Korean has three reflexives: caki, casin, and caki-casin. Previous literature agrees (Yoon, 1989; Kang, 1998) that speakers differentiate the forms via their binding distance preference. Empirical research has generally corroborated these distributions (Kim & Yoon, 2008; Choi & Kim, 2007; Kim et al., 2013; Kim, M., & Lee, M., 2022), but variability in binding preferences has been found for caki and casin, suggesting that the Korean reflexive system may be in flux. However, little research exists which examines the production of these forms, where a system in flux may be most robustly identified.
35 Korean native speakers completed a picture-based oral production task and a picture-sentence judgment task in order to compare the distribution of Korean reflexives in production to the distribution in comprehension. The results show that, for local binding, caki-casin was preferred in both comprehension and production. For long-distance binding, however, comprehension and production diverged. In comprehension, speakers preferred caki, but caki-casin was produced most of the three reflexives, despite being dispreferred in comprehension (p < 0.001). These results with caki-casin are of interest, as they are not predicted by previous research or by the comprehension results of the current study. This misalignment can be considered evidence that caki-casin is becoming a preferentially local reflexive which is licensed as a logophor in long-distance contexts, consistent with previous research regarding the ability of caki-casin to be licensed as a logophor (Kim, J.H., & Yoon, J., 2009; Kim, E.H., & Yoon, J., 2020; Kim, J.H., & Lee, Y.H., 2022). As to why comprehension and production differ in how this emerging change is manifested, usage-based theories of language change posit that production is the leading force of change, and this tendency is observed in the ongoing changes in the reflexive system of Korean.