An Analysis of Errors in Acquisition of Past Tense Forms of Korean Elementary School Children

The purpose of this study is to investigate errors of past tense forms made by Korean elementary school children. The influence of verb class and frequency on the accuracy of past tense forms, error patterns, and causes of ‘weird past tense forms’ (WPFs) were examined. In this study, fifty-nine elementary school children participated in a past tense elicitation task consisting of twenty regular and irregular verbs. A semi-structured interview was conducted for the WPFs. The children were significantly more accurate with regular verbs than irregular verbs. There was no significant main effect for frequency and interaction between Regular/Irregular and Frequency. In terms of error patterns, in regular verbs, omission errors were most common while nonvalid errors as well as WPFs were also found. In irregular verbs, suffixation errors were most common followed by omission errors, WPFs, and nonvalid errors. The children generated WPFs with various reasons including simple mistake, irregularization, discrepancy between pronunciation and spelling, and imperfect grammar knowledge. Irregularizations were further subclassed into analogy, real words, and arbitrary alternation. The results give implications for the necessity for explicit instructions of past tense forms and grammar. Although there were some weaknesses, this study contributed to providing an understanding of Korean elementary school children’s errors of past tense.