Acquisition of Modality by L2 Learners of Korean

This study examines the development of modality in the Interlanguage of Indonesian migrant workers who were learning Korean as an L2 in naturalistic contexts without formal instruction. Data collected from 24 Indonesian workers through semi-structured interviews were analyzed focusing on structures expressing deontic and epistemic modality. The results reveal the following: 1) the L2 learners expressed both deontic and epistemic modality from the early stages of L2 acquisition utilizing such various means as discourse contexts, lexical verbs, and adjectives. 2) the periphrastic modal construction emerged quite late in the Interlanguage, but it still preceded the sentence ending(SE) suffixes in expressing diverse modalities contrary to the pattern found in L1 acquisition. 3) grammaticalization of modality first appeared with deontic modality, with epistemic modality following behind. In the case of a polysemous modal construction, it was the deontic concept that was first developed. Future research is needed to account for the factors behind the developmental order of the modal structures in learner varieties.