• 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.

• 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.

• 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.11 no.1
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• pp.53-76
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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.

• 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.

• 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.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.338-343
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• 2020

This paper provides a semantic account of double nominative constructions in the framework of Autolexical Grammar, which views syntax, semantics, morphology, and other language components as modules generated simultaneously and independently. Some syntactocentric models in the past analyzed double nominatives as a result of possessor raising, ECM or incorporation. This paper provides a semantic explication of double nominatives through function-argument (F/A) structure of internal possession and external possession. The possessum used in double nominatives is a relational noun which takes a possessor as its argument in F/A structure. If the possessor directly combines with the relational noun, then internal possession is generated. If the possessor is a gap in F/A structure, then the argument which is coreferential with the gap combines later with the predicate, resulting in external possession, in which the possessor is in the nominative case. Unlike internal possession, the F/A structure of external possession structurally shows that the sentence is predicated of the possessor.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.35-51
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• 2000

The goal of this paper is to examine how Case Drop (the drop of the case markers) correlates with the prosodic structure in Korean. On the assumption that intervocalic Lenis Stop Voicing (LSV) applies within the domain of the Accentual Phrase (AP), voicing analyses are performed on intervocalic lenis stop consonants before and after Case Drop. A statistical analysis reveals that the drop of the nominative and accusative case markers significantly alter the AP structure. Pitch values will then be extracted to verify that such changes in the AP structure conform to the pitch properties proposed for the AP (Jun 1993, 1998). The results show that the AP structure suggested by LSV does not always coincide with that imposed by the pitch properties.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.59-72
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• 2006

In the present study, we investigated the grammaticality judgement skills of children with developmental language impairments. The participants included 20 children with language impairments of ages ranging from 7 to 9 years and of IQ's ranging from 71 to 84, and 40 normally developing children. Twenty normal children were matched with the language impaired children in their language ages and the other 20 normal children were matched with the language impaired children in their chronological ages. The children were asked to judge the grammatical correctness of 48 short sentences, half of which were ungrammatical sentences containing incorrect case-markers and the other half were grammatically correct sentences. Four types of case-markers including nominative "i/ga", accusative "ul/lul", locative "e," and instrumental "ro" were systematically changed to generate the ungrammatical sentences. The language impaired children performed worse than both groups of normally developing children in detecting the ungrammatical sentences and in correcting the case-markers of those sentences. In detecting the errors of ungrammatical sentences, the language impaired children exhibited variable performances across the different case-markers.

• Language and Information
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.163-178
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• 2003

Korean displays an interesting construction (so-called possessor agreement construction), where a possessor nominal and its possessum nominal are marked with the same case as shown in the example Mary-ka John-ul tali-lul cha-ss-ta ‘Mary kicked John's leg’ More interestingly, not all possessors in possessive construction are marked the same case with its possessum as shorn in the ungrammatical sentence ＊Mary-ka John-ul cha-lul cha-ss-ta ‘Mary kicked John's car’. Hence, a simple but non-trivial question arises: In what situation are both possessors and possessums marked with the same case\ulcorner In this paper, we advance three claims: (i) Possessor agreement appears in the situation where entailment is satisfied as follows: If Mary kicked John's leg, it entails that Mary kicked John, (ii) entailment in possessor agreement results from theta-feature sharing; specifically, the whole DP and the possessor DP share the same theta role, and (iii) Possessor nominals are marked with accusative (or nominative) case when they are assigned internal theta role from the predicate directly.