A Study on the Use of Discourse Markers according to the Level of Burden of Subject in Interview Discourse: Focus on Myanmar Korean Learners and Korean Native Speakers

The purpose of this study is to examine the use of discourse markers according to the level of burden of subject in interview discourse, focus on Korean native speakers and Myanmar Korean advanced learners. For this, the study conducted interviews with 15 participants in each group. The subjects of the interview were divided into upper, middle, and lower according to the level of burden of subject, and there are a total of three. A total of 6739 syntactic words were produced by native Korean speakers, and the total number of discourse markers was 752 times, so one discourse marker was used in 8.96 syntactic words. Meanwhile, in the case of learners, a total of 3082 syntactic words were produced, and a total of 722 discourse markers were used, so one discourse marker was used for 4.41 words. As a result of the study, Korean native speakers used the most discourse markers when the subject had a high burden, but the learners used discourse markers regardless of the level of burden of subject. Korean native speakers used various functional discourse markers depending on the subject of the interview, but learners repeatedly used limited discourse markers. Interestingly, when learners couldn't think of the next content well, or when they took a long time to think, switching to their native language occurred. At this time, learners were using discourse markers in their mother tongue that do not exist in Korean. In many cases, Korean native speakers speak two or more discourse markers combined, and this can be said to be a characteristic of the Korean native speaker.