Abstract

Two experiments were performed to examine effects of case makers on sentence processing. In experiment I, the effects of subjective case markers('ka/i') were compared with those of topic makers('nun/un') in the two types of structure, i.e. relative clause and coordinate clause sentences. In experiment II, first, both types of the case makers were inserted in the same sentence structures, and then by changing the positions of the topic maker(i.e., first vs. second) four conditions were constructed and were compared. The moving-window presentation method were used and self-paced reading times of each words were measured. The results of the first experiment showed that the topic makers significantly reduced word-by-word reading times of the relative clause structures. The second experiment showed that the position of the topic maker had differential effects on the two sentence structures. That is, the first position of the topic maker reduced the reading times in the relative structures, however, it increased the reading times in the coordinate structures. Taken together, the findings are interpreted as support for the thematic/referential processing hypothesis of the topic maker. An alternative explanation about interaction mechanism between syntactic processing and the thematic/referential processing was suggested.