Help with designing neurolinguistic stimuli in Korean

[RankFeral]

Hi, I am wondering if there is somebody proficient enough in Korean to help me come up with some stimuli for an experiment I am designing. People with aphasia (an acquired language disorder resulting from stroke or brain trauma) often make language errors while speaking. Sometimes these errors (paraphasias) involves issues of phonology (sound), semantics (meaning), or syntax (grammar). One common way we test the abilities of aphasics is through an object naming task. In this task, the person is shown pictures of common everyday objects (e.g. different animals, household items, furniture, tools, etc.) and asked to name them. Unfortunately, these task only tests for semantic paraphasias (calling a dog a cat, for example) or phonological errors (e.g. calling a dog a "dok"). I am designing a protocol that allows us to test syntactic aspects of language processing. Rather than just naming the picture, the subject is asked to introduce the named object with a carrier phrase that requires syntactic agreement. In the following example from English, the word in ALL CAPS corresponds to an image; the proper response is placed in "quotes":

1. DOG -> "That is a dog"
2. TWO DOGS -> "Those are dogs"

So in the English example, by just changing the plurality of the stimuli, we force the subject to change several parameters of agreement: a.) the demonstrative pronoun (that/those) b.) the copula verb (is/are) c.) the indefinite article (a/null) and d.) plurality marking (null/'s).

Can somebody come up with a comparable task in Korean? It obviously doesn't have to be based on plurality marking (which is not mandatory in Korean, nor does it require syntactic agreement). Any comparable task involving object naming required syntactic agreement would suffice.

Thanks in advance for any advice and assistance with this project.

[Keith]

Hi RankFeral,

Korean is very different than English in the sense that an acceptable sentence can simply be one word. English absolutely needs a subject and a verb at the least, however, Korean can simply have a verb, with the subject inferred, for it to be an acceptable sentence. Also, there are no indefinite articles, nor is there subject-verb agreement. So I finding it a bit difficult to give you something that can be applied for your test.

However, Korean does require two minimum things in a sentence. 1. Verb 2.Politeness level. The politeness level reflects the relationship of the speaker to whom he/she is speaking to. A student would use polite language to a teacher. The teacher, however, can use casual language to the student. Whereas close friends would use casual language. So maybe a test like this can help?

A teacher speaking to a student holding up a picture of a cat. 고양이입니다. (Goyangi-imnida) or 고양이예요 (goyangi-yeyo). (both are polite)

A close friend speaking to a student holding up a picture of a cat. 고양이야. (goyangi-ya)

The verb is 이다 (ida) - the copula. But it is conjugated according to different politeness level and with whom the speaker is speaking with. The speaker would have to change their speech pattern according to who is holding up the picture.

Again, I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for exactly, but feel free to ask for different examples, and we'll figure something out

[RankFeral]

Thanks for the politeness level idea Keith. One of the things I am working on in my research is identifying the neuroanatomical correlates of language processing (where in the brain do certain linguistic processes take place). I would ideally like to create a task in Korean that is comparable to the one in English... one of the issues with using politeness level is that it seems to tap into the system of pragmatics (how people use knowledge of social situations, etc.). Unfortunately, from what we psycholinguists know about this system, most of it takes place on the right side of the brain (at least in most right-handed people, the majority of which are left brain dominant), which doesn't coincide particularly well with the population I am interested in (i.e. aphasics and patients undergoing cortical stimulation mapping for epilepsy surgery).

More along the line of what I am looking for would be something that is truly syntactic in nature. So, one possible example in korean would be showing somebody a picture of a DOG CHASING A CAT, in which case they would probably describe the picture as "that dog is chasing a cat" where "that" would correspond to the appropriate demonstrative PN in korean, dog would take the subject marker, and cat would take an object marker (excuse me for not writing the Hangul, but I don't have the letters on my keyboard). The only problem with a task like this, is that it would likely be too complex for a patient undergoing awake brain surgery Perhaps something using counters would be more in line with my objectives (e.g. "there are two people" vs. "there are two chickens"... i.e. myeong vs mari?). Any ideas?

Thanks again,
Brandon