The L1 Acquisition of the Imperfective Aspect markers in Korean: a Comparison with Japanese

This study investigates the L1 acquisition of the Korean imperfective aspect markers -ko issand -a iss-, and attempts to identify language-general and languagespecific acquisition patterns through comparison with Japanese. In cross-linguistic research on the acquisition of tense-aspect marking, children have been observed to associate progressive marking with activity verbs in early stages of development. This study aims to test whether or not Korean children will actually follow the acquisition pattern and acquire progressive marking with activity verbs earlier than resultative marking with achievement verbs. Longitudinal interaction data from three Korean boys was collected and analyzed. The results indicate that there was no common pattern in the three children‟s acquisition, which differences from the results of similar tests with Japanese children. This suggests that neither universal predisposition nor the distribution bias hypothesis can explain the L1 acquisition of Korean aspect markers, and that individual variation plays a much larger role.