reading times and ERPs.Google Scholar
Kwon, N., Lee, Y., Gordon, P. C., Kluender, R., and Polinsky, M.. 2010. Cognitive and linguistic factors affecting subject/object asymmetry: An eye-tracking study of pre-nominal relative clauses in Korean. Language 86: 546–82.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. 1968. Pronouns and Reference. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Levy, R. 2008. Expectation-based syntactic comprehension. Cognition 106: 1126–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lewis, R. L., and Vasishth, S.. 2005. An activation-based model of sentence processing as skilled memory retrieval. Cognitive Science 29: 1–45.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lewis, R. L. Vasishth, S., and Van Dyke, J. A.. 2006. Computational principles of working memory in sentence comprehension. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10: 447–54.Google Scholar
Lin, C. J. (In press). Subject prominence and processing filler-gap dependencies in prenominal relative clauses: The comprehension of possessive relative clauses and adjunct relative clauses in Mandarin Chinese. Language.Google Scholar
Lin, C. J., and Bever, T. G.. 2006. Subject preference in the processing of relative clauses in Chinese. In Baumer, D., Montero, D., and Scanlon, M., eds., Proceedings of the 25th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project, pp. 254–60.Google Scholar
Lin, Y. 2010. Comprehending Mandarin relative clauses: Ambiguity, locality, and expectation. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, IL.Google Scholar
Lin, Y., and Garnsey, S.. 2007. Plausibility and the resolution of temporary ambiguity in relative clause comprehension in Mandarin. In Proceedings of The Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing. University of California, San Diego.Google Scholar
Liversedge, S. P., and Van Gompel, R. P. G.. Manuscript. Resolving anaphoric and cataphoric pronouns.Google Scholar
MacDonald, M. C., and Christiansen, M. H.. 2002. Reassessing working memory: Comment on Just and Carpenter (1992) and Waters and Caplan (1996). Psychological Review 109: 35–54.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B., and Pleh, C.. 1988. The processing of restrictive relative clauses in Hungarian. Cognition 29: 95–141.Google Scholar
Mak, W. M., Vonk, W., and Schriefers, H.. 2002. The influence of animacy on relative clause processing. Journal of Memory and Language 47: 50–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mecklinger, A., Schriefers, H., Steinhauer, K., and Friederici, A. D.. 1995. Processing relative clauses varying on syntactic and semantic dimensions: An analysis with event-related potentials. Memory and Cognition 23: 477–94.Google Scholar
Mittwoch, A. 1983. Backward anaphora and discourse structure. Journal of Pragmatics 7: 129–39.Google Scholar
Miyamoto, E. T., and Nakamura, M.. 2003. Subject/object asymmetries in the processing of relative clauses in Japanese. In Garding, G. and Tsujimura, M., eds., Proceedings of the 22nd WCCFL. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, pp. 342–55.Google Scholar
Müller, H. M., King, J. W., and Kutas, M.. 1997. Event-related potentials elicited by spoken relative clauses. Cognitive Brain Research 5: 193–203.Google Scholar
Münte, T. F., Heinze, H. J., and Mangun, G. R.. 1993. Dissociation of brain activity related to syntactic and semantic aspects of language. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 5: 335–44.Google Scholar
Münte, T. F., Schiltz, K., and Kutas, M.. 1998. When temporal terms belie conceptual order. Nature 395: 71–3.Google Scholar
Neville, H., Nicol, J., Barss, A., Foster, K. I., and Garnett, M. F.. 1991. Syntactically based sentence processing classes: Evidence form event-related brain potentials. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 3: 151–65.Google Scholar
O’Grady, W. 1997. Syntactic Development. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
O’Grady, W. 2011. Relative clauses: Processing and Acquisition. In Kidd, Evan, ed., The Acquisition of Relative Clauses: Functional and Typological Perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Osterhout, L., and Mobley, L. A.. 1995. Event-related brain potentials elicited by failure to agree. Journal of Memory and Language 34: 739–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pablos, L., Doetjes, J., Ruijgrok, B., and Cheng, L. L. S.. 2015. Active search for antecedents in cataphoric pronoun resolution. Frontiers in Psychology 6: 1638.Google Scholar
Phillips, C. 1996. Order and structure. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Phillips, C. 2006. The real-time status of island phenomena. Language 82: 795–823.Google Scholar
Phillips, C., Kazanina, N., and Abada, S. H.. 2005. ERP effects of the processing of syntactic long-distance dependencies. Cognitive Brain Research 22: 407–28.Google Scholar
Reali, F., and Christiansen, M. H.. 2007. Processing of relative clauses is made easier by frequency of occurrence. Journal of Memory and Language 57: 1–23.Google Scholar
Reinhart, T. 1983. Anaphora and Semantic Interpretation. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Rösler, F., Pechmann, T., Streb, J., Roder, B., and Hennighausen, E.. 1998. Parsing of sentences in a language with varying word order: Word-by-word variations of processing demands are revealed by event-related brain potentials. Journal of Memory and Language 38: 150–76.Google Scholar
Qiao, X., Shen, L., and Forster, K.. 2012. Relative clause processing in Mandarin: Evidence from the maze task. Language and Cognitive Processes 27: 611–30.Google Scholar
Schriefers, H., Friederici, A. D., and Kuhn, K.. 1995. The processing of locally ambiguous relative clauses in German. Journal of Memory and Language 34: 499–520.Google Scholar
Sohn, H. M. 1980. Theme-prominence in Korean. Journal of the International Circle of Korean Linguistics 2: 2–19.Google Scholar
Sohn, H. M. 1999. The Korean Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stowe, L. A. 1986. Parsing wh-constructions: Evidence for online gap location. Language and Cognitive Processes 1: 227–45.Google Scholar
Stromswold, K., Caplan, D., Alpert, N., and Rauch, S.. 1996. Localization of syntactic comprehension by positron emission tomography. Brain and Language 52: 452–73.Google Scholar
Sturt, P., and Kwon, N.. 2015. The processing of raising and nominal control: An eye-tracking study. Frontiers in Psychology 6 [online].Google Scholar
Traxler, M., Morris, R., and Seely, R.. 2002. Processing subject and object relative clauses: Evidence from the eye movements. Journal of Memory and Language 47: 69–90.Google Scholar
Ueno, M., and Garnsey, S. M.. 2006. An ERP study of the processing of subject and object relative clauses in Japanese. Language and Cognitive Processes 23: 646–88.Google Scholar
Van Gompel, R. P. G. and Liversedge, S. P.. 2003. The influence of morphological information on cataphoric pronoun assignment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 29: 128–39.Google Scholar
Vasishth, S., Chen, Z., Li, Q., and Guo, G.. 2013. Processing Chinese relative clauses: Evidence for the subject-relative advantage. PLoS ONE 8(10): e77006. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0077006 [last accessed September 4, 2020]..Google Scholar
Wanner, E., and Maratsos, M.. 1978. An ATN approach to comprehension. In Halle, M., Bresnan, J., and Miller, G., eds., Linguistic Theory and Psychological Reality. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 119–61.Google Scholar
Yang, D. W. 1987. Theory of barriers and relativization. Language Research 23: 1–37.Google Scholar
Yang, H. K. 1990. Categories and barriers in Korean. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas at Austin.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×