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Article published In:
Natural language processing for learner corpus research
Edited by Kristopher Kyle
[International Journal of Learner Corpus Research 7:1] 2021
► pp. 53–82

Automatic analysis of passive constructions in Korean

Written production by Mandarin-speaking learners of Korean

| Palacký University Olomouc
| University of Pittsburgh

The present study aims to explore the applicability of automatic analysis to L2-Korean learner corpora, with a special focus on learners’ use of a clause-level construction. For this purpose, we investigate L1-Mandarin L2-Korean learners’ written production of two passive construction types in Korean – suffixal and periphrastic – by devising a pattern-extraction process through NLP techniques. We focus on reporting how the passive constructions are identified and extracted from learner writing automatically, given language-specific features involving the passive. A total of 72 essays were analysed by adapting an existing pipeline (developed by Shin, forthcoming), with enhanced tokenisation and annotation through manual revision of the data. Results showed that our automatic pattern-finder identified more instances than manual extraction for the suffixal passive and yielded a perfect match with manual extraction for the periphrastic passive. Implications of the findings are discussed in regard to strengths and drawbacks of the automatic analysis of learner writing, with suggestions for improving currently available tools for learner corpus research in Korean.

Keywords: natural language processing, learner corpus, passive construction, Korean
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Trend of learner corpus research on L2 Korean
    • 2.2Passive constructions in Korean and Mandarin
    • 2.3Issues of Korean passive constructions in learner corpus research
  • 3.Methods
    • 3.1Learner corpus creation
    • 3.2Pattern extraction: Passive constructions in leaner writing
    • 3.3Evaluation
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
    • 5.1Implications of findings
    • 5.2Limitations and future directions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 1 March 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijlcr.20002.shi
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2021. Isomorphism and language-specific devices in comprehension of Korean suffixal passive construction by Mandarin-speaking learners of Korean. Applied Linguistics Review 0:0 DOI logo

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