The Syntax and Semantics of Korean External Possession Constructions
Min-Joo Kim
April 2025
 

Korean has at least three types of external possession construction (EPC) and they respectively instantiate the multiple accusative, the multiple dative, and the multiple nominative construction. EPCs in Korean present several problems to theoretical syntax and the syntax-semantics interface. In particular, they pose a problem to Case theory, as the number of structural cases occurring in them and the number of suitable Case licensors do not match. This paper is an attempt to offer a new and a relatively unified account of the EPCs in Korean. More specifically, it aims to provide answers to the following questions: (i) What is the source of the extra Cases in each type of EPC in Korean? (ii) What are the grammatical statuses of the possessor and the possessum nominals that occur in the EPCs in Korean? (iii) Are there any constraints on the Korean EPCs? If so, what are they? The syntactic analysis this paper offers is similar to but also different from what authors like Yoon (1989) have proposed: building on the insights of Schütze (1996) and Sohn (1994), I suggest that the extra “Cases” in each EPC are best treated as focus markers. As to their semantics, I propose an analysis which resorts to type-shifting of the sentential predicate. This will be followed by identifying semantic restrictions on Korean EPCs. In this process, I show that Korean MACs cannot be fully accounted for without considering some pragmatic or cognitive factors (e.g., affectedness, physical contiguity), as has been noted in the literature (e.g., Yoon 1989; Yeon 1999); however, I add some new observations to the phenomena at hand as well.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/006024
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: (2000) Unpublished manuscript, UMass Amherst; Revised for typos in June, 2021 and April, 2025
keywords: external possession, possessor raising, multiple case licensing, focus marking, type shifting, function composition, theta binding, aboutness, affectedness, korean, syntax, semantics, morphology, pragmatics
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