• Language and Information
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.107-126
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• 2005

The impersonal or psyc-predicate construction in Old English (=OE) poses a special challenge for most case theories in generative linguistics. In the OE impersonal construction, the experiencer argument is marked by dative, accusative, or nominative, whereas the theme is marked by nominative, genitive, or accusative, or by a PP. The combinations of possible cases for experiencer and theme are not random, bringing about daunting complexity for possible and impossible case frames. In this paper, I develop a conceptual semantic case theory (a la Jackendoff 1990, 1997, 2002; Yip, Maling, and Jackendoff 1987) to provide a unified account for the complicated case frames of the OE impersonal construction. In the conceptual semantic case theory, syntax and semantics have their own independent case assignment principles. For impersonal verbs in OE, I propose that UG leave an option of determining either syntactic or semantic case to lexical items. This proposal opens a new window for the OE impersonal construction, in that it naturally explains both possible and impossible case frames of the construction.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.31-52
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• 2002

This paper discusses the nature of the associate NP of English there constructions and attempts to capture the underlying similarity between the associate NP in English and the nominative object in Korean. Specifically, this paper is centered on the Case property of the associate NP. As the first step, previous proposals on the case of the associate NP are critically reviewed. Through the criticism, this paper opposes to Chomsky's (1995, 2000, 2001) analysis and to Lasnik's (1999) partitive Case analysis. In particular, convincing reason for the partitive Case assignment to the associate NP, other than other cases, cannot be found. This paper, therefore, adopts a recent claim of Boeckx (2000) that the Case under consideration is nominative by Agree. His idea is extended to the analysis of the presentational expletive construction. This paper draws a conclusion that the associate NP of the presentational expletive construction has accusative by Agree. This dichotomy (or split) is also observed in the nominative object construction in Korean. In the nominative object construction, the nominative object has nominative Case by Agree, whereas the regular object has accusative by Agree.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.1
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• pp.227-236
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• 1997

How do aphasics deal with the inflectional marking occurring in agglutinative languages like Korean? Korean speech repetition, comprehension and production were studied in 3 Broca's aphasic speakers of Korean. As experimental materials, 100 easy sentences were chosen in 1st grade Korean elementary school textbooks about reading writing and listening, and two pictures were made from each sentence. This study examines the use of three kinds of inflectional markings--past tense, nominative case, and accusative case. The analysis focuses on whether each inflectional marking was performed well or not in tasks such as repetition, comprehension and production. In addition, morphological errors concerned with each inflectional marking were analyzed in view of markedness. In general, the aphasic subjects showed a clear preservation of the morphological aspects of their native language. So the view of Broca's aphasics as agrammatical could not be strongly supported. It can be suggested that nominative case and accusative case are marked elements in Korean.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Language and Information Conference
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• 2002.02a
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• pp.404-410
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• 2002

No Abstract(See Full Text)

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Language and Information Conference
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• 1996.02a
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• pp.501-510
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• 1996

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.25-47
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• 2013

We conducted a psycholinguistic experiment in which participants orally produced sentences using a subject, a dative object, an accusative object, and a verb, provided just before the production. Results of the experiment are twofold: (i) Korean speakers basically produce the dative object earlier than the accusative one if the lengths of the objects are identical. (ii) If there is a length difference between the two objects, though, the longer one strongly tends to be placed before the shorter one, overriding the preference for 'dative-accusative' order. This 'long before short' preference which is generally observed in head-final languages appears to reflect the underlying tendency of the processing mechanism to put the heads of arguments and the predicate as closely as possible, thereby minimizing the cost for the processing of verb-argument structure.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.46
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• pp.355-377
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• 2017

Compared with other Altaic languages, Japanese and Korean languages are much closer to each other in grammar, and also to Ryukyuan language. According to the literature, Korean people are the first foreigners to record Ryukyuan language in a written form. In the passage "pronunciation interpreting the Ryukyuan Kingdom" from A Journey to the Eastern Countries (1512), Korean people perfectly preserved the pronunciation and meanings of words and sentences in Ryukyuan language in both Korean and Chinese languages, which is an extremely valuable material. Unfortunately, the later time period witnessed stagnation after a prominent beginning. In order to clarify the language family to which Korean belongs to, it is necessary to thoroughly compare Korean language with Japanese and Ryukyuan languages. Different from lexis, grammar underwent a slow and gradual process of variation. A comparative study of the three languages can provide strong evidence for defining the language family of Korean. Based on this rationale, this paper starts from the comparison of grammar elements of these three languages, aiming at case markers including the nominative case markers and the accusative case markers, and observes the procedures and functions diachronically. Based on the examples from the medieval data, it is found that the nominative case markers and the accusative case markers of these three languages vary from each other in forms and origins. Although they show some similarities in functions, it can be conjectured that there is no cognate for the three languages in the history.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.13-21
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• 2014

Late talkers are young children who are delayed in their expressive language skills despite normal nonverbal cognitive ability, adequate hearing and typical personality development. The purpose of this study is to investigate the sentence interpretation strategies used by Korean-speaking late talkers and age-matched normal children. Nine late talkers and nine normal children matched by age at 30-35months were participated in this study. 27 simple noun-noun-verb(NNV) sentences were generated by factorial combination of case-marker [nominal case-marker on the first noun and accusative on the second (C1), accusative on the first noun and nominative on the second (C2), and no case markers on both nouns (C0)], and animacy of the nouns [animate-inanimate(AI), inanimate-animate(IA), animate-animate(AA)]. All the children were asked to "act out" their interpretation of the given sentence. For each type of sentences the percentage of choices of the first noun as the agent was calculated. The results of group (2) ${\times}$ animacy(3) ${\times}$ case-marker(3) mixed ANOVA showed a significant main effect for 'animacy', 'case marker' and 'group(2) ${\times}$ case-marker (3)'. The late talkers relied on semantic (animacy) cues in their interpretation of the sentences, while the normal peers utilized both animacy and grammatical morpheme (case-marker) cues. The results indicated that the late-talkers' comprehension skills were also delayed.

• Language and Information
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.69-86
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• 2003

Contrary to the popular view that dative is idiosyncratic to verbs or particular theta roles, the distribution of dative is predictable from the distribution of other cases like nominative, accusative, instrumental, etc. That is, dative behaves like an unmarked or elsewhere choice for Non-Actor/Non-Patient (＝NANP) roles. This paper develops a theory of semantic structural case under the framework of conceptual semantics (Jackendoff 1983, 1990, 1997, 2002). In my proposed analysis, dative is structurally mapped onto NANP entities in the conceptual structure. Important consequences about other peripheral roles are discussed in section 5.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Language and Information Conference
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• 2002.02a
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• pp.123-134
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• 2002

This paper compares secondary predication constructions such as small clause complements, resultatives, and depictives in English and Korean. It argues that these two typologically different languages employ different modes of satisfying the Case Filter with regard to the Case of the subjects of small clauses. More specifically, it is argued that the subject of a small clause in English is Accusative Case-marked by the higher governing verb, while that ul ]Korean is Nominative Case-marked by default.