국어 유동 수-분류사(floating numeral classifier)의 실험언어학적 증거

This paper investigates the sentence processing of 'floating' numeral classifiers (FNCs) in Korean by using the event-related potentials (ERP) paradigm. In particular, we examine the following three questions. First, is there a difference between Case-marked and Case-less forms of FNCs? Second, is there a contrast between subject-related and object-related FNCs? Third, is there a distinction between Case-marked and focus-particle-marked FNCs? We found from the ERP experiment that, first, subject-related Case-less forms of FNCs elicit N400 followed by P600 in comparison to the corresponding Case-marked ones, but object-related ones didn't. Second, subject-related FNCs are greater in amplitude than object-related ones. Third, subject-related focus-particle-marked FNCs also elicit N400 followed by P600 in comparison to the corresponding Case-marked ones, but object-related ones didn't. We take all the three results to render neuroelectrophysiological evidence that our mind detects subject-object asymmetry in the case of processing subject-related focus-particle-marked FNCs as well as subject-related Case-less ones. Based on the results from the ERP study, allowing subject scrambling we suggest a unified 'stranding' approach to 'floating' numeral classifiers in Korean.