Use of locative postposition-verb construction in Korean: analysis of L1-Korean corpora and L2-Korean textbooks

A usage-based account argues that the actual experience of language use greatly affects the course of language acquisition. On the basis of this premise, this study investigates how language textbooks, as a main input source for L2 learners, reflect the properties of a target language. We focus on a Korean locative postposition–verb construction, consisting of one of the three locative postpositions (– ey, – eyse and –( u) lo) and particular sets of verbs. For this purpose, we adopt representative L1 written/spoken corpora in Korean and two L2-Korean textbook corpora, and analysed three aspects of them: frequency of these postpositions and verbs, their association strength, and change in use of the construction’s components across the corpora. We find that ( i) verb types co-occurring with each postposition follow the Zipfian distribution in both datasets, ( ii) L1 corpora and L2 textbooks are inconsistent with their manifestation of postposition–verb associations within the construction, and ( iii) the two textbook types differ in verb use co-occurring with the postpositions. The implications of this study’s findings are discussed in terms of the acquisitional benefits of constructional frames and using corpora for L2 learning and teaching