• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Language and Information Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.57-66
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• 2007

Case markers in Korean are omissible in colloquial speech. Previous discourse studies of Caseless bare NPs in Korean show that the information structure of zero Nominative not only differs from that of overt Nominative but it also differs from that of zero Accusative in many respects. This paper aims to provide a basis for these semantic/pragmatic properties of Caseless NPs through the syntactic difference between bare subjects and bare objects: namely, the former are left-dislocated NPs, whereas the latter form complex predicates with the subcategorizing verbs. Our analysis will account for the facts that (i) the distribution of bare subject NPs are more restricted than that of bare object NPs; (ii) bare subject NPs must be specific or topical; (iii) Acc-marked NPs in canonical position tend to be focalized.

• Language and Information
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.83-104
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• 2002

I argue that Definiteness Effect (DE) should include Indefiniteness Restriction (IR) as well as Definiteness Restriction (DR). DR is exhibited by existential constructions, predicate nominals, inalienable possession constructions, and verbs with semantic features like 〔((CAUSE TO) COME TO) EXIST〕. IR is caused by some existence presupposition of aspectual adverbs, aspectual verbs, repetitives, and topic markers. The environments for DR and IR determine the (in)definiteness of Korean bare noun phrases which otherwise can be used either way. The neutralization of DR is also induced by focus which imposes a certain amount of structure on the event quantification. Van der Sandt's (1992) Presuppositions-as- Anaphora-Theory is effectively used to account for those examples from DR, ID, and the neutralization of BR.