Suppletive negation in Korean and Distributed Morphology

Abstract

A limited number of predicates show a suppletive form instead of the so-called short-form negation construction in Korean ( al- ‘know’ → molu- ‘not know’, * an(i)/mos al-; iss- ‘exist’ → eps- ‘not exist’, * an(i)/mos iss-). Distribution of the negator, licensing of negative polarity items, and scope interactions with respect to quantifiers show that short-form negation is syntactic. The suppletive negations behave just like short-form negation cases, without the responsible negator. This paper is concerned with these suppletive negation cases and provides a Distributed Morphology analysis, identifying shortcomings of lexicalist approaches. The particular analysis for the suppletive negation in Korean is morphological fusion of the negator and the predicates under consideration in the postsyntactic morphological component. This treatment explains the same syntactic and semantic behaviors for suppletive negation and short-form negation. Also, this account allows syntactic structure and operations (overt and covert) to be uniform regardless of the predicate chosen in a negative clause for the syntactic representation and derivation. One theoretical consequence is that morphology does not derive syntax, but interprets it. Toward the end of the paper, some special behaviors and properties of the verb ‘know’ are provided from Korean and several other languages, suggesting a functional feature related to ‘know’.