An experimental investigation of event telicity in Korean

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In Korean, either specific quantity or definiteness of an object is recognized to be associated with event telicity. However, there has been no clear account on which property is a crucial factor for telicity. This study conducted an acceptability judgment experiment testing to identify what property of an object is associated with telicity of an event VP under the conditions which differ by the presence or absence of the time adverbials (-maney ‘in x time’ and -dongan ‘for x time’). 30 Korean native speakers were given target sentences with multiple choices to select, and the choices were made based on the potential interpretations of the sentences with different types of objects such as a bare noun or numeral classifier object. The target sentences also differ in the presence or absence of the time adverbials, i.e., -maney or -dongan adverbial. The results suggested that contrary to the current literature definiteness may not play a role in event telicity. As for specific quantity, it is not a necessary property of an object, but mere quantity of an object is found to be sufficient for a telic interpretation of an event. The results also showed that -dongan adverbials can have time span meaning not only with numeral classifier objects but also with bare noun objects.