On the Syntactic Category of kkway ‘quite’ in Korean

Abstract

This paper argues that the degree modifier kkway ‘quite’ in Korean is used as an adjective inside NPs although it is normally used as a degree adverb inside the predicate of a sentence. Several pieces of evidence for the adjectival status of kkway ‘quite’ are provided in this paper: i) kkway ‘quite’ inside NPs cannot have the topic marker -(n)un like other adjectives, ii) kkway ‘quite’ must appear in the prenominal position when it modifies a head noun, iii) kkway ‘quite’ restricts the meaning of the head noun, iv) kkway ‘quite’ can be modified by a degree adverb, and v) kkway ‘quite’ can be stacked with other typical adjectives within NPs. I further show with similar evidence that other degree modifiers – sangdanghi ‘considerable’ and maywu ‘very’ – can be also used as an adjective inside NPs. Finally, some nominal expressions with kkway ‘quite’ are analyzed in the Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (Pollard & Sag, 1994; Sag, Wasow, & Bender, 2003).