A Contrastive Analysis on Information Structure in English and Korean

초록

Languages differ in the way in which they deal with the manifestation of information structure in terms of information processing. This study examines some typological differences between English and Korean with respect to the questions of how far and in what ways the linguistic realization of given-new information structure can be varied. As for the language-specific factors that characterize the difference in information processing between English and Korean, it is proposed that as a SVO-language and a subject-prominent language, English prefers dummy subjects, non-referential pronouns, and clefting constructions. As a SOV-language and a topic- prominent language, Korean lacks dummy or non-referential pronouns like it or there. A general typological difference between English and Korean in relation to information structure is that English tends to rely on structural devices (e.g., clefting sentences) for information processing, while Korean shows a tendency that grammatical or morphological devices paly a significant role in the information processing.

키워드