Yoon, Sang-Seok & Jeong, Hee-Jeong, 2015. An Analysis of KFL Students’ Errors of Korean Copula i-ta. Language Information. Volume 21. 91-114. The purpose of this study is to investigate KFL students’ errors in using Korea copula i-ta in their writing assignments. In Korean classes, the Korean copula i-ta is usually simply introduced as a word equivalent to the English be-verb, and there is not much explanation beyond this. However, there are many cases when i-ta cannot be considered as a counterpart to the be-verb, since i-ta and be-verb have many different properties in terms of their meanings and functions. To investigate KFL students’ error patterns in using the Korean copula, this study examined American college students’ writing data for two semesters. Our data show that students often make errors related to meanings and to forms. Errors in meaning include confusion between i-ta and iss-ta ‘to exist’, and between i-ta and toy-ta ‘to become’; and errors in forms include orthographic error, conjugation error, and inappropriate omission. This study shows that errors of i-ta are found prevalently at all levels of proficiency; upper-level students are not exempt and often make errors as they try to produce more complex sentences. We argue that the Korean copula i-ta cannot be simply compared with the English be-verb and should be taught repeatedly and explicitly as students advance into the higher levels, so that they can speak and write Korean more fluently and naturally.
Key words: copula, Korean copula i-ta, English be-verb, error analysis, L1 transfer