Journal

Volume 26, Issue 4 (December 31, 2025)

6 articles

• Cross-Linguistic Syntactic Parsing in GPT Models: Evidence from English and Korean Ambiguities
  by Jeonghwa Shin
  J. CS. 2025, 26(4), 337-361;
  Abstract This study investigates how three GPT-based large language models—ChatGPT-3.5, ChatGPT-4o, and ChatGPT-5.0—resolve globally ambiguous structures in English and Korean, focusing on relative clause (RC) attachment and temporal adverbial adjunct (TAA) attachment ambiguities. Across both constructions, ... [Read more].
  Abstract This study investigates how three GPT-based large language models—ChatGPT-3.5, ChatGPT-4o, and ChatGPT-5.0—resolve globally ambiguous structures in English and Korean, focusing on relative clause (RC) attachment and temporal adverbial adjunct (TAA) attachment ambiguities. Across both constructions, all three models produced near-categorical low-attachment interpretations in English. Although English speakers generally prefer low attachment, human judgments are gradient; thus, the models’ uniformly categorical responses reflect an overgeneralized heuristic rather than human-like syntactic parsing. In Korean, where human readers are known to favor high attachment, the models again exhibited strong low-attachment preferences for both RC and TAA structures, with ChatGPT-4o and ChatGPT-5.0 showing especially rigid, near-ceiling low-attachment behavior. These cross-linguistic patterns indicate that GPT models do not acquire language-specific attachment strategies but instead extend an English-derived low-attachment heuristic across typologically distinct languages. The findings underscore key limitations in current autoregressive LLMs’ cross-linguistic syntactic generalization and highlight the need for training and modeling approaches that more effectively capture typological variation in structural interpretation. [Collapse]
• Neural Correlates of Morphological Processing in the Visual Recognition of Sino-Korean Prefixed Derivations
  by Jinwon Kang & Sun-Young Lee
  J. CS. 2025, 26(4), 363-399;
  Abstract This study investigated the neural correlates of morphological processing in Sino-Korean prefixed derivations in the visual word recognition. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), brain responses to morphological, semantic and orthographic priming effects were examined on the three time windows: N2... [Read more].
  Abstract This study investigated the neural correlates of morphological processing in Sino-Korean prefixed derivations in the visual word recognition. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), brain responses to morphological, semantic and orthographic priming effects were examined on the three time windows: N250 (200–270 ms), N400 (340–380 ms), and a late positivity component (LPC) (380–450 ms). Forty-three native Korean speakers participated in a masked priming lexical decision task while their EEG was recorded. The overall results revealed robust and sustained neural effects of N250, N400 and a late positivity for morphological priming, but absence or very weak effects for semantic and orthographic priming, indicating early morphological decomposition and subsequent reanalysis. The following topographic analysis further confirmed that the morphological priming effects were elicited at language related brain regions. These findings were taken as supporting evidence for the early sub-lexical and continuous engagement of morphological analysis of the lexicon in visual word recognition, extending our understanding of morphological decomposition beyond alphabetic languages. [Collapse]
• The Interplay of Probabilistic Expectation and Semantic Compatibility in Korean Evidential Processing
  by Hongoak Yun & Yunju Nam
  J. CS. 2025, 26(4), 401-435;
  Abstract This study examines how readers process evidential dependencies in Korean, a language where marking the source of information is morphologically encoded but often optional. Using a combination of offline and online measures, we investigated the extent to which readers adhere to evidential consistenc... [Read more].
  Abstract This study examines how readers process evidential dependencies in Korean, a language where marking the source of information is morphologically encoded but often optional. Using a combination of offline and online measures, we investigated the extent to which readers adhere to evidential consistency during incremental processing. Our findings indicate that while readers generate probabilistic expectations based on early cues, these expectations are distinctly modulated by semantic compatibility. The observation that evidential mismatches are frequently accommodated suggests that evidentiality in Korean functions as a soft constraint to prevent communication breakdown. We conclude that evidential processing is not driven by rigid grammatical algorithms but is a flexible mechanism that balances probabilistic expectation with semantic congruence. [Collapse]
• Vietnamese EFL Learners’ Sensitivity to the Structural Parallelism Constraint on Comparative Ellipsis
  by Duong Hong Mai & Nguyen Thi Quyen
  J. CS. 2025, 26(4), 437-486;
  Abstract This study examines how Vietnamese learners of English as a foreign language acquire comparative ellipsis, focusing on two subtypes: Gapping and Stripping. It investigates learners’ sensitivity to structural constraints as well as the roles of L1 influence and structural priming. Since Vietnamese la... [Read more].
  Abstract This study examines how Vietnamese learners of English as a foreign language acquire comparative ellipsis, focusing on two subtypes: Gapping and Stripping. It investigates learners’ sensitivity to structural constraints as well as the roles of L1 influence and structural priming. Since Vietnamese lacks Gapping-like constructions, such structures were expected to present acquisition challenges. Previous research has not clearly distinguished how second-language learners process Gapping versus Stripping. To address this gap, both comprehension and production tasks were employed. Results showed that learners consistently performed well with Stripping, suggesting its greater accessibility, likely due to parallels with discourse-level omission in Vietnamese. By contrast, Gapping posed initial difficulties. Nevertheless, exposure through priming improved learners’ production and, to a lesser extent, their grammaticality judgments, indicating short-term priming effects. These findings support the Full Transfer/Full Access model: learners begin with L1-based representations but can restructure their grammar with sufficient input. However, performance with Gapping remained less stable, reflecting the impact of structural complexity and typological distance. The study underscores the need for targeted pedagogical support for constructions absent in learners’ L1. Instructional implications include explicitly contrasting Gapping and Stripping and providing guided, contextualized practice. Future research should investigate the durability of priming effects and the effectiveness of instructional interventions in fostering mastery of L2 ellipsis. [Collapse]
• The Syntax of Prohibitive Negation mal- in Korean: Beyond Modality to Speech Act Structure and Person Features
  by Myung-Kwan Park
  J. CS. 2025, 26(4), 487-532;
  Abstract This study investigates the morphosyntactic and semantic conditions underlying imperative negation in Korean, focusing on the auxiliary verb mal-, which expresses prohibitive force (‘Don’t do’). Traditionally, mal- has been analyzed as a morphological fusion of the negative morpheme an(i) ‘not’ and ... [Read more].
  Abstract This study investigates the morphosyntactic and semantic conditions underlying imperative negation in Korean, focusing on the auxiliary verb mal-, which expresses prohibitive force (‘Don’t do’). Traditionally, mal- has been analyzed as a morphological fusion of the negative morpheme an(i) ‘not’ and the light verb ha- ‘do’, realized under the presence of deontic modality (Han & Lee 2007). While this Distributed Morphology approach captures the co-occurrence of negation and obligation, it fails to explain why mal- alternates with an.h- in various deontic contexts and why it is excluded from others that also encode deontic meanings, such as evaluative or permissive expressions. Building on cross-linguistic research in the syntax of imperatives, this paper proposes that the occurrence of mal- is determined not solely by modality but by person features and speech act structure. Specifically, mal- appears when negation operates within a directive configuration, where the Person (Pers) head agreeing with the subject interacts with the Addressee node in the Speech Act Phrase (SAP) (i.e., the Mood Phrase in Korean, in conventional terminology) to encode the participant roles of speaker and addressee. This interaction yields the morphological realization of mal- in imperatives, propositives, and related directive environments, but blocks its use in factual or evaluative clauses. The analysis demonstrates that the distribution of mal- reflects a syntactic encoding of speaker–addressee relations rather than deontic modality alone. By linking negation, person agreement, and speech act structure, this study provides new evidence that Korean morphosyntax directly encodes communicative roles, offering broader implications for the grammar of directives and negation across languages. [Collapse]
• Cognitive Science in East Asia and Beyond: Past, Present, and Future
  by Chungmin Lee
  J. CS. 2025, 26(4), 533-548;
  Abstract This survey article reviews the global reception of the Cognitive Revolution and traces the development of cognitive science in East Asia and the Pacific from the 1980s to the present. It focuses on domestic initiatives and international conferences—most notably the ICCS series (from 1997), the foun... [Read more].
  Abstract This survey article reviews the global reception of the Cognitive Revolution and traces the development of cognitive science in East Asia and the Pacific from the 1980s to the present. It focuses on domestic initiatives and international conferences—most notably the ICCS series (from 1997), the founding of the Journal of Cognitive Science (from 2000), and the establishment of the International Association for Cognitive Science (IACS) in 2008—culminating in ICCS Tokyo 2025, after which the conference becomes annual. We survey how cognitive science theories developed. We pay attention to the institutional conditions that enabled sustained intellectual exchange. Focusing on Japan–Korea cooperation in formal linguistics and semantics, the article highlights two successful conference traditions—the Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation (PACLIC) and the Japanese/Korean (J/K) Linguistics Conference, as well as LENLS (Logic and Engineering in Natural Language Semantics)—as positive models of archival continuity. The discussion contrasts these cases with more fragmented developments elsewhere in East Asia and argues that long-term success in cognitive science depends not only on theoretical innovation but also on durable archival infrastructures and quality international journals, often maintained through individual scholarly responsibility. [Collapse]