ABSTRACT
This chapter reports on current issues and recent findings on the acquisition of polysemous words from the perspective of second language acquisition (SLA), focusing on Korean as a second language (KSL). For second language (L2) learners, acquiring a word means gaining diverse types of knowledge: recognizing its sound pattern and orthography, understanding it at the conceptual level, and – as many words have more than a single meaning – being able to recognize semantic relationships among its senses. In the field of KSL, studies have shown that the most common lexical errors made by L2 Korean learners are related to L1 interference, typically due to direct translation from L1 to L2. Another related type of error, however, arises from the polysemous nature of individual lexical items because the sets of meanings of L1 and L2 counterparts rarely overlap entirely. This chapter first describes how current theoretical and pedagogical approaches are utilized in the field of KSL to help learners acquire the various senses of polysemous Korean words. It then explores the applicability and effectiveness of these approaches for both research and teaching, discusses pedagogical implications for natural classroom settings, and suggests future directions for this line of research.
