Irregular' Verbs in Korean Revisited

2013

The present study addresses the question of whether Korean irregular conjugations are really irregular. Traditional approaches are in agreement espousing the dichotomy between regulars and irregulars. What is problematic is that Korean conjugations conflict with our common sense that regulars are the majority and irregulars the minority. In reality, p, l.-irregulars overwhelmingly outnumber their regular counterparts, and t, s, h, l?-irregulars are statistically comparable to regulars. To address this problem, regulars vs. irregulars are identified as inconsistent in terms of constraint hierarchy, and constraint cloning with concomitant listed lexical items is proposed. One of my key findings is that a unitary schema Markedness irregular items >> Faithfulness >> Markedness regular items guarantees the rise of regulars vs. irregulars. Second, the size of the set of listed lexical items affects existing inflectional paradigms. Larger sets are likely to launch a paradigm in...

ABSTRACT The recent literature on paradigms has uncovered two forces that pull a morpheme,in different directions, often contravening a language's normal phonological processes and constraints. Paradigm Uniformity (PU) optimizes for the same stem/affixal shape through a range of morphosyntactic,contexts while Paradigmatic Contrast (PC) strives to maintain some minimal distance between,morphemes.,In this paper we apply these notions to the analysis of a much- discussed class of irregular verbs in Korean. 1. Background

2018

The life cycle of phonological rules or processes is a concept that has been familiar to phonologists since the work of Kruszewski and Baudouin de Courtenay in the last decades of the 19th century. Coming into being with the phonologization (Hyman 1976) of mechanically determined phonetic variation and being as a result entirely general at the outset, phonological processes subsequently acquire morphosyntactic conditioning or come to apply in increasingly restricted morphological domains (Bermúdez-Otero 2007:504, 2015:382-384). Eventually, they may disappear from the grammar altogether, leaving traces of their former existence only in isolated alternations between lexically listed items; this is the case, for example, for the residue of Verner’s Law in English (was/were, lose/forlorn).

27th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, …, 2008

Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 1995

In this paper we give a reasonably comprehensive presentation of Korean inflectional suffixes, whose status has been somewhat controversial in the generative literature. We argue that nominal and verbal inflectional morphemes not only show phonological constituency with their hosts but also show evidence of lexical attachment, within the theory of Lexical Phonology and Morphology , , ). Consequently, the inflectional suffixes should combine with their hosts in a lexical formation component, separate from the syntax proper.

Handout distributed at GLOW in Asia XII, 2019

First of all, I argue that the /Hi/ morpheme is univocally causative, and it apparent passive use results from "bundling" of Cause and Voice. Secondly, although multiple verbal suffixation is not highly productive in the present-day Seoul Korean, its reminiscence is found at some point of time or place, which is predicted by the "layered VP hypothesis".

2005

... b. Ilk-e man an po-ass-ta. read-e only not try-PAST-DECL 'Reading is the only thing I didn't try.'/'I tried everything but reading.' (only neg) ... Only a verbal gerund can be selected by a verb like oku (past tense oita) 'to put/to prepare for some future eventuality'. ...

Locality and Minimalism (Proceedings of the 9th Seoul International Conference on Generative Grammar), 2007

The isomorphism of the causative and passive suffix /Hi/ in Korean is well accommodated under the late Vocabulary Insertion hypothesis in Distributed Morphology together with an assumption that D is pair-Merged with v, resulting in absorption of the external argument in passive.

2015

In this paper, we investigate whether the Korean complex verb sicakhata (시작하다), 'start', has the similar properties as the Japanese syntactic complex verb with the same meaning, hajimeru (始める). In particular, we propose that although Korean complex verbs where V2 is sicakhata bear properties similar to the Japanese syntactic complex verb hajimeru in the sense that the three tests discussed below can be applied to V1 in Korean complex verbs, the verb sicakhata differs from hajimeru in terms of c-selection of the complement. While sicakhata takes a verbal noun phrase (VNP) as its complement, hajimeru takes a projection vP. 2. Complex Verbs in Japanese 2.1 Nature of Syntactic Complex Verbs In this section, we give an overview of the difference between syntactic complex verbs (SCV) and lexical complex verbs (LCV) in Japanese. According to Kageyama (1993) and Saito (2013), LCVs project a single maximal projection, vP, comprising a V1 and V2 complex. In contrast, SCVs have the form of their maximal projection (Saito 2013). Their syntactic structures are shown in (1). (1) a. LCVs b. SCVs vP vP2 v′ v2′ VP v VP2 v2 V vP1 V2 V1 V2 v1′ VP1 v1 V1 Kageyama (1993) argues that there are at least three ways to distinguish SCVs from LCVs by focusing on the differences in syntactic structure; these are shown in (2), (3), and (4). First, let us look at the test that substitutes soo su 'do so'; conjugated here as soo si. (2) Substitution with soo su 1 a. Taroo-ga ki-o kiri-taosi-ta. Taroo-NOM tree-ACC cut-topple-Past 'Taroo cut down the tree.' b.* Hanako-mo soo si-taosi-ta. Hanako-also so do-topple-Past 'Lit., Hanako also started to do so.' c. Taroo-ga naki-hajime-ta. Taroo-NOM cry-start-Past 'Taroo began to cry.' d. Hanako-mo soo si-hajime-ta. Hanako-also so do-start-Past 'Hanako also began to do so.' The phrases (2a) and (2b) show examples of LCVs, whereas (2c) and (2d) show SCVs. In the case of LCVs, as is seen in (2b), it is difficult to substitute soo su for V1 since V1 as an LCV does 263 not project vP, as shown in (1a). In contrast, SCVs can be replaced, as seen in (2d) because both V1 and V2 project vP, as is illustrated in (1b). Second, the substitution of Sino-Japanese verbs for V1 can be used to examine whether complex verbs are LCVs or SCVs. This test is applied to the whole set of words, rather than to parts of the set, as shown in (3). (3) Substitution with Sino-Japanese verbs a. Taroo-ga ki-o kiri-taosi-ta. Taroo-NOM tree-ACC cut-topple-Past 'Taroo cut down the tree.' b.* Taroo-ga ki-o bassai si-taosi-ta. T-NOM tree-ACC logging do-topple-Past 'Lit., Taroo cut down the tree.' c. Taroo-ga naki-hajime-ta. Taroo-NOM cry-start-Past 'Taroo began to cry.' d. Taroo-ga gookyuu si-hajime-ta. Taroo-NOM crying do-start-Past 'Taroo began to cry.' Phrases (3a) and (3b) are examples of LCVs. In Syoboo, Tokyo. Kim, Lucy K (2010) "Korean Honorific Agreement too Guides Null Argument Resolution: Evidence from an Offline Study."

Papers from the 27th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation, 505-511, Taipei, 2013

This paper examines some popular misanalyses in Korean morphology. For example, contrary to popular myth, the verbal ha- and the element -(nu)n- cannot be analyzed as a derivational affix and as a present tense marker, respectively. We will see that ha- is an independent word and that -(nu)n- is part of a portmanteau morph. In providing reasonable analyses of them, we will consider some computational implications of the misanalyses. It is really mysterious that such wrong analyses can become so popular in a scientific field of linguistics.