한국인 제2언어 학습자의 영어 사동 구문 생성에서의 통사적 점화

Won, Da Bhin; Shin, Jeong-Ah

doi:10.30961/lr.2026.62.1.1

Lang. Res. 62(1):1-20

pISSN: 0254-4474, eISSN: 2586-7113

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30961/lr.2026.62.1.1

Article

한국인 제2언어 학습자의 영어 사동 구문 생성에서의 통사적 점화

원다빈¹, 신정아¹^,^†

Syntactic Priming in Korean L2 Learners’ Production of English Causative Construction

Da Bhin Won¹, Jeong-Ah Shin¹^,^†

Author Information & Copyright ▼

¹동국대학교

¹Dongguk University

^†Corresponding author: 교수 영어영문학부 동국대학교 04620 서울시 중구 필동로 1길 30 E-mail: jashin@dongguk.edu

ⓒ Copyright 2026 Language Education Institute, Seoul National University. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Received: Nov 15, 2025 ; Revised: Mar 05, 2026 ; Accepted: Mar 17, 2026

Published Online: Apr 30, 2026

ABSTRACT

This study investigated how Korean EFL learners’ proficiency and lexical overlap influenced syntactic priming effects in English causative constructions. Forty-four learners participated in picture-selection and sentence-production tasks across a pre-test, an immediate post-test, and a delayed post-test. The experimental group received priming exposure, whereas the control group did not. In the delayed post-test, participants were further divided into same-verb (have) and different-verb (get) conditions to examine lexical repetition effects. Results for the first research question showed that lower-proficiency learners demonstrated significant reductions in reaction times from pre- to post-tests, indicating robust priming effects in reaction times. Regarding the second research question, accuracy results revealed a significant three-way interaction among lexical overlap, proficiency, and test time: lexical overlap facilitated greater gains particularly for lower-proficiency learners, aligning with developmental accounts suggesting early-stage learners rely more on explicit memory and repeated lexical cues. However, reaction times did not show a comparable interaction, likely due to the cognitive complexity of sentence generation and limited cumulative exposure. Overall, the study highlights that repeated exposure and lexical overlap can support L2 syntactic development (Hartsuiker & Bernolet, 2017), especially for lower-proficiency learners.

Keywords: syntactic priming; L2 proficiency; lexical boost; causative construction; Korean EFL learners

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