Tài liệu Current issues in linguistic theory 71 - William o'grady categories and case_ the sentence structure of korean john benjamins publishing company (1991)

CATEGORIES AND CASE AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE General Editor E.F. KONRAD KOERNER (University of Ottawa) Series IV - CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY Advisory Editorial Board Henning Andersen (Los Angeles); Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles) Thomas V. Gamkrelidze (Tbilisi); Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin) J. Peter Maher (Chicago); Ernst Pulgram (Ann Arbor, Mich.) E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.); Danny Steinberg (Tokyo) Volume 71 William O'Grady Categories and Case The Sentence Structure of Korean CATEGORIES AND CASE THE SENTENCE STRUCTURE OF KOREAN WILLIAM O'GRADY University of Calgary & University of Hawaii at Manoa JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA 1991 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data O'Grady, William D. (William Delaney), 1952Categories and case : the sentence structure of Korean / William O'Grady. p. cm. - (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV, Current issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763; v. 71) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Korean language ~ Morphology. 2. Korean language ~ Case grammar. 3. Korean language - Categorical grammar. I. Title. II. Series. PL919.035 1991 495.7'5--dc20 90-42137 ISBN 90 272 3569 7 (Eur.)/l-55619-127-8 (US)(alk. paper) CIP © Copyright 1991 - John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. Contents 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations The Yale System of Romanization vi vii viii The Problem The Grammar Grammatical Relations and Thematic Roles The Case System Passivization and Dative Advancement Possessor Ascension Inversion Constructions Focus Constructions Subject-to-Object Raising Lexical Causatives Syntactic Causatives Case and Word Order Floated Quantifiers Some Special Challenges The Acquisition Problem Concluding Remarks 1 13 25 33 47 67 97 117 139 153 171 197 211 225 249 269 Notes References Index 275 283 293 Acknowledgements While working on this project I benefitted from the assistance of a number of people. First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Sook Whan Cho, whose work on the acquisition of Korean first got me interested in that language and who subsequently encouraged me to work on the problem of case marking. Special thanks are also due to Young-Seok Choi and Sung-Ock Shin, who served as my principal informants and who provided invaluable comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. I am also very grateful for the help of D.-J. Lee, my first Korean teacher, who read and commented on different versions of the manuscript, noting many problems and providing invaluable help with the Korean data. His assistance and insights helped mefindmy way out of many deadends. Don Frantz also read the manuscript in its entirety and made many valuable suggestions, for which I am very grateful. Additional important data and comments were provided by Younghee Na, Keon-Soo Lee, Yutaka Sato, Kazue Kanno, Gyung-Ran Kim, Hak-neung Joo, Eung-Do Cook, Joe Ree, Konrad Koerner and two anonymous referees, to whom I express my thanks. Needless to say, any remaining errors are my responsibility. The production of the final version of the manuscript was due in large part to the efforts of Betty Lewis, Susan Langley and Kazue Kanno. Without their help and hard work, this project could not have been completed. List of Abbreviations Ac Adv Caus Clas Comp Dat Decl FQ Gen Hon Inf IV loc N Nmnlzr NPa NPc NPexp NPl NPr NPt Pass Pl Poss pro Pst Q Rel Sg T TTV TV accusative adverb causative classifier complementizer dative declarative floated quanitifer genitive honorific infinitive intransitive verb locative nominative nominalizer actor NP causer NP experiencer NP locative NP recipient NP theme NP passive plural possessor pronoun past question particle relative clause ender singular topic ditransitive verb transitive verb The Yale System of Romanization (' marks a tense consonant) Hangul Yale Basic Phonemic Realization Hangul Yale -Il 41  /P7 ■A wcy s /t/ /th/ /t'/ /s/ way M SS /s7 M H H •Ml — u ;* *  /e/ ch /Ch/ * cc /č'/ -i  /k/ /kh/ /k'/ V- kh kk m n 0 ng /m/ /n/ /n/ e I l/ •*- h i wi P ph /p/ /ph/ e  PP t th tt  tí XL W  =! TI  1 ) /h/ /i/ /wi/ 1 4 -H h Y -4 ey Basic Phonemic Realization /e/ /ye/ /we/ oy /œ/ ay / e / , /æ/ / y e / , /yæ/ yay / w e / , /Wæ/ /w/ e // ye // we /We/ a // ya wa // /wa/ T wu // TT yu /yu/ _1_ 0 -- yo 4 uy // /yo/ /1/ ***1*** The Problem The study of morphological case constitutes one of the oldest and most puzzling research problems in the study of language. From the time of Panini in ancient India and the Stoics in ancient Greece, the role of case affixes in sentence formation has represented an ongoing challenge for linguistic analysis. If there is one sentiment shared by all those who have examined this problem, it is that case has a very fundamental grammatical function, as evidenced by both its ubiquity in human language and by its association with such basic syntactic notions as subject and direct object. What still remains to be discovered after several centuries of inquiry is the precise nature of the information encoded by case categories and the motivation for this particular use of a grammar's resources. This book seeks to uncover the principles governing the use of case suffixes in Korean, a language spoken by over sixty million people on the Korean peninsula as well as in parts of China and the Soviet Union (not to mention immigrants to the United States and Canada). To the speaker of English who is exposed to Korean for the first time, at least two properties of sentence structure come immediately to the fore. First, the Korean verb is heavily agglutinating, frequently consisting of half a dozen or more morphemes. For example, the verb form used in a sentence such as 'The deposed king was caught ' has the structure depicted in (1) (Sohn 1987). (1) cap-hi-si-ess-sup-ni-ta cap =catch; -Ai =passive; -si =subject honorific, -ess =past; -sup =hearer honorific, -ni =indicative mood and -ta =declarative marker. Second, although Korean is a strictly 'head-final' language that favors SOV sentence patterns, the grammar allows relatively free ordering of a verb's arguments and adverbial modifiers. Hence the following two sentences are both acceptable. (2) a. Ai-ka pap-ul mek-ess-ta child-N food-Ac eat-Pst-Decl 'The child ate the food.' 2 CATEGORIES AND CASE b. Pap-ul ai-ka mek-ess-ta food-Ac child-N eat-Pst-Decl 'The child ate the food.' This 'free word order' option is made possible in part by the existence of the case particles whose precise properties constitute the central concern of this book. Before proceeding, it is necessary to comment briefly on the presentation of the example sentences used throughout this book. Following the common practice in linguistic work on Korean, I use the Yale system of romanization (Martin 1954, 1963), with a few minor modifications.1 Yale romanization establishes a virtual oneto-one correspondance between Roman letters (including some digraphs) and the symbols of Hangul, the Korean alphabet (see the table at the beginning of this book). For those unfamiliar with Korean, it is perhaps worth mentioning that because Hangul is a morphophonemic orthography, neither it nor the Yale system of romanization provides a straightforward phonetic record of Korean speech. The Korean verbs used in the vast majority of example sentences in this book are in the so-called 'plain' form, consisting of a root, a tense marker, (-ass , -ess or -ss for the past, 0 for the non-past), the 'processive mood' marker -(nu)n (for nonstative verbs in the non-past), and the declarative suffix -m , which can also be used without tense suffixes to indicate a verb's neutral or 'dictionary' form. Since tense and mood markers are irrelevant to the issues that concern me here, I will consistently ignore them in the glosses I give for the Korean examples. In order to further facilitiate the analysis of example sentences by nonspeakers of Korean, I will use English proper names as subjects and direct objects where feasible. In this, I follow a practice common in the literature on Korean. The Case Suffixes of Korean In the pages that follow I will be primarily concerned with the function and distribution of three case particles, the nominative suffix (-ka after stems ending in a vowel, -i elsewhere), the accusative (-lul after stems ending in a vowel, -ul elsewhere), and the genitive (-uy ). A fourth particle, the suffix -kkeyse, which replaces the nominative in certain patterns where the nominal refers to someone of high social status and which is often considered to be the 'high form' of the nominative ending, will not be considered here. The following sentences exemplify the use of Korean case suffixes with NPs bearing a variety of thematic roles. THE PROBLEM a. NOMINATIVE SUFIX MARKING AN ACTOR Kay-ka John-ul mwul-ess-ta dog-N John-Ac bite 'The dog bit John.' b. NOMINATIVE SUFFIX MARKING A PATIENT John-i mwul-li-ess-ta. John-N bite-Pass 'John was bitten.' C. NOMINATIVE SUFFIX MARKING A POSSESSOR John-i son-i aphu-ta. John-N hand-N hurt 'John's hand hurts.' a. ACCUSATIVE SUFFIX MARKING A PATIENT John-i chayk-ul ilk-ess-ta. John-N book-Ac read 'John read the book.' b. ACCUSATIVE SUFFIX MARKING A RECIPIENT Nay-ka John-ul chayk-ul cwu-ess-ta. I-N John-Ac book-Ac give 'I gave John a book.' C. ACCUSATIVE SUFFIX MARKING AN ACTOR John-i Sue-lul hakkyo-ey ka-key hay-ss-ta. John-N Sue-Ac school-to go-Comp do 'John let/made Sue go to school.' d. ACCUSATIVE SUFFIX MARKING A POSSESSOR Kay-ka Mary-lul son-ul mwul-ess-ta. dog-N Mary-Ac hand-Ac bite 'The dog bit Mary's hand. a. GENITIVE SUFFIX MARKING A POSSESSOR John-uy chayk John-Gen book 'John's book' 4 CATEGORIES AND CASE b. GENITIVE SUFIX MARKING AN ACTOR AND A PATIENT John-uy caki-uy piphan John-Gen self-Gen criticism 'John's criticism of himself In choosing to focus on these particles, I take the position that they are qualitiatively different from two other classes of postnominal morphemes in Korean: (a) the class of 'postpositions' that includes -eyse 'in, at, on', -eyuyhay(se) 'by', -(u)lo 'to, by means of, -hako 'with', and so on; and (b) the class of 'delimiters' (Yang 1972) that includes- 'only', -to 'also',-pafc&ey 'nothing but',-Mad 'even', and so on. It is relatively easy to distinguish between case markers and delimiters since the latter carry quantificational information and do not make the structural distinctions typically associated with case. In fact, as the following sentences show, the same delimiter can appear with either a subject or a direct object (for some general discussion, see I. Lee 1977). (4) a. -MAN 'only'USED WITH A SUBJECT John-man holangi-lul po-ass-ta. John-only tiger-Ac see 'Only John saw a tiger.' b. -MAN 'only' USED WITH A DIRECT OBJECT John-i holangi-man po-ass-ta. John-N tiger-only see 'John saw only a tiger.' (5) a. -TO 'also'USED WITH A SUBJECT John-to Sue-lul po-ass-ta. John-too Sue-Ac see 'John too saw Sue.' b. -TO 'also'USED WITH A DIRECT OBJECT John-i Sue-to po-ass-ta. John-N Sue-too see 'John saw Sue too.' The major difference between case markers and postpositions is categorial: whereas the former elements mark NPs, the latter head PPs. A simple distributional test distinguishes case markers from postpositions in Korean. As the following THE PROBLEM 5 sentences show, case suffixes differ from postpositions in not being able to precede other postnominal particles.2 (6) CASE MARKERS PRECEDING OTHER PARTICLES a. *-- John-ul mwul-ess-ta. dog-N-only John-Ac bite 'Only the dog bit John.' b. *Chayk-ul-un John-i ilk-ess-ta. book-Ac-T John-N read 'John read the BOOK.'  *John-uy-man cha John-Gen-only car 'John and only John's car' (7) POSTPOSITIONS PRECEDING OTHER PARTICLES a. Hakkyo-eyse-nun John-i kongpwu ha-n-ta. school -at -T John-N study do 'John is studying at school.' b. Cha-lo-man salam-i ka-n-ta. car-by-only man-N go 'The man travels only by car.' A second characteristic distinguishing case suffixes from postpositions is their optionality in at least certain patterns in the spoken language, given the approporiate discourse conditions and shared background knowledge (see, for example, Lee and Thompson 1987). (8) a. OPTIONAL NOMINATIVE SUFFIX Mas(-i) iss-ta. taste(-N) exist '(It) is tasty.' b. OPTIONAL ACCUSATIVE SUFFIX Haksayng-i chayk(-ul) ilk-ess-ta. student-N book(-Ac) read 'The student read a book.' 6 CATEGORIES AND CASE . OPTIONAL GENITIVE SUFFIX John(-uy) chayk John(-Gen) book 'John's book' In contrast, deletion of postpositions is generally not permitted (for some discussion, see Na 1986:119ff). (9) John-i hakkyo-*(eyse) kongpwu ha-n-ta. John-N school (at) study do 'John is studying at school.' (10) Chayk-i John-*(eyuyhayse) phal-li-iss-ta. book-N John (by) sell-Pass 'The book was sold by John.' The Status of the Dative Marker A long-standing problem in Korean grammar has to do with the status of the so-called 'dative' particle -eykey, which is sometimes classified as a postposition and sometimes as a case marker (see, for example, Hong 1985). Because the use of Korean -eykey extends well beyond the expression of goals and recipients, the term 'dative' is technically somewhat inappropriate. Nonetheless, for the sake of continuity and ease of exposition, I will use this term throughout this book to label any occurrence of the particle -eykey. Distributionally, -eykey patterns like a postposition rather than a case marker. Thus, we find sentences such as those in (1), in which -eykey may co-occur with a topic marker and a delimiter, respectively. (1) a. -EYKEY WITH A TOPIC MARKER John-eykey -nun nay-ka chayk-ul cwu-ess-ta. John -Dat -T I-N book-Ac give 'As for John, I gave a book to (him).' b. -EYKEY WITH A DELIMITER Kay-eykey-man John-i mwul-li-ess-ta. dog-Dat-only John-N bite-Pass 'John was bitten by only the dog.' THE PROBLEM 7 Moreover, as the following sentence shows, -eykey differs from case suffixes and resembles postpositions in being obligatory.3 (2) John-i Sue-*(eykey) malhay-ss-ta. John-N Sue(-Dat) speak 'John spoke to Sue.' Another difference between genuine case suffixes and -eykey is noted by Kuh (1987), who observes that the dative particle differs from the nominative and accusative markers in being able to occur inside a coordinate structure. In this, it resembles postpositions. (3) a. NOMINATIVE SUFFIX APPEARING OUTSIDE COORDINATE STRUCTURE [Joe-kwaMary]-ka yenay-lul ha-n-ta. Joe-andMary -N love-Ac do 'Joe and Mary are in love.' b. NOMINATIVE SUFFIX APPEARING INSIDE COORDINATE STRUCTURE *[Joe-ka -kwa Mary]-ka yenay-lul ha-n-ta. Joe-N -and Mary -N love-Ac do (4) a. ACCUSATIVE SUFFIX APPEARING OUTSIDE COORDINATE STRUCUTRE Chelswu-ka [emeni-wa apeci]-/w/ mosi-ess-ta. Chelswu-N mother-and father -Ac support 'Chelswu supported his mother and father.' b. ACCUSATIVE SUFFIX APPEARING INSIDE COORDINATE STRUCUTRE *Chelswu-ka [emeni-lul -wa apeci]-lul mosi-ess-ta. Chelswu-N mother--and father-Ac support (5) a. GENITIVE SUFFIX APPEARING OUTSIDE COORDINATE STRUCTURE [John-kwa Mary]-uy chayk John-and Mary-Gen book 'John and Mary's book' b. GENITIVE SUFFIX APPEARING INSIDE COORDINATE STRUCTURE *[John-uy -kwa Mary]-uy chayk John-Gen-and Mary -Gen book 8 CATEGORIES AND CASE (6) a. DATIVE PARTICLE APPEARING OUTSIDE COORDINATE STRUCTURE John-i [Mary-wa Sue]-eykey senmwul-ul cwu-ess-ta. John-N Mary-and Sue -Dat present-Ac give 'John gave a present to Mary and Sue.' b. DATIVE PARTICLE APEARING INSIDE COORDINATE STRUCTURE John-i [Mary-eykey -wa Sue]-eykey senmwul-ul cwu-ess-ta. John-N -Dat-and Sue -Dat present-Ac give Because of these facts, I will consider the dative particle to be a postposition rather than a case marker in Korean. Nonetheless, as I will endeavor to show in chapter 4, the dative has a special status among postpositions in Korean and interacts in an important way with case markers. The Status of the Topic Marker Falling between the system of case markers and the system of delimiters is the suffix -(n)un, which marks discourse notions such as 'topic' or 'contrast' (the latter notion being especially salient when the suffix is attached to a non-subject; see Ree 1969 and Na 1986:34ff for extensive discussion). (1) TOPIC MARKER ASSOCIATED WITH A SUBJECT John-un ttena-ss-ta. John-T leave 'John left.' (2) TOPIC MARKER ASSOCIATED WITH A DIRECT OBJECT Chayk-un Sue-ka cohaha-n-ta. book-T Sue-N like 'Sue likes BOOKS (not TV).' (3) TOPIC MARKER ASSOCIATED WITH A SUBJECT AND A DIRECT OBJECT Bruce-nun Ann-un cohaha-n-ta. (Na 1986:14) Bruce-T Ann-T like 'Bruce likes ANN (not Sue).' Since -(n)un is attached to an NP associated with a particular discourse function and does not distinguish among grammatical relations such as subject and direct object, it is quite unlike bona fide case markers. In this it resembles delimiters, which are THE PROBLEM 9 primarily concerned with the expression of pragmatic and discourse-based notions and do not even discriminate between subjects and direct objects (see (4) and (5) in the earlier section on case suffixes). These facts notwithstanding, the status of the topic suffix remains problematic. For example, -(n)un resembles case suffixes in not occurring inside coordinate structures and in not being able to precede delimiters (e.g. Ahn 1988). Moreover, as I will note in chapter 4, many (if not all) NPs bearing the topic marker occupy a particular structural position (informally, 'sister' of S). To the extent that the topic marker encodes structural information of this sort, its function is easier to reconcile with that of case suffixes, raising interesting questions about its place in the overall sentence-building system of Korean. I will return to this matter in chapter 4. Theoretical Objectives In proposing the theory of case marking that constitutes the central concern of this book, I will attempt to meet two objectives. First, I will try to show that each case suffix encodes a single corresponding linguistic relation, thereby satisfying what I will call the Uniqueness Criterion . Second, I will attempt to show that the relations encoded by the case markers of Korean are manifested at a single level of syntactic representation (surface structure), consistent with what I will call the Monostratality Criterion. The theoretical interest of the Uniqueness Criterion and the Monostratality Criterion stems from the fact that they make very strong claims about the nature of case marking and are hence very difficult to maintain. As an illustration of the type of challenges facing the Uniqueness Criterion, we need only consider two of the many patterns of accusative case marking found in Korean. (1) Nay-ka John ul/ chayk-ul cwu-ess-ta. I-N John-Ac book-Ac give 'I gave John the book.' (2) Mary-ka ku namwu-lul kaci-lul cal-lass-ta. -N the tree-Ac branch-Ac cut 'Mary cut the tree's branches.' Semantically, the four accusative-marked NPs in these structures have nothing in common: whereas chayk 'book' and kaci 'branch' denote themes or patients, John names a recipient and namwu 'tree' can have a possessive interpretation. Moreover, while the four NPs do share a structural property, it seems not to be relevant to case 10 CATEGORIES AND CASE marking. Thus, even though the accusative-marked NPs in (1) and (2) all occur within VP, other NPs appearing in this position do not receive the -ul suffix. For example, the NP John in sentence (3), which is virtually synonymous with (1), is one of the verb's subcategorized complements (and hence part of the VP), yet it appears with the dative postposition rather than the accusative case. (3) Nay-ka John-eykey chayk-ul cwu-ess-ta. I-N John-Dat book-Ac give 'I gave the book to John.' Comparable problems arise in the analysis of the nominative case. As the sentences in (4) and (5) (repeated from above) help show, this suffix is not associated with any single obvious syntactic or semantic property. (4) Kay-ka John-ul mwul-ess-ta. dog-N John-Ac bite 'The dog bit John.' (5) John-i son-i aphu-ta. John-N hand-N hurt 'John's hand hurts.' While the nominative in (4) marks an agentive subject, neither of its counterparts in (5) marks an agent and at most one marks a subject (on the assumption that there is only one subject per clause). This raises an obvious challenge for any analysis that seeks to satisify the Uniqueness Criterion. Challenges to the Monostratality Criterion are also easy to find, as the work cited in subsequent chapters will illustrate. These difficulties notwithstanding, a guiding principle of my analysis will be that there is a single level of syntactic representation in human language and that the properties encoded by Korean case can be characterized soley in terms of that level. Concluding Remarks I will end this chapter with a brief discussion of two methodological issues that have arisen in the course of my research. First, while I have tried to consider a broad and representative range of case marking phenomena in Korean, no work of this kind can be comprehensive and I have been forced to place some limits on the scope of my inquiry. The single most important phenomenon which I have chosen to THE PROBLEM 11 ignore has to do with the precise conditions under which case suffixes may be omitted and the possible semantic effects of their omission (e.g. Ahn 1988:11). This decision was motivated in large part by the fact, alluded to above, that a variety of nonsyntactic factors (pertaining to discourse and pragmatics) help regulate this phenomenon. Since the vast majority of this book focusses on the role of sentence structure (syntax) in the selection of case suffixes, this omission seemed appropriate. A second and more perplexing methodological problem has to do with the data upon which my analysis is based. Virtually all syntactic analysis done within a theoretical framework in the last two decades has relied for its data on sentences constructed by linguists rather than on a corpus of spontaneous utterances. I too have followed this practice on the assumption that its advantages (see, e.g., Newmeyer 1983:48ff) outweigh any disadvantages. Nonetheless, at least one special problem has arisen. For reasons that I do not understand, there is an unusual amount of disagreement among Korean-speaking linguists over the status of sentences involving a variety of grammatical phenomena (e.g. pronoun interpretation, quantifier scope, honorific agreement, case marking, and so on). This fact is widely recognized by people working in the field and is a frequent source of frustration for many. In an attempt to circumvent this problem, I have made a special effort to avoid controversial data. To begin, I have tried to draw as many examples as possible from independent sources, especially articles published in refereed journals and dissertations. Judgments from sentences that I had to construct were initially checked with two native speakers of Korean (both from the Kyengsondo region) who were graduate students at the University of Hawaii. The manuscript was subsequently read by an older speaker of Korean from the Seoul area (an instructor at the University of Hawaii), whose comments helped eliminate judgments that might be considered uncharacteristic of Korean speakers in general. Additional comments on the judgments in the first six chapters were provided by a recent Ph.D. graduate, also from the Seoul area. All of these individuals had training as linguists. Next, the manuscript was read by two anonymous referees, one of whom was a native speaker of Korean and a senior scholar in the field. The other, although not a native speaker, made use of a consultant who was. Their comments and criticisms were taken into account by including sentences questionable in a survey of six Korean-speaking linguists (four graduate students and two professors) at the University of Hawaii. With the exception of a small number of sentences inserted during the final revision process (and identified as such), the judgments used here reflect this exhaustive filtering process. While there is no such thing as irreproachable data, I believe that the judgments upon which I have relied are at least as dependable and representative as those used by linguists working on English and other European languages.