Language and Information (한국언어정보학회지:언어와정보)
- Volume 13 Issue 2
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- Pages.1-27
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- 2009
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- 1226-7430(pISSN)
Contrastive Focus and Variable Case Marking: A Comparison between Subjects and Objects
Abstract
This paper examines the (a)symmetries in the realization of focused subjects and objects in Korean. Through rating experiments, we demonstrate that native speakers' judgments of acceptability of sentences containing case-marked or case-ellipsed subjects and objects are sensitive to the contrastiveness strength and the discourse accessibility of focused arguments. However, our experiments also show that focused subjects exhibit stronger preference for explicit case marking over case ellipsis and that contrastiveness strength and discourse accessibility have weaker influence on the case marking and ellipsis of focused subjects compared to focused objects. We propose an account of variable case marking that is capable of subsuming both the similarities and differences between focused subjects and objects under the universal theory of markedness. In particular, it is shown that the similarities between focused subjects and objects are predicted by the proposed account based on the contrastiveness strength and the discourse accessibility of focused arguments and that the differences between focused subjects and objects follow naturally from the relative markedness of focus as subjects.
Keywords
- case marking;
- case ellipsis;
- focus types;
- contrastive focus;
- accessibility contrastiveness strength;
- markedness