Constructions In Korean Research Articles

The give-type benefactive constructions in Korean and Japanese

This paper offers a formal account for the give-type benefactive constructions involving -cwu in Korean and -age in Japanese. Inspired by Shibatani’s (Jpn Korean Linguist 4:39–74, 1994; in: Shibatani and Thompson (eds) Grammatical constructions: their form and meaning, Clarendon Press, Oxford, pp 157–194, 1996) observation that a dative NP in a benefactive sentence is associated with the notion of possession, we propose an account based on lexical decomposition, which has been widely adopted for analyzing ditransitives and some complex predicates in the recent literature. We argue that a dative NP is not a beneficiary but rather a possessor, whose apparent ‘beneficiary’ interpretation is derived via pragmatic inferences, and that a beneficiary role is always encoded in the form of an implicit argument of the benefactive auxiliary -cwu/-age. The proposed analysis accounts for the puzzling distributional patterns of dative arguments in the benefactive construction that cannot be easily captured by a simple ‘benefactive-as-applicative’ analysis. Furthermore, our investigation of the benefactive meaning reveals that it belongs to the not-at-issue tier of meaning in the multi-dimensional semantics, and that the lack of entailment of the benefactive meaning is better analyzed by appealing to generic quantification.

Main Clause Phenomena in Korean (vs. V2 in German)

The goal of this paper is to examine what kind of universals and parameters exist in Main Clause Phenomena (MCP), conducting a comparative study between Korean and German. First, we show that complements allowing MCP reveal a structural ambiguity between root or subordinating clauses, which implies that these cases of semi-Roots are only an optional operation in Korean. Second, we discuss the typology of MCP with respect to true Roots and semi-Roots in Korean. Third, we discuss three semantic properties of MCP in Korean: (i) non-presupposition is a prerequisite in triggering MCP, supporting earlier accounts; (ii) the (non-)presuppositional property reflected in complementizer selection precisely patterns with the (non-)factivity of matrix predicates; and (iii) various semantic–pragmatic sources for MCP such as illocutionary forces, expressive/emotional attitude, mirative evidentials, (anti)honorification, and mood choice in Korean are identified. Fourth, we show that Korean complements with MCP and German V2 constructions exhibit striking parallels in terms of distribution, which implies that MCP in these typologically unrelated languages can be captured by a single principle. Finally, we propose a unified account for the syntax of true Roots, semi-Roots, and non-Roots, building on Wurmbrand's (2012, 2014) timing-of-Merge account. This dynamic syntax allows us to capture the crosslinguistic variation such as structural ambiguity of MCP constructions in Korean and the mismatches between syntactic and LF/PF properties in V2 in German.The current analysis has important consequences: First, this study has empirical confirmation that the types of MCP-trigger must be extended to comprise the newly identified cases in Korean. Second, the structural ambiguity for MCP constructions in Korean gives us the generalization that MCP operate on syntax, even though they are semantically or pragmatically motivated. Finally, the comparative analysis of genetically distant languages opens the possibility to provide a principled account of the MCP-activating force heads across languages, incorporating the empirical findings of prior research on individual factors such as emotional attitude, evidentiality, or mood.

Correction and compensation: The taysin construction in Korean

This paper explores the taysin construction in Korean, ClauseAtaysin ClauseB, which can convey corrective semantics (‘ClauseB instead of ClauseA,’ where only ClauseB holds) or compensatory concessive semantics (‘ClauseB even though ClauseA,’ ‘ClauseB in exchange for ClauseA,’ where both clauses hold). The taysin construction is remarkable in that (1) when it conveys corrective semantics, it may not require any overt negativizer as correctives usually do (e.g., he is not rich, but instead poor) and in that (2) its function covers a specific type of concessive—compensatory concessive. I contend that the various uses of this versatile construction are conceptually related by showing that all evoke mutual exclusiveness at some level (whether profiled or not) and that there must always be an assessment of compensation/offset between the effects of situations referred to in the two clauses. To explicate the constructional polysemy better, this study clarifies definitions of corrective and compensatory concessive and argues that the uses are better grasped by employing the domain analysis (following Sweetser, 1990). Then, this study provides a systematic account of the distribution of the taysin construction in Korean by discussing how the relevant mutual exclusiveness is construed together with compensation/offset as being at the content, epistemic, or speech-act level.

Clausal Architecture of Auxiliary Verb and Periphrastic Causative Constructions in Korean

Clausal Architecture of Auxiliary Verb and Periphrastic Causative Constructions in Korean

Towards a Derivational, Labeling-based Approach to ‘Floating’ Numeral Classifiers in Korean

This paper investigates the well-known subject-object asymmetry in the ‘floating’ numeral classifier construction in Korean: Unlike objects, subjects...

A Resumption Strategy for Gapless Multiple Right Dislocation

This paper mainly focuses on gapless multiple right dislocation constructions in Korean. Abe (2016) argues against the most popular approach to right dislocation, namely, a bi-clausal analysis incorporating repair by ellipsis strategy. Instead, he argues for a bi-clausal in situ deletion approach based on island insensitivity, intervention effects, and multiple sluicing in Japanese. In this paper, I carefully examine Abe’s arguments, using corresponding Korean examples, and argue that his arguments are not tenable. I even claim that the bi-clausal analysis is not an option. More specifically, I propose that the in situ deletion effects are achieved by another mechanism, which I call phonetic resumption, under the mono-clausal analysis coupled with TP-raising.

A Contrastive Study of Existential Constructions in Korean, Chinese and Japanese: From a Typological Perspective

A Contrastive Study of Existential Constructions in Korean, Chinese and Japanese: From a Typological Perspective

Partitive descriptions in Korean

This paper examines Korean partitive constructions to investigate the typology of the partitive structure. In Korean, a quantifier precedes the nominal in a non-partitive, but it follows the nominal in a partitive. The relative order between a quantifier and its associated nominal indicates that a quantifier in Korean partitive does not function as a NP adjunct but takes a DP as its argument. I argue that Korean postnominal (floating) quantifier constructions can be interpreted as partitives or pseudo-partitives/quantitatives because a postnominal (floating) quantifier denoting a part-of relation can occur with a kind-denoting DP as well as a definite DP. I also propose that a quantifier denoting a part-of relation is associated with the argument of a verb via composition with a verbal predicate in the floating quantifier construction. This approach can provide an account for several idiosyncratic properties of floating quantifier constructions, which are difficult to capture under the assumption that a floating quantifier construction is derived by moving a quantifier away from its associated nominal.

The Syntactic Structures of Long-form Causative Constructions in Korean.

The Syntactic Structures of Long-form Causative Constructions in Korean.

The temporal interpretation of tenseless relative clauses in Korean

This paper investigates the temporal interpretation of Korean relative clauses that are not morphologically marked with overt tense morphemes (plain KRCs). Previous researchers (e.g. Lee in Tense, aspect, and modality: a discourse-pragmatic analysis of verbal affixes in Korean from a typological perspective. Ph.D. thesis, UCLA, 1991, Stud Lang 17: 75–110, 1993; Yoon in Temporal adverbials and Aktionsarten in Korean. Ph.D. thesis, The Ohio State University, 1996) have postulated phonologically null temporal markers in plain KRCs, and have accounted for their temporal interpretation in terms of the meaning of the postulated temporal markers. In this paper, I show that these analyses are empirically problematic, and argue that the temporal interpretation can be captured without assuming null tense or aspect, in line with Lee and Tonhauser’s (J Semant 27:307–341, 2010) tenseless analysis of the temporal interpretation of Korean and Japanese coordination constructions. I show that the temporal interpretation of plain KRCs is determined by interactions among various factors such as Aktionsarten, discourse relations, discourse context, and world knowledge, and propose a compositional analysis of the observed facts.

Anticausative Feature of ‘Passive - By itself’ Construction in Korean

The aim of the study is to examine similarities and differences of the ‘passive - by itself’ construction that expressed ‘being damaged’ by spontaneous situation among several types of Korean passive construction and anticausative construction that mentioned in language typology, to get to know ‘passive - by itself’ construction has anticausative feature. Korean ‘passive - by itself’ construction has a lot in common morphologically․syntactically․semantically with anticausative construction of Indo-European, it unites in points that there is particularly no agent in sentence and it shows that event which happened spontaneously. Unlike anticausative construction ; however, cannot imply agent syntactically and semantically, there is able to ambiguous constructions that imply agent in Korean ‘passive - by itself’ construction. This study shows the reason why Korean ‘passive - by itself’ construction is expressed by passive verb and anticausative construction of Indo-European is expressed by reflexive. In addition, this study distinguished with ‘passive - by itself’ construction by applying ambiguous construction. There are a lot of ambiguous construction in Korean. When we make sentences that depend on context, we have to consider whether the agent should be places or not in order to subject constraint in connection with animacy hierarchy. Furthermore, referring to semantic map and semantic model of Hapelmath(1987), this study suggests meaning of Korean passive verb and Indo-European reflexive. While Indo-European reflexive has each meaning by sequential derivation, Korean passive verb shows phenomenon that meaning changed according to cause material each in a ’passive’ category.

Revisiting Korean long form negative question: A usage-based perspective

Unlike most of the previous work on the semantic/functional ambiguity of the long form negative question construction in Korean which mainly focused...

Lexicology of Korean Common Nouns

In this paper I attempt to analyze various Korean transitive verb constructions whose meanings are associated with a qualia role. In particular, four generalizations are observed: (i) the verbs culki- `enjoy" and kyenghemha- `experience" must be associated only with a telic role of common noun object, (ii) the non-final light verb of a serial verb construction is related only to an agentive role of common noun object, (iii) if a quale of a common noun is associated with the light verb ha- `do", then that quale is also associated with another qualia-related verb (e.g., culki- `enjoy" or kyenghemha-`experience"), and (iv) the verb sicakha- `begin" must be associated only with the first qualia role on the LV-QUALIA list, which I propose in this paper. Based on these generalizations, the transitive verb constructions are formalized in Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG).

Cyclic Computation of Focus Intonation in Numeral Quantifier Floating Constructions in Korean

In this paper, I propose that Kayne’s(1994) LCA underlies the entire set of syntactic representations, even those at LF, imposing a tight relation between hierarchical structure and linear order. It will be shown that the Distinctness principle of Copies I suggested earlier(Son 2015a, 2016) is a manifestation of the LCA. More specifically, the LCA applies to a Spell-Out domain shipped to LF, choosing only those representations that satisfy the LCA. An LF-representation bearing nondistinct copies in the head and tail of the chain will turn out to be a non-trivial chain since it conflicts with the requirements on linearization and thus cannot be linearized.

The Principle of Distinctness and Rightward Displacement in Korean

Right dislocated constructions in Korean reveal exciting but puzzling patterns in their linear order and resultant interpretations. Concerning binding and scope, for instance, right dislocated constituents behaves as if they were not in the place where phonetically realized. In this respect, the co-related gaps within the host clause are not much different, either. Although not all the time, the clause-internal gaps do not directly enter into the binding and scope interactions. Furthermore, these constructions cannot be a mere mirror reflex of scrambling since the right- and left-dislocated elements pattern entirely different way. In this paper, I show that a simple movement analysis fails to capture this and other aspects of the right-dislocated constructions. I instead propose that all varieties of interpretations in these constructions come as a consequence of syntactic movement similar to quantifier raising, and that their noticeable characteristics of the subject/object-asymmetry is well understood by referring to the Distinctness principle of Copies.

A Multifactorial Analysis of English Dative Alternations in Korean EFL Learners’ Writings

This paper adopts a multi-factorial analysis and investigates English dative alternations in Korean EFL learners’ writings, by directly comparing dative alternations of native speakers and those of Korean EFL learners’ writings. Two corpora were chosen for the comparison: the Switchboard corpus (written sections) and the Korean component of the TOEFL11 corpus. After all the sentences with dative alternations were extracted from these two corpora, and seventeen linguistic factors were manually encoded, the data were statistically analyzed in R. This paper was theoretically based on the concept of interlanguage in the Second Language Acquisition and Competition Model of Bates and MacWhinney (1982, 1989). Through the analysis, the following facts were observed: (i) the Korean EFL learners used ditransitive constructions more frequently than prepositional constructions, (ii) eight main factors and four interactions with the L1 were statistically significant, and (iii) the ditransitive constructions which the Korean EFL learners used were closer to the prepositional constructions rather than the ditransitive constructions in Korean.

The so-called attributive appositional construction in Korean: a case supporting the labeling algorithm of Chomsky (2013)

The so-called attributive appositional construction in Korean: a case supporting the labeling algorithm of Chomsky (2013)

A Comparative Study on the AND-constructions in English and Their Corresponding ‘-ko/-wa’ Constructions in Korean

A Comparative Study on the AND-constructions in English and Their Corresponding ‘-ko/-wa’ Constructions in Korean

On the Affected Construction in Korean

This paper revisits the structure of the so-called “adversity” construction in Korean. The construction is formed by attaching the idiosyncratic -i/-hi/-li/-ki suffixes to some transitive roots, but differ from typical inchoative/passive constructions, which also involve the -i/-hi/-li/-ki allomorphy. I show that the peculiarities of the construction arise due to the selectional relationships among syntactic heads—active Voice, high applicative, verbalizer—as well as an implied PRO argument. I motivate the analysis with various pieces of evidence—the behaviors of depictive secondary predicates, properties of case marking and agent-oriented adverbs, as well as scope interpretation. I then show that a three-way distinction among the construction in question and two types of passives in Korean emerges due to two syntactic factors: the type of the Voice head and the syntactic position of the relevant verbal suffixes. Finally, some implications regarding the semantics of Voice and high applicative are discussed.

A Family of Topic Constructions in Korean: A Construction-based Analysis

A Family of Topic Constructions in Korean: A Construction-based Analysis