Sejung Yang - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Sejung Yang

Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, 2019

As linguists develop a deeper understanding of the properties of individual varieties of speech, ... more As linguists develop a deeper understanding of the properties of individual varieties of speech, they often find it necessary to reclassify dialects as independent languages, based on the criterion of intelligibility. This criterion is applied here to Jejueo, the traditional variety of speech used on Jeju Island, a province of the Republic of Korea. Although Jejueo has long been classified as a nonstandard dialect of Korean, evidence from an intelligibility experiment shows that it is not comprehensible to monolingual speakers of Korean and therefore should be treated as a separate language, in accordance with the usual practice within linguistics. This finding calls for a revision to the standard language map of Korea.

The Linguistic Association of Korea Journal, 2020

Jejueo pedagogical materials reflect previous mis-analyses of the language’s verbal morphology. T... more Jejueo pedagogical materials reflect previous mis-analyses of the language’s verbal morphology. The current study attempts to identify those errors and to offer a corrective reanalysis. Problems with traditional proposals are traced to the influence of an over-reliance on syllable structure in the use of Hangeul to spell Jejueo as well as to a disregard for phonological phenomena resulting in the mis-segmentation of verbal suffixes. The current analysis takes account of common phonological phenomena in Jejueo: re-syllabification and allomorphic variation after ‘s’ (ㅅ). The proposed tense and aspectual markers are the perfective marker -eos (엇), the continuative marker -eoms (□), the non-past markers -eun (은) and -neun (는), and the past tense marker -eon (-언). This new view of morpheme segmentation enables us to better identify the intricate system of the verbal morphology in Jejueo while providing a basis for identifying other suffixal forms with which they combine.

Language Documentation & Conservation, 2015

The most widely used techniques for assessing language vitality (the Graded Intergenerational Dis... more The most widely used techniques for assessing language vitality (the Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale, the UNESCO system, and the EL-CAT Language Endangerment Index) all derive their endangerment estimates from surveys that elicit self-reports of language proficiency and use. Unfortunately, speaker self-assessments can be distorted by a variety of factors, including confusion over what counts as proficiency in a language and a subconscious desire to understate or overstate one’s ability to use a community language that is cherished by some and criticized by others. We report here on a study that has the joint objective of (i) establishing that subjective self-assessments may often be inaccurate, and (ii) proposing a technique to reduce the effects of this problem. Participants: 61 residents of Korea’s Jeju Island, home to the critically endangered language Jejueo. The participants ranged in age from 20 – 29; all had Korean as their dominant language, but were proficient to ...

Language Acquisition, 2019

Over the past five years I have received support and encouragement from a great number of individ... more Over the past five years I have received support and encouragement from a great number of individuals. First, I owe my deepest gratitude to Dr. William O'Grady, my advisor, who found me in Jeju. Ever since the first day of my Ph.D. program, he has shown patience, great support, wonderful mentorship, and most of all incredible enthusiasm for the research. One evening, after a long day, I told him "It is still very difficult to keep up with you." he said "Don't worry, one day, you will." Without his inspiring and invaluable guidance and encouragement, this study would not have been completed.

As linguists develop a deeper understanding of the properties of individual varieties of speech, ... more As linguists develop a deeper understanding of the properties of individual varieties of speech, they often find it necessary to reclassify dialects as independent languages, based on the criterion of intelligibility. This criterion is applied here to Jejueo, the traditional variety of speech used on Jeju Island, a province of the Republic of Korea. Although Jejueo has long been classified as a nonstandard dialect of Korean, evidence from an intelligibility experiment shows that it is not comprehensible to monolingual speakers of Korean and therefore should be treated as a separate language, in accordance with the usual practice within linguistics. This finding calls for a revision to the standard language map of Korea.

Testing is increasingly recognized as a vital part of language revitalization. I demonstrate here... more Testing is increasingly recognized as a vital part of language revitalization. I demonstrate here that assessment of linguistic knowledge should also be part of the planning process that precedes the creation of a revitalization program. I take as an example Jejueo, the language of Korea's Jeju Island. Whereas previously published work contradicted UNESCO's conclusion that the language is critically endangered, a test that I designed to elicit basic vocabulary and verbal patterns from 224 participants (from elementary school students to senior citizens) revealed otherwise. Alarming deficits in basic knowledge of the language were uncovered that both confirmed UNESCO's classification of the language and identified the particular areas in which remediation is required.

Yang, Sejung. 2021. Errors and accuracy in the production of the English progressive by Korean el... more Yang, Sejung. 2021. Errors and accuracy in the production of the English progressive by Korean elementary and middle school students. Journal of Linguistic Studies 26(1), 223-243. This study examines Korean EFL learners' systematic production of errors and accurate responses. A total of one hundred and one participants (aged between 11 and 13) completed a picture elicitation task designed for the English progressive. The method of Error Analysis was employed to analyze the written production. The findings indicated that Korean learners produced intralingual errors most frequently. The most common errors involved the use of bare verbs without tense and aspectual marking (e.g., Dance, She dance). The next most frequent errors involved the use of be followed by a bare verb (e.g., She is dance). Omission of be alone was rare in the current study (e.g., She dancing). The middle school student group performed better than the elementary group (50% accuracy versus 8.82%). The difference can be attributed to the input frequency and classroom practices. Pedagogical implications of the results are discussed in terms of the effectiveness of English teaching and the necessity of explicit and implicit error corrections and grammatical instructions.

Jejueo, spoken on Jeju Island, Korea, has long been thought to be a dialect of Korean. However, a... more Jejueo, spoken on Jeju Island, Korea, has long been thought to be a dialect of Korean. However, a recent experiment (Yang et al., 2019) reported that monolingual Korean speakers from mainland of Korea had comprehension rates of less than 10% on average. The current paper investigates linguistic factors that may influence the low intelligibility of Jejueo to Standard Korean. Linguistic factors reveal that both the number of non-cognates (lexical distance) and pronunciation differences (phonetic distance) affect the low intelligibility rate of Jejueo to some extent. However, lexical distance is more correlated with its intelligibility than phonetic distance. My results also show a larger lexical distance (42.2%) between Jejueo and Standard Korean than between certain pairs of European languages (0% - 16.8%, Gooskens, 2007, pp. 453-459). These findings contribute to our understanding of why Jejueo is unintelligible to people who speak only Korean and supports the importance of developing revitalization programs in Jejueo for young learners whose parents no longer speak to them in the language.

Jejueo pedagogical materials reflect previous mis-analyses of the language's verbal morphology. T... more Jejueo pedagogical materials reflect previous mis-analyses of the language's verbal morphology. The current study attempts to identify those errors and to offer a corrective reanalysis. Problems with traditional proposals are traced to the influence of an over-reliance on syllable structure in the use of Hangeul to spell Jejueo as well as to a disregard for phonological phenomena resulting in the mis-segmentation of verbal suffixes. The current analysis takes account of common phonological phenomena in Jejueo: re-syllabification and allomorphic variation after 's' (ㅅ). The proposed tense and aspectual markers are the perfective marker-eos (엇), the continuative marker-eoms (), the non-past markers-eun (은) and-neun (는), and the past tense marker-eon (-언). This new view of morpheme segmentation enables us to better identify the intricate system of the verbal morphology in Jejueo while providing a basis for identifying other suffixal forms with which they combine.

The Journal of Studies in Language 36.1, 073-092. This paper aims to integrate linguistic analysi... more The Journal of Studies in Language 36.1, 073-092. This paper aims to integrate linguistic analysis into grammar teaching in the modern-language classroom on Jeju Island by examining how negation in Jejueo, the province's traditional language, could be taught to native speakers of Korean. 1) In adopting the assumption that knowledge of a first language influences acquisition of a second language, a comparative analysis of the properties of negation in Jejueo and Korean is provided. The overview of negation in Jejueo (based on previous linguistic work) and the sample lesson plan that accompanies it offer teachers a potential model for developing lesson plans for teaching Jejueo in the schools of Jeju Island.

Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, 2019

As linguists develop a deeper understanding of the properties of individual varieties of speech, ... more As linguists develop a deeper understanding of the properties of individual varieties of speech, they often find it necessary to reclassify dialects as independent languages, based on the criterion of intelligibility. This criterion is applied here to Jejueo, the traditional variety of speech used on Jeju Island, a province of the Republic of Korea. Although Jejueo has long been classified as a nonstandard dialect of Korean, evidence from an intelligibility experiment shows that it is not comprehensible to monolingual speakers of Korean and therefore should be treated as a separate language, in accordance with the usual practice within linguistics. This finding calls for a revision to the standard language map of Korea.

The Linguistic Association of Korea Journal, 2020

Jejueo pedagogical materials reflect previous mis-analyses of the language’s verbal morphology. T... more Jejueo pedagogical materials reflect previous mis-analyses of the language’s verbal morphology. The current study attempts to identify those errors and to offer a corrective reanalysis. Problems with traditional proposals are traced to the influence of an over-reliance on syllable structure in the use of Hangeul to spell Jejueo as well as to a disregard for phonological phenomena resulting in the mis-segmentation of verbal suffixes. The current analysis takes account of common phonological phenomena in Jejueo: re-syllabification and allomorphic variation after ‘s’ (ㅅ). The proposed tense and aspectual markers are the perfective marker -eos (엇), the continuative marker -eoms (□), the non-past markers -eun (은) and -neun (는), and the past tense marker -eon (-언). This new view of morpheme segmentation enables us to better identify the intricate system of the verbal morphology in Jejueo while providing a basis for identifying other suffixal forms with which they combine.

Language Documentation & Conservation, 2015

The most widely used techniques for assessing language vitality (the Graded Intergenerational Dis... more The most widely used techniques for assessing language vitality (the Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale, the UNESCO system, and the EL-CAT Language Endangerment Index) all derive their endangerment estimates from surveys that elicit self-reports of language proficiency and use. Unfortunately, speaker self-assessments can be distorted by a variety of factors, including confusion over what counts as proficiency in a language and a subconscious desire to understate or overstate one’s ability to use a community language that is cherished by some and criticized by others. We report here on a study that has the joint objective of (i) establishing that subjective self-assessments may often be inaccurate, and (ii) proposing a technique to reduce the effects of this problem. Participants: 61 residents of Korea’s Jeju Island, home to the critically endangered language Jejueo. The participants ranged in age from 20 – 29; all had Korean as their dominant language, but were proficient to ...

Language Acquisition, 2019

Over the past five years I have received support and encouragement from a great number of individ... more Over the past five years I have received support and encouragement from a great number of individuals. First, I owe my deepest gratitude to Dr. William O'Grady, my advisor, who found me in Jeju. Ever since the first day of my Ph.D. program, he has shown patience, great support, wonderful mentorship, and most of all incredible enthusiasm for the research. One evening, after a long day, I told him "It is still very difficult to keep up with you." he said "Don't worry, one day, you will." Without his inspiring and invaluable guidance and encouragement, this study would not have been completed.

As linguists develop a deeper understanding of the properties of individual varieties of speech, ... more As linguists develop a deeper understanding of the properties of individual varieties of speech, they often find it necessary to reclassify dialects as independent languages, based on the criterion of intelligibility. This criterion is applied here to Jejueo, the traditional variety of speech used on Jeju Island, a province of the Republic of Korea. Although Jejueo has long been classified as a nonstandard dialect of Korean, evidence from an intelligibility experiment shows that it is not comprehensible to monolingual speakers of Korean and therefore should be treated as a separate language, in accordance with the usual practice within linguistics. This finding calls for a revision to the standard language map of Korea.

Testing is increasingly recognized as a vital part of language revitalization. I demonstrate here... more Testing is increasingly recognized as a vital part of language revitalization. I demonstrate here that assessment of linguistic knowledge should also be part of the planning process that precedes the creation of a revitalization program. I take as an example Jejueo, the language of Korea's Jeju Island. Whereas previously published work contradicted UNESCO's conclusion that the language is critically endangered, a test that I designed to elicit basic vocabulary and verbal patterns from 224 participants (from elementary school students to senior citizens) revealed otherwise. Alarming deficits in basic knowledge of the language were uncovered that both confirmed UNESCO's classification of the language and identified the particular areas in which remediation is required.

Yang, Sejung. 2021. Errors and accuracy in the production of the English progressive by Korean el... more Yang, Sejung. 2021. Errors and accuracy in the production of the English progressive by Korean elementary and middle school students. Journal of Linguistic Studies 26(1), 223-243. This study examines Korean EFL learners' systematic production of errors and accurate responses. A total of one hundred and one participants (aged between 11 and 13) completed a picture elicitation task designed for the English progressive. The method of Error Analysis was employed to analyze the written production. The findings indicated that Korean learners produced intralingual errors most frequently. The most common errors involved the use of bare verbs without tense and aspectual marking (e.g., Dance, She dance). The next most frequent errors involved the use of be followed by a bare verb (e.g., She is dance). Omission of be alone was rare in the current study (e.g., She dancing). The middle school student group performed better than the elementary group (50% accuracy versus 8.82%). The difference can be attributed to the input frequency and classroom practices. Pedagogical implications of the results are discussed in terms of the effectiveness of English teaching and the necessity of explicit and implicit error corrections and grammatical instructions.

Jejueo, spoken on Jeju Island, Korea, has long been thought to be a dialect of Korean. However, a... more Jejueo, spoken on Jeju Island, Korea, has long been thought to be a dialect of Korean. However, a recent experiment (Yang et al., 2019) reported that monolingual Korean speakers from mainland of Korea had comprehension rates of less than 10% on average. The current paper investigates linguistic factors that may influence the low intelligibility of Jejueo to Standard Korean. Linguistic factors reveal that both the number of non-cognates (lexical distance) and pronunciation differences (phonetic distance) affect the low intelligibility rate of Jejueo to some extent. However, lexical distance is more correlated with its intelligibility than phonetic distance. My results also show a larger lexical distance (42.2%) between Jejueo and Standard Korean than between certain pairs of European languages (0% - 16.8%, Gooskens, 2007, pp. 453-459). These findings contribute to our understanding of why Jejueo is unintelligible to people who speak only Korean and supports the importance of developing revitalization programs in Jejueo for young learners whose parents no longer speak to them in the language.

Jejueo pedagogical materials reflect previous mis-analyses of the language's verbal morphology. T... more Jejueo pedagogical materials reflect previous mis-analyses of the language's verbal morphology. The current study attempts to identify those errors and to offer a corrective reanalysis. Problems with traditional proposals are traced to the influence of an over-reliance on syllable structure in the use of Hangeul to spell Jejueo as well as to a disregard for phonological phenomena resulting in the mis-segmentation of verbal suffixes. The current analysis takes account of common phonological phenomena in Jejueo: re-syllabification and allomorphic variation after 's' (ㅅ). The proposed tense and aspectual markers are the perfective marker-eos (엇), the continuative marker-eoms (), the non-past markers-eun (은) and-neun (는), and the past tense marker-eon (-언). This new view of morpheme segmentation enables us to better identify the intricate system of the verbal morphology in Jejueo while providing a basis for identifying other suffixal forms with which they combine.

The Journal of Studies in Language 36.1, 073-092. This paper aims to integrate linguistic analysi... more The Journal of Studies in Language 36.1, 073-092. This paper aims to integrate linguistic analysis into grammar teaching in the modern-language classroom on Jeju Island by examining how negation in Jejueo, the province's traditional language, could be taught to native speakers of Korean. 1) In adopting the assumption that knowledge of a first language influences acquisition of a second language, a comparative analysis of the properties of negation in Jejueo and Korean is provided. The overview of negation in Jejueo (based on previous linguistic work) and the sample lesson plan that accompanies it offer teachers a potential model for developing lesson plans for teaching Jejueo in the schools of Jeju Island.