Abstract

Kearns (1988) has previously proposed two types of Light Verb Constructions in English: True Light Verb Constructions and Vague Action Verb Constructions. This paper claims that the Korean Light Verb Construction without an accusative marker corresponds to the True Light Verb Construction in English, while the Korean Light Verb Construction with an accusative marker corresponds to the Vague Action Verb Construction in English. Joh (2017) has claimed that, for the former, we can apply the Type Coercion mechanism, while, for the latter, a Co-compositional process takes place. Extending this analysis, this paper claims that the two types of Korean Light Verb Constructions can be explained by the two different generative mechanisms. One of the biggest advantages of this paper is that it finds that the two types of Light Verb Construction observed in Korean is not an isolated phenomenon but provides clear and concrete evidence to the claim that there are two different types of Light Verb Constructions in natural languages by showing that they can be morphologically evidenced.

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