A study on the acquisition of case alternation in Korean transitive locative verb constructions by Japanese and English speakers

This study investigates the influence of native language (L1) on the acquisition of case alternation in Korean ditransitive locative verb constructions among Japanese and English-speaking learners, categorized by proficiency level. The findings reveal that both intermediate and advanced Japanese and English-speaking learners recognized sentences with typical case markers similarly to native Korean speakers. This pattern was also observed in constructions involving quantifiers. However, in conditions where locative alternation occurred and non-typical case markers were used, only the advanced Japanese learner group demonstrated sentence recognition comparable to that of native speakers. In contrast, regarding sentence meaning interpretation in locative verb and locative alternation constructions, learners struggled to acquire the differences in sentence meaning that arise when the quantifier modifies the case marker ‘-ul/-lul. This study is significant in that it confirms that learners exhibit different patterns in sentence recognition and meaning interpretation based on the results.