초록/요약

Lexical inferencing, which is an effective vocabulary development strategy, has been investigated by many researchers in the field of reading to date; however, it has received far too little attention in listening. In this context, this paper explores the role of L1 lexicalization patterns in lexical inferencing in listening. To this end, a listening experiment was carried out with 15 short texts containing 15 target words to both native (N=8) and four groups of non-native (N=32) speakers of English. We included 15 Motion verb target words since Chinese, Korean, and Japanese are known to have different lexicalization patterns for Motion events. The results show that the two groups of Chinese-speaking participants achieved higher inferencing scores than the Korean- and Japanese-speaking participants because English and Chinese have similarities in lexicalization patterns of Motion events. In addition, Korean and Japanese listeners achieved significantly different inferencing scores, although these two languages are categorized into the same typological group. Hence, it is proposed that L1 lexicalization patterns play an essential role in guessing the meaning of target words in listening. We also present some results on the knowledge sources used in the lexical inferencing of the target words.