<OT> New Posting: ROA-871

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 871-0906

Optional case marking of the possessor in Korean

Jaehee Bak <jaehee.bak at utoronto.ca>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=871


Abstract:
This thesis examines one specific construction (the possessor
raising construction) as an example of "optional" case marking
in Korean from the perspective of optimality theory.  In
traditional theory, the main function of the case markers
is to assign/determine the grammatical role of the NP in
a clause.  The relationship between the case marker and
the grammatical role is mainly regarded as one-to-one mapping
such as subject-nominative case marker, object-accusative
case marker, possessor-genitive case marker etc.  When the
possessor is marked with the accusative case marker in Korean
(the so-called possessor raising construction), this one-to-one
mapping fails.  This unusual case marking is recognized
as being conditioned by 'inalienability', 'affectedness'
and 'entailment' (Kim 1999; Kang 1998; Cho 2002).  However,
I claim that the genitive case marker, the accusative case
marker, and the zero case marker can each optionally occur
with the possessor in the possessor raising construction,
even where the possessor satisfies these three conditions.
The key concept is that the interaction between the grammatical
role and information status of the NP provides the proper
form of case marking for the possessor.

Comments: 
Keywords: optionality, case marker, Korean, corpus study, aboutness topic
Areas: Syntax
Type: Masters Dissertation

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=871