Learning Environment and Learning Outcome: Evidence from Korean Subject–Predicate Honorific Agreement

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

See the attached review file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

1. For discussion of/explanations for the differences, consider not only Korean L2 textbook features and learning environments, but also the level of learners’ understanding of the pragmatics of Korean culture as an outcome of those learning conditions and environment, e.g., their understanding of the implications of using a person’s first name.

For example, the USA group may have given a high acceptability rating for (a)-like sentences because they have not fully understood that referring someone by first name implicates that the subject is lower or younger than the speaker, thus is non-honorifiable. That is, the USA group isn’t sure whether the name (Mia) should have honorific predicate. In English, it is common to use first names even for people older than the speaker or higher in the social hierarchy. The authors could explore additional areas related to pragmatics in honorification that the USA group may lack due to limitations of their learning environment.

>>> We appreciate the reviewer’s insightful comment. We have added one additional paragraph addressing this point in the Discussion section as follows.

(p. 13) Meanwhile, as this study focused exclusively on morphosyntactic features involving subject honorification, it did not consider pragmatic factors or Korean-specific cultural norms that may influence learners’ perception and processing of honorification. For instance, our findings do not directly speak to learners’ nuanced understanding of the social implications of using a person’s first name, which was present in some test sentences, in relation to social hierarchy. In this respect, future research should integrate pragmatic and cultural dimensions when exploring learners’ understanding of Korean subject honorification, particularly those with diverse language‐use experiences.

2. I was intrigued by the authors’ reference to L1-Czech L2 learners of Korean compared to the USA group (pp. 17-18). If I understand it right, the L1-Czech learners rated (a)-like sentences lower in acceptability than the USA group. As explanation, the authors simply refer to the more robust agreement system in Czech (than in English). But which specific aspects of the agreement system in Czech would promote more appropriate judgement for Korean subject-predicate honorific agreement? A more concrete explanation would be more convincing and would inspire future cross-linguistic research.

>>> We thank the reviewer for pointing this out. While it reinforces our interpretation of the USA group’s performance, including it in the main text may detract from the coherence of our primary comparison between the USA and KHS groups. Accordingly, we have provided a concise explanation in a footnote as follows.

(Footnote 3) Czech is a synthetic, highly inflectional language with an active agreement system marked by word inflection, including grammatical case. Its contemporary honorific system comprises two primary styles: the informal second-person singular pronoun ty (T-form) and the formal second-person plural pronoun vy (V-form). This system creates a grammatical chain of address, pronoun selection, and verbal conjugation: (i) the conversational address requires an appropriate salutation, (ii) the pronoun must be vy, and (iii) the verb must be conjugated to agree with vy (see Kwak, 2017, for a detailed account). Authors (xxxx) argue that, unlike English which lacks such a system, this sophisticated Czech honorific systen may afford L1-Czech L2-Korean learners greater facility in identifying the honorific verbal suffix within conjugated predicates and evaluating its appropriateness, compared to L1-English L2-Korean learners. For the full details on the findings and interpretations, see Authors (xxxx).

3. Figure 3: In the KHS, higher proficiency was associated with lower acceptability, meaning that proficient KHS learners behaved more like native speakers. So, I do not understand the authors’ explanation: “…although increased proficiency in the target language could promote overall processing efficiency, it may not necessarily have facilitated the acquisition of the target knowledge that has been reinforced in a non-target-like manner through formal instruction.” What does this mean? Clarification is necessary here. Are the authors referring to the KHS group? Do the authors mean that the highly proficient KHS learners were less like the NSK?

>>> We are sorry for the confusion that the reviewer experienced. We have clarified this statement as follows.

(p. 13) … These divergent trends imply that, although higher proficiency in the target language could enhance overall processing efficiency for both learner groups, it may not necessarily have facilitated the acquisition of the target knowledge reinforced in a non-target-like manner through formal instruction, as observed in USA.

Reviewer 2 Report

See the attached PDF file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

1. The sample size for English-speaking learners (n=24) is smaller than that of Korean heritage speakers and native speakers (n=40 for each group). This discrepancy raises concerns about the reliability of generalizations drawn from the English- speaking learner data. To enhance the validity of their findings, the authors are encouraged to consider increasing the sample size for this group, if possible.

>>> We agree with the reviewer’s concern here. While it is impossible to recruit more participants now due to time constraints, we acknowledge this as another limitation of the current study.

(Footnote 2) We originally recruited 30 participants for this group but excluded six due to insufficient proficiency in Korean, which prevented them from completing the main task. We hope that future studies with larger sample sizes would replicate the findings reported in the current study.

2. It would be valuable to know whether any of the English-speaking learners – particularly those at more advanced proficiency levels, if such data are available – exhibited response patterns similar to those of Korean heritage speakers or native speakers. Furthermore, did the authors conduct a more fine-grained analysis of individual variation within the English-speaking learner and Korean heritage speaker groups? Such analysis could offer important insights into the extent to which proficiency level or other learner- or speaker-specific factors influence sensitivity to honorific agreement.

>>> We believe what the reviewer mentioned can be found in Figures 3 and 5, which displayed each participant’s acceptability ratings and reaction times within each group plotted against their proficiency scores.

3. Throughout the manuscript, the authors consistently gloss the morpheme ‘-ta’ as a simple sentence ender in the Korean examples. This choice requires justification, as the more conventional practice in Korean linguistic literature is to gloss ‘-ta’ as a declarative marker (DEC).

>>> Following this comment, we have changed the gloss of this morpheme as DC. We thank the reviewer for pointing this out.

4. Minor comments and/or typos

Line 103: The sentence states, “Specifically, it attaches to a predicate stem to signal its connection with an honorifiable subject, such as in the case of halmeni ‘grandmother’, as in (1)”. However, the example given in (1) contains sensayngnim ‘teacher’, not halmeni ‘grandmother’.

>>> We are sorry for this typo; this has been corrected now. We thank the reviewer for their keen eyes.