초급 한국어 학습자의 통사 복잡성 발달에 대한 종적 연구

A Longitudinal Study on Syntactic Complexity Development of Beginner-Level Korean Language Learners

This study analyzed syntactic complexity development in learners in the initial step of learning Korean longitudinally and examined the aspects and characteristics of their syntactic complexity development. Syntactic complexity is a language’s structural complexity, and it can be investigated by converting the degree of complexity in the connection of sentences, phrases, or clauses into values. To analyze syntactic complexity development in learners’ spoken language longitudinally, the research team used <Korean learners’ longitudinal spoken language corpus> consisting of 85,620 phrases and 11,604 sentences from eight beginner-level Korean language learners’ free conversation utterances collected through seven sessions for five months. Also, analysis was done by setting analysis units of spoken language syntactic complexity as words, phrases, clauses (coordinate & subordinate clauses), and AS-unit. According to the analysis results, as their learning proceeded, their syntactic complexity increased in general, but temporarily, the development was either delayed or set back, too. Also, in sentential extension, the use of subordinate clause had more influence on the learner’s development of syntactic complexity than coordinate clause; however, individual difference existed in syntactic complexity development. Based on the findings, this study found implications about education for connective endings and the necessity to conduct research on personal variables regarding syntactic complexity development and follow-up research on syntactic complexity of Korean learner’s spoken language. Furthermore, this study verified the point that AS-unit can be used as a analysis unit to determine syntactic complexity of learner’s spoken language.