Processing English Island Sentences by Korean EFL Learners

This paper took an experimental approach and investigated how Korean EFL learners process the English island constructions. Since there are some controversies on the existence of the island effects in Korean, the L1 transfer effect may make it difficult for the Korean EFL learners to learn island constructions in English. To examine if the difference between English and Korean affects the acquisition of English island constructions, four different types of target sentences were made for English island phenomena: Complex-NP, whether, subject, and adjunct island. The acceptability scores of Korean EFL learners were measured with Magnitude Estimation (ME). Then, the collected data were statistically analyzed. The analysis results showed that, unlike previous studies, the Korean EFL learners correctly identified all of the English island constructions. This finding showed that the island status of the Korean language did not affect the acquisition of island constructions in English.