On the Inherent (non-) Negativity of Negative Sensitive Items

황주현 한국언어정보학회 2010 언어와 정보 Vol.14 No.2

On the Inherent (non-) Negativity of Negative Sensitive Items. This paper explores the idea that Korean Negative Sensitive Items, which are better viewed as Negative Concord Items (NCIs) (Kim 2001, 2006, Watanabe 2004), should not be construed as inherently negative in spite of the fact that NCIs are able to appear as an elided form without the presence of a negative licenser. Among several diagnostics, which are designed to draw syntactic and semantic distinctions between traditional Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) and NCIs employed in previous studies, the ability of an NCI to appear as a fragment answer raises the question of whether the negativity of NCIs is inherent or not. Contrary to Kim (2001, 2006) and Watanabe (2004), who are in favor of the inherent negativity of NCIs, I claim that non-negative Korean NCIs still need contentful negation to be licensed, and therefore their ability to appear as a fragment answer should be considered as a matter of ellipsis, in support of Giannakidou (2000, 2006). The main argument will be strengthened by the fact that Korean NCIs do not express negative meaning themselves, and that double negation readings are not allowed no matter how many NCIs occur simultaneously.

Do we have true existential NPIs?: on the issue of indefinite-based NPI formation

황주현 한국중원언어학회 2014 언어학연구 Vol.0 No.33

The analysis of some of Korean NPIs seems to have caused much debate among professionals. This paper examines indefinite-based NPI formation with a question of whether Korean has existential NPIs identical to English any. Choi (2011) recently classifies two types of NPIs in terms of their quantificational force: one is an existential nwukwu, and the other is a universal amwu-to. I, however, argue that nwukwu itself does not exhibit its sensitivity to negation without overt NPI particles such as to or lato in negatives. I claim that the quantificational force Korean NPIs must be conditioned by thetypes of NPI particles with which the indefinite root is combined (Lee 1996, 1999, Lee et al. 2000, inter alia). More precisely, the particle to renders indefinites universal NPIs, as proposed by Choi, whereas lato apparently renders them existential NPIs. This paper also discusses that if the presence of NPI particles is not available, speakers try to ‘recover’ the type of the NPIs from the given contexts, which is regarded as pragmatic recoverability.

The Dual Nature of N-pakkey

황주현 한국중원언어학회 2018 언어학연구 Vol.0 No.47

The purpose of this study is to question the properties of N-pakkey ‘only N’ in Korean as an NPI. In order to accomplish this research purpose, this paper revisits the licensing properties of N-pakkey, which do not belong to those of typical NPIs. This paper argues that the status of N-pakkey as an NPI is not definitive unlike other types of NPIs in Korean (cf. Chung, 1993; Yeom, 2015) and suggests that the NPI status of N-pakkey is not conclusive but rather in the transitional status between an NPI and a non-PI. In terms of licensing, N-pakkey occurs in more restricted antiveridical contexts as an NPI, whereas N-pakkey also occurs in affirmatives as a non-PI. This paper argues that the apparent non-PI status of N-pakkey is pragmatically determined when the interpretation of N-pakkey introduces a pragmatically possible alternative set in discourse, which leads to a contrastive interpretation of N-pakkey (Lee, 1999, 2003, 2006). This idea is supported by the fact that the topic marker -nun or the additive particle -to ‘even’ allows N-pakkey to appear in affirmatives.

use of calcium as an interconnecting Layer in soluble tandem organic Light emitting diodes

황주현 한국고분자학회 2010 한국고분자학회 학술대회 연구논문 초록집 Vol.2010 No.10

Licensing of Negative Polarity Items within an Extended Minimal Domain of the Extended Projection of [+NEG]

황주현 한국언어학회 2009 언어 Vol.34 No.2

This paper explores the idea that Korean Negative Polarity Items (NPIs hereafter) are licensed within an extended minimal domain of the extended projection of the head containing [+NEG], where the head with [+NEG] is part of the extended projection of verbal negation (Grimshaw 1991). This idea is expected to account for the following two properties exhibited by Korean NPI licensing, which have not been satisfactorily captured in terms of the well-known clause-boundedness: i) Korean NPIs are licensed outside the scope of negation, and ii) only direct arguments or adjuncts of a negative predicate are subject to NPI licensing.

Typology of NPIs in Korean: Variation and Licensing

황주현 서울대학교 언어교육원 2013 語學硏究 Vol.49 No.3

This paper examines typology of Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) in Korean, focusing on their distributional and licensing properties. This paper first classifies various types of Korean NPIs in terms of their distributional properties, and then discusses licensing environments of each type of NPIs in terms of nonveridicality, extensively discussed in many previous studies (Zwarts 1995, Giannakidou 1998, 2002, 2011a, b, C. Lee 1996, 1999, C. Lee et al. 2000, inter alia). Although licensing environments of each type of NPIs are not uniform, licensing environments of morphologically complex NPIs appear to be more restricted antiveridical, whereas other types of NPIs are widely distributed in nonveridical contexts. This paper further examines a context that does not contain an apparent nonveridical licenser but permit an NPI, and argues that a few types of NPIs secondarily adopt a mechanism of ‘rescuing’ (Giannakidou 2006) that is pragmatically conditioned. This paper examines typology of Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) in Korean, focusing on their distributional and licensing properties. This paper first classifies various types of Korean NPIs in terms of their distributional properties, and then discusses licensing environments of each type of NPIs in terms of nonveridicality, extensively discussed in many previous studies (Zwarts 1995, Giannakidou 1998, 2002, 2011a, b, C. Lee 1996, 1999, C. Lee et al. 2000, inter alia). Although licensing environments of each type of NPIs are not uniform, licensing environments of morphologically complex NPIs appear to be more restricted antiveridical, whereas other types of NPIs are widely distributed in nonveridical contexts. This paper further examines a context that does not contain an apparent nonveridical licenser but permit an NPI, and argues that a few types of NPIs secondarily adopt a mechanism of ‘rescuing’ (Giannakidou 2006) that is pragmatically conditioned.

Intervention Constraint and Licensing of Negative Polarity Items

황주현 한국언어학회 2010 언어 Vol.35 No.4

Hwang, Juhyeon. 2010. Intervention Constraint and Licensing of Negative Polarity Items. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 35-4, 1173-1190. This paper revisits the Generalized Immediate Scope Constraint (GISC) (Sells and Kim 2006) in Korean, which has been known as one of the Negative Polarity Item (NPI) licensing constraints holding at LF, and argues that the GISC needs to be restated as a more general Intervention Constraint strictly holding at S-structure. This line of reasoning will be supported by the fact that licensing of Korean NPIs is not constrained by the scope relation between an NPI and its licenser as the GISC defines, but rather constrained by the surface word order between them. The restrictions on the multiple occurrences of an NPI will be given as a theoretical consequence brought by the application of the Intervention Constraint. (Sungkyunkwan University)

Semantic Function of Three Forms of Negation in Korean

황주현 한국언어학회 2009 언어 Vol.34 No.1

This paper claims that all three forms of overtly negated predicates in Korean, which have been traditionally construed as a NPI licenser, denote an anti-morphic function homogeneously, regardless of their different scope-taking abilities. There has been a line of reasoning (Chung 1993, 1997, Nam 1994) arguing that the semantic properties of the domain where NPIs are licensed characterize licensing environments of Korean NPIs. Chung (1997), for example, argues that overtly negated predicates in Korean do not always denote the same semantic function, and therefore the semantic licensing environments of NPIs in Korean should be more narrowly distributed, unlike Nam (1994) claiming that overtly negated predicates in Korean denote the same anti-morphic function. In support of Nam (1994), I argue in this paper that all forms of overtly negated predicates in Korean invariably denote an anti-morphic function, showing that the different scope-taking behavior of the different forms of negation has nothing to do with denoting different semantic functions.

Idioms in Korean Ditransitive Constructions

황주현 한국중원언어학회 2015 언어학연구 Vol.0 No.37

This paper discusses a so-called asymmetric theory of idiom formation in Korean ditransitive constructions, focusing on its problems. The asymmetric approach, in particular proposed by Kim (2012), claims that the prepositional dative (PD) and the double object construction (DOC) are syntactically different, and that this difference is able to predict logically possible/impossible idiom patterns in Korean ditransitives. This paper, however, argues that idiom formation in ditransitives is better captured in a verb-sensitive approach (Rappaport and Levin, 2008; Levin, 2009, 2010) claiming that a verb’s meaning determines its own argument realization. This idea is supported by fixed argument idioms whose types are fixed theme and fixed goal idioms. It appears that fixed goal idioms only involve send-type verbs associating caused motion and caused possession, whereas fixed theme idioms involve give-type verbs associating caused possession. This study also concludes with the suggestion that the classification of give-type and send-type verbs in Korean needs to be more refined: the verb tencita ‘throw’, for example, is expected to be associated with the caused motion event just like ‘send’ but appears to prefer the theme-goal-V order.

Positional Restrictions on Multiple NPIs in Korean

황주현 한국중원언어학회 2016 언어학연구 Vol.0 No.41

The primary purpose of this paper is to investigate word order restrictions on multiple NPIs in Korean, focusing on the interactions among N-pakkey ‘exclusive only N’, amwu-(N)-to ‘any N’ and han-(N)-to ‘even one N’. While questioning grammaticality judgments established by previous studies (Kuno and Whitman 2004, Sells 2006), this paper first represents a new set of data revealing that N-pakkey is required to occupy the leftmost position of a sentence when cooccuring with to-NPIs, whereas the two different forms of to-NPIs are unconstrained. Following Horvath (2007)’s Exhaustive Identification (EI) operator that triggers focus movement into a sentence-initial position, this paper suggests that the exceptive meaning of N-pakkey introduces the EI operator that makes the non-leftmost N-pakkey move into the sentence-initial position, which salvages the grammaticality of a sentence. This paper further suggests that the word order restrictions on multiple NPIs accord with an intervention effect on NPI licensing (Linebarger 1987) where the EI-associated N-pakkey plays an intervening role in the interpretation of to-NPIs.