SVO 언어권 한국어 학습자들의 작문에 나타난 문장의 통사적 복잡성과 다양성 연구

Syntactic complexity and diversity of clauses in writings from Chinese, English and Spanish learners of Korean

We gathered and parsed well-formed clauses in writings from Chinese, English and Spanish learners of Korean in order to investigate syntactic complexity and diversity revealed in their clauses using Analytic Grammar. It was concluded that the Korean language learners from the three SVO type languages showed similarity of syntactic aspects of their clauses. First of all, syntactic complexity of matrix clauses was found to be constant from beginners to advanced learners. That of embedded clauses, however, differed according to learners' proficiency; that is, higher level learners showed higher syntactic complexity than lower levels. Syntactic complexity of sentences depended not on matrix clauses but on embedded clauses. Secondly, the Korean language learners from the three SVO type languages also showed similarity of syntactic diversity. The matrix clauses played the main role in sentences written by beginners but the embedded clauses caught up with the matrix clauses in those of the advanced learners. It is also interesting that these conclusions support the results from our previous study on intermediate learners from China for academic purpose.