• Language and Information
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.93-111
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• 2010

This article is a description of the case variation in Guarani Language, which is a relatively, rarely studied language, and more so about case phenomena. Guarani has two remarkable facts about case. First, it has two overt accusative case markers, which are differentiated by the semantic notion of boundedness as in Jackendoff(1990, 1991). The existence of accusative case markers in Guarani is attested by their behavior in the typical transitive verb sentences, the ability to occur in ECM constructions, and the interpretation of specificity which is parallel to Turkish accusative case marker realization reported in Enc(1991). Second, accusative case forms occur in adjunct positions as well as object positions in Guarani. To capture these peculiar case phenomena, an account based on some recent Minimalist ideas about case checking from Legate(2008), Bowers(2010) is shown to be available.

• Language and Information
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.81-120
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• 1998

The case marking phenomenon in Korean is closely related to semantic entailment and should be studied as an interface between syntax and semantics. Assuming a direct mapping between syntactic realization and semantic information, this study investigates the role of the accusative marker ul/lul in Korean, and explores the semantic constraints working on the argument realization on the basis of proto-roles hypothesis. Specifically, I will study various types of case alternations in Korean and clarify the role of the accusative marker ul/lul, which manifests the distinction between direct object NPs and oblique NPs.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.6
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• pp.55-82
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• 1999

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the acoustic characteristics of the Korean accusative marker {-lil} which functions as a discourse marker in discourse. Generally, in written texts or read speeches, it is seldom omitted and it certainly seems to serve a grammatical function. But in ordinary discourse, speakers do not use it in many cases. That is, the environments speakers use {-lil} differ from those they do not. According to the semantic interpretations, {-lil} functions as a pragmatic factor and adds to the meaning of the object in an utterance. In this paper, by comparing the acoustic characteristics of the utterances that contain the marker {-lil} with those of utterances that do not, especially based on Korean Intonational Phonology, we will demonstrate that the Korean accusative marker {-lil} shows clearly the acoustic characteristics related to the pragmatic factors which reflect speakers' special intention.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.207-219
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• 2006

The present study was designed to investigate the comprehension of 'who' and 'what' questions in 2- to 3-year-old normal children. Sixty children were divided into 3 groups depending on their ages, i.e., age groups 2;6-2;11, 3;0-3:5, and 3;6-3;11. Three types of 'who' questions and 2 types of 'what' questions were generated depending on the attached case markers, i.e., who-nominative, who-accusative, who-dative, what-nominative, and what-accusative. The children watched 36 cuts of short video recordings. After watching each cut, they were asked to answer one of the 5 types of wh-questions. For the 'who-nominative' and 'what-accusative' questions, even the late 2-year-old children performed with over 70% of accuracy, and the late 3-year-old children performed with over 95% of accuracy. For the 'who-accusative' and 'who-dative' questions, the late 2-year olds exhibited difficulty in comprehension with performance accuracy of 41% and 33%, respectively. However, the late 3-year olds could comprehend those questions correctly with over 90% of accuracy. On the other hand, in answering 'what-nominative' questions, the children did not show rapid development across the age groups, as the mean performance accuracies of the 3 groups were 39%, 49%, and 59%, respectively. The results indicated that children's understanding of a wh- question is largely affected by the case of the interrogative.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.1-14
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• 2006

This study examined the spontaneous utterances of 20 1-2 year old Korean-Chinese children in Yanji, China by videotaping their spontaneous natural speech during interaction with his/her caregiver for 30 minutes on 4 separate occasions. Utterances were transcribed and coded by nominative and accusative case markers; then analyzed by grammatical functions. Results showed that the order and pattern of the acquisition of the case marking system of Korean-Chinese bilinguals differed from that of Korean monolinguals. Bilinguals used the accusative marker -lul earlier than the nominative marker-ka and overextended the accusative marker more often than the nominative marker. These results are consistent with those of Gathercole (in press) who found that bilingual children differed from monolinguals in mastering grammar.

• Language and Information
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.1-27
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• 2013

This paper presents a unified approach to multiple nominative and accusative constructions in Korean. We identify 16 semantic relations holding between two consecutive noun phrases (NPs) in multiple case marking constructions, and propose each semantic relation as a licensing condition on double case marking. We argue that the multiple case marking constructions are merely the sequences of double case marking, which are formed by dextrosinistrally sequencing the pairs of the same-case marked NPs of same or different type. Some appealing consequences of this proposal include a new comprehensive classification of the sequences of same-case NPs and a straightforward account of some long standing problems such as how the additional same-case NPs are licensed, and in what respects the multiple nominative marking and the multiple accusative marking are alike and different from each other.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Language and Information Conference
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• 2002.02a
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• pp.358-369
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• 2002

This paper presents a unified account of three kinds of constructions in which more than one NP can show up with the same case in simple sentences in Japanese and Korean: double subject, double nominative object and double accusative constructions. Noting that the second NPs in these constructions are functional or relational, this paper proposes to assign them the category and type different from the first NPs. We show the derivations of these three constructions in a parallel manner, and explain the asymmetries in extractability between possessor and possessed NPs in relativization.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.10
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• pp.74-82
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• 2022

The purpose of this paper is to provide a multi-modular account of double accusative constructions in Korean in the framework of Autolexical Grammar. The grammar views syntactic, semantic, and morphological structures of sentences as modules which are generated simultaneously and independently. Unlike syntactocentric theories, this paper analyzes semantic characteristics of double accusatives through function-argument (F/A) structure along with roles structure (RS) and information structure (IS). In F/A structure of double accusatives, the first accusative becomes an argument of a predicate, unlike the possessive, which is an argument of a relational noun. Furthermore, the first accusative of double accusatives takes the role of patient in RS, which allows it to become the subject of a passive sentence. On the other hand, the second accusative, which is originally the possessee, becomes a focal area in IS. Therefore, the purpose of double accusatives is twofold: one is to turn the possessor into an independent argument of a predicate which takes patient role, and the other is to turn the possessee into a focus. Such semantic characteristics of double accusatives can be expressed by means of multi-dimensional structures of F/A structure, RS, and IS of Autolexical Grammar, which allows an integrated account of the phenomenon.

• Language and Information
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.73-91
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• 2004

The nominative and accusative postpositions in Korean may intervene between the negative auxiliary verb ANH and its complement verb phrase. As Korean is an OV language, this means that 'verb + {nom, acc} + ANH' as well as the simpler concatenation 'verb + ANH' is possible. This fact, together with an overwhelming regularity of these postpositions' optionality in virtually all constructions, poses a problem for formal approaches to the syntax of the language. Working in a constraint-based grammatical framework shaped by such works as Sag and Wasow (1999) and Copestake (2002), we put forth type hierarchies for major_class, which represents verb inflection, and for pos, which has two immediate subtypes, i.e., htrp_pos and ord_pos. What we call the 'half transparency' of the case postpositions separates them from all the other lexical items in the language. The type htrp_pos is used to constrain one of the two newly proposed head_comp_rules, where a newly proposed feature HEAD2 of a phrase inherits its value from the HEAD feature of the head word. The COMPS list of the negative auxiliary ANH is seen as containing a single phrase whose HEAD is a kind of nominal clause and whose HEAD2 is something that is one of the three maximal types: acc, nom, and null.

• Language and Information
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.29-50
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• 2013

Multiple Nominative Constructions (MNCs) and Multiple Accusative Constructions (MACs) have been some of the hottest and interesting topics in Korean syntax. This paper took empirical approaches to these constructions and examined native speakers' grammaticality judgements of these constructions. Though there are lots of previous studies on these constructions, Ryu (2010, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c) recently tried to unify MNCs and MACs into Multiple Case Constructions (MCCs) and to classify them into 16 types based on the semantic relations. This paper includes experiments which were performed on these 16 different types. The experiments were designed following Johnson (2008); and the native speakers' intuition was measured with two scales, numerical estimates and line drawing, though the latter was adopted in the actual analyses. Through the experiment, the following facts were observed: (i) the grammaticality of the MCCs varies depending on their semantic relations, (ii) MNCs were more grammatical than MACs if both constructions occurred in similar environments, and (iii) the sentences in some MAC types had much lower grammaticality than those in the others, as Ryu (2013b, 2013c) mentioned.