EFL Korean Learners’ Overuse of the Definite Article by Korean ‘keu’ Transfer

EFL Korean Learners’ Overuse of the Definite Article by Korean ‘keu’ Transfer

This paper will try to examine the lexico-syntactic factors that drive Korean EFL learners to overuse ‘the’ even in indefinite contexts in the light of the Det-as-head analysis. To seek out these factors, this study will explore syntactic structures of both the English article and the Korean prenominal demonstratives and their cross-linguistic characteristics. By examining the process of specifying their distinctions, this study will also show that Korean EFL learners’ overuse of ‘the’ stems from the following accounts: 1) the English article, ‘the’, belongs to the functional category with null semantic meaning and is located in the position of D: 2) the Korean demonstrative, ‘keu’ is driven like ‘the’. On account of this reason, EFL Korean learners might overuse ‘the’ by transferring ‘keu’ from Korean. Through the lexico-syntactic investigation, this study will present the evidence that the Korean demonstrative ‘keu’ is transferred to English article choice. Based on this investigation, learners and teachers will be able to recognize the English article systems from the syntactic viewpoint.