Discourse Marker mwe in the Interlanguage of Chinese Learners of Korean

This study explores the development and use of mwe, a multi-functional discourse marker, in the interlanguage of Chinese learners of L2 Korean. Oral production data elicited from 28 Chinese migrant workers at three proficiency levels and five advanced Chinese students were analyzed focusing on the distribution of mwe in three functional domains, which consist of nine subcategories. A native corpus of about 56,000 words compiled from the Sejong Corpus served as the native baseline. The data analysis revealed the following: 1) Few tokens of mwe were produced by the migrant workers until they reached the advanced level. 2) The nine functions of mwe were used by the advanced learners, mostly as a filler, an uncertainty marker, and an exemplifier. 3) The Chinese students with about half the length of residence of the workers exhibited as diverse uses of mwe as the workers, implying the facilitative role of formal instruction in the acquisition of discourse markers.