Constraints in Verbal Compounding

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is two fold. First, I will examine the internal structure of the N-V-i construction, in terms of the constraints on argument linking. I will incorporate the major concepts in current morphological studies (Sproat 1985, Di Sciullo &1 Williams 1987, and Grimshaw 1990). As for the related issues in Korean, I will reexamine the earlier studies of Ahn (1985), Sohn (1987), H.-Y. Kim (1990), Yu-Cho (1994), and Shi (1993, 1995). Then, I will provide a new categorization of compounds in terms of morpho-lexical and semantic consideration. I will test this categorization phonologically. Second, I will examine several constraints on the selection of a proper nominalizing suffixal form. For this part, I will employ the framework of the Optimality Theory by Prince & Smolensky (1993) and McCarthy & Prince (1993, 1994). Here I will propose five major constraints and their dominance hierarchy and show how these constraints and the dominance relation can account for the optimal selection of the surface form.