Oh, Eunjeong & Song, Sanghoun. 2016. An Experimental Study of Yeo (2006, 2011): -Key/-Tolok Alternation of Resultative Constructions in Korean. Language Information. Volume 23. 25-54. This experimental syntax study examines Yeo’s (2006, 2011) claims about –key/-tolok alternation of clausal and non-clausal resultatives in Korean. Yeo (2006) argues that clausal resultatives license–tolok whereas non-clausal resultatives license -key, but not vice versa. These claims were tested, employing OpenSesame and a 5-point Likert scale task. The t-test and κ-test results showed that non-clausal resultatives agreement (i.e., convergence rate) between the linguist’s and 44 naïve speakers’ judgments was 100% and clausal resultatives agreement between the two types of acceptability judgments was just 57%. These new empirical data are in line with Yeo’s (2006) claims for non-clausal resultatives, but not for clausal resultatives. Furthermore, this paper provides a pattern analysis, a detailed analysis of divergence types between the two types of judgments for all pairs tested. We also discuss contributions of experimental syntax studies to the advancement of syntactic theory.
Key words: Resultative constructions, Acceptability judgments, Experimental syntax, Likert scale task, t-test, κ-test, Pattern analysis.