• Language and Information
• /
• v.8 no.1
• /
• pp.77-100
• /
• 2004

This paper aims to account for direct combination of an entity type noun with the verb HA- 'do' (ex. piano-rul ha- 'piano-ACC do') in Korean, based on Generative Lexicon Theory (Pustejovsky, 1995). The verb HA-'do' coerces some entity type nouns (e.g., pap 'boiled rice') into event type ones, by virtue of the qualia of the nouns. Typically, a telic-based type coercion supplies individual predication to the HA- construction and an agentive-based type coercion evokes a stage-level interpretation. Type coercion has certain constraints on the choice of qualia. We further point out that qualia cannot be a warehouse of pragmatic information. Qualia are composed of necessary information to explain the lattice structure of lexical meaning and co-occurrence constraints, distinct from accidental information. Finally, we seriously consider co-composition as an alternative to type coercion for the crucial operation of type shift.