국어 유동 수-분류사(floating numeral classifier)의 실험언어학적 증거: ERP 기반 연구

Abstract

This paper investigates the sentence processing of 'floating' numeralclassifiers (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-relatedFNCs? Third, is there a distinction between Case-marked andfocus-particle-marked FNCs? We found from the ERP experiment that,first, subject-related Case-less forms of FNCs elicit N400 followed byP600 in comparison to the corresponding Case-marked ones, butobject-related ones didn't. Second, subject-related FNCs are greater inamplitude than object-related ones. Third, subject-relatedfocus-particle-marked FNCs also elicit N400 followed by P600 incomparison to the corresponding Case-marked ones, but object-relatedones didn't. We take all the three results to renderneuroelectrophysiological evidence that our mind detects subject-objectasymmetry in the case of processing subject-related focus-particle-markedFNCs as well as subject-related Case-less ones. Based on the results fromthe ERP study, allowing subject scrambling we suggest a unified'stranding' approach to 'floating' numeral classifiers in Korean.