An Experimental Approach to Multiple Case Constructions in Korean

Abstract

Multi-ple Nominative Constructions (MNCs) and Multiple Accusative Constructions (MACs) have been some of the hottest and interesting topics in Korean syntax. This paper took empirical approaches to these constructions and examined na-tive speakers`s grammaticality judgements of these constructions. Though there are lots of previous studies on these constructions, Ryu (2010, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c) recently tried to unify MNCs and MACs into Multiple Case Construc-tions (MCCs) and to classify them into 16 types based on the semantic re-lations. This paper includes experiments which were performed on these 16 different types. The experiments were designed following Johnson (2008); and the native speakers` intuition was measured with two scales, numerical esti-mates and line drawing, though the latter was adopted in the actual analyses. Through the experiment, the following facts were observed: (i) the grammat-icality of the MCCs varies depending on their semantic relations, (ii) MNCs were more grammatical than MACs if both constructions occurred in simi-lar environments, and (iii) the sentences in some MAC types had much lower grammaticality than those in the others, as Ryu (2013b, 2013c) mentioned. (Chungnam National University & Hannam University)