This study aims to investigate perceptions of English implicative verbs and non-implicative verbs by conducting surveys targeting Korean learners of English. As the differences between the two types of verbs are not easily noticed by the non-native speakers of English, they can make mistakes in understanding or translating the meaning of implicative/non-implicative verbs. Thus, the surveys focused on whether L2 students can perceive the differences between implicative verbs and non-implicative verbs and correctly translate the two types of verbs into Korean implicative or non-implicative constructions and vice versa. In this study, the Korean connective ending -a/eoseo ('-아/어서') is suggested as the counterpart of English implicative verbs. As the Korean implicative constructions, which are contained within the resultative ending -a/eoseo ('-아/어서'), have the same properties as the English implicative verbs, they can be effectively used in English-Korean or Korean-English translation.
The surveys consist of three parts - personal background questionnaires, English-Korean or Korean-English translation tasks and English or Korean entailment checking tasks. A total of 62 junior and senior students mostly majoring in English Language and Literature at Seoul Women's university responded to these surveys.
According to the survey results, in English-Korean tasks, only 41.7% of the students were able to tell the differences between English implicative verbs and non-implicative verbs and, in Korean-English tasks, only 48% noticed them. As Korean native speakers, almost every student accurately understood the meaning of Korean implicative and non-implicative constructions. The majority of students, however, failed to correctly translate Korean implicative/non-implicative constructions into English implicative/non-implicative verbs. In particular, the error rates of the implicative verbs were substantially higher than those of the non-implicative verbs.
The result of this study indicates that the meaning of implicative/non-implicative verbs should be taught as one of the important parts of English grammar education and translation training. Without perceiving the differences of implicative verbs and non-implicative verbs, non-native speakers of English would misunderstand or mistranslate their meanings. Therefore, it is important to teach and learn the differences between two languages, Korean and English and understand the differences in the meaning of English implicative and non-implicative verbs.