Possessor Agreement as Theta Feature Sharing

Abstract

Korean displays an interesting construction (so-called possessor agreement construction), where a possessor nominal and its possessum nominal are marked with the same case as shown in the example Mary-ka John-ul tali-lul cha-ss-ta ‘Mary kicked John''s leg’ More interestingly, not all possessors in possessive construction are marked the same case with its possessum as shorn in the ungrammatical sentence ^＊Mary-ka John-ul cha-lul cha-ss-ta ‘Mary kicked John''s car’. Hence, a simple but non-trivial question arises: In what situation are both possessors and possessums marked with the same case? In this paper, we advance three claims: (i) Possessor agreement appears in the situation where entailment is satisfied as follows: If Mary kicked John''s leg, it entails that Mary kicked John, (ii) entailment in possessor agreement results from theta-feature sharing; specifically, the whole DP and the possessor DP share the same theta role, and (iii) Possessor nominals are marked with accusative (or nominative) case when they are assigned internal theta role from the predicate directly. (Sogang University)