On the Inchoative -eci- with Verbs in Korean

Dongsik Lim 사단법인 한국언어학회 2021 언어학 Vol.- No.90

This paper argues that -eci- with a verbal root is neither an anticausative morpheme nor a passive morpheme, but the head of a directed motion construction. Based on previous works, such as Zubizarreta and Oh (2007), Lim and Zubizarreta (2012), Lim (2016), Kang and Zubizarreta (2017), among others, but slightly diverging from them, this paper further argues that -eci- takes a predication relation headed by the r(elator) (Den Dikken 2006), where the verbal root appears as a result state, and the DMC headed by -eci- should involve a causal chain with the result state denoted by the verval root. This explains why -eci- is not compatible with adverbs such as kyeysok ‘continuously’ and cecello ‘by itself’, and why -eci- sometimes carries the possibility modal meaning.

Concessive Conditionals without even: in Contrast with Korean Counterparts

Dongsik Lim 한국언어과학회 2020 한국언어과학회 학술대회 Vol.2020 No.10

In English, the meaning of concessivity in conditionals is usually expressed by using the focus particle even with the antecedent of the conditional which is headed by if, as shown in (1): (1) Even if John is a doctor, I will not trust him. Guerzoni and Lim (2007) claim that even in conditionals, which is responsible for concessivity, is the same even that we can find in examples like (2): that is, even in even if is a focus particle (Rooth 1985, a.o.) which is associated with a focus and introduces projective content (Tonhauser et al. 2013, a.o.) which I will call presuppositions just for simplicity. Furthermore, Guerzoni and Lim show that we can explain the difference in meaning between two types of concessive conditionals, standing-if (3a) and introduced-if (3b) (which are distinguished with respect to whether the factivity of the consequent is guaranteed or not, as indicated below: see Pollock 1976 and Bennett 1982, a.o.) in a compositional way, depending on the position of focus associated with even. (2) Even [John]f can lift the table. (3) a. Standing-if: Even if John drank [one ounce]f of whiskey, she would fire him. ~> If John did not drink whiskey at all she would not fire him. b. Introduced-if: Even if the bridge were standing I wouldn’t cross. ~> I wouldn’t cross the bridge, anyway. Based on this, in this presentation I first show that, in English, there are conditionals which express concessivity even though there is no overt even. To do so, I use Sejong English-Korean Parallel Corpus, from which I find some examples of English conditionals whose Korean counterparts can be understood as expressing concessivity, as in (4), given that Korean tends to express concessivity more explicitly: (4) a. If not considered to be good manners in Korea, individualism is frowned upon in Russia as well. b. 한국처럼 심하지는 않지만 러시아에도 개인주의가 좋지 않은 시선을 받는다. (RB0421) After showing that in English there are concessive conditionals without even, I try to generalize the notion of concessivity in conditionals in terms of the unlikelihood of the causal relation between the antecedent and the consequent (cf. see König 1986), and explain this kind of conditionals in a compositional way by assuming a covert focus particle corresponding to overt even (see also Heim 1984 and Guerzoni 2004, where minimizers such as lift a finger are analyzed in terms of covert even).

의문문에서 나타나는 ‘-더-’의 시점 이동: 표준적인 지표어와 의문문의 의미론을 중심으로

임동식(Lim, Dongsik) 한국언어학회 2021 언어 Vol.46 No.4

This paper addresses the so-called perspective shift of Korean direct perceptive evidential -te- in questions (Lim 2010, a.o.): the direct perceptive evidence implicated by -te- is interpreted from the speaker’s perspective in declaratives, and from the addressee’s perspective in interrogatives. To account for this, this paper argues that -te- is a function which takes a proposition as its argument and returns a character (Kaplan 1989), and this character again becomes a proposition in a context on behalf of declarative endings. By assuming this, as well as pointwise functional application (PFA: Heim and von Fintel 2001), it is shown that the perspective shift of -te- in interrogatives can be explained within the standard semantics of interrogatives (Hamblin 1973, a.o.) and of indexicals (Kaplan 1989, a.o.) After doing so, this paper briefly addresses Yang’s (2020) criticism on Lim (2010), which this paper is based on.

Korean deadjectival inchoatives and measure phrases: a compositional study

Lim, Dongsik Korean Society for Language and Information 2016 언어와 정보 Vol.20 No.1

Korean adjectives in general cannot combine with measure phrases (MP), but MPs are compatible with adjectives when they appear with the inchoative morpheme -(e)ci. In this case, MPs can only denote the difference between two states along the dimension denoted by the root adjective. To account for this, this paper proposes that i) -(e)ci is a spell-out of V in the directed motion construction which takes an abstract path argument, like become, and ii) this path argument contains a comparative morpheme. By assuming this we can explain why MPs appear with -(e)ci, as well as other interesting phenomena such as variable telicity in deadjectival verbs with -(e)ci.

Situation semantics and evidentiality

Dongsik Lim(임동식) 사단법인 한국언어학회 2018 한국언어학회 학술대회지 Vol.2018 No.6

What the Partitive Reading of Floating Quantifiers in Korean Tells Us about the Korean Extended DP Structure

Dongsik Lim 사단법인 한국언어학회 2015 언어학 Vol.0 No.73

This paper aims to present a DP structure of Korean, based on Korean Floating Quantifiers (FQ). As pointed out by Park (2008), among many others, there are various types of FQ constructions in Korean, which have already received much attention. Based on previous studies, such as Schwarzschild (2006) and Park (2008), this paper tries to analyze the following two points, which we believe have not been discussed in detail. First, some measure phrases (MPs) can also appear in FQ constructions, but other MPs cannot, and second, only some types of FQ constructions can receive the partitive interpretation. This paper shows that the distribution of MPs is closely related to Schwarzschild’s (2006) monotonicity constraint on MPs, and analyzes the distribution as well as the interpretation of MPs and classifier phrases in FQ constructions in parallel with Schwarzschild (2006) and Park (2008).

A Note on Korean Evidential -te-

Dongsik Lim 사단법인 한국언어학회 2013 언어학 Vol.0 No.66

Korean direct perceptive evidential -te- is said to introduce two puzzles. First, when it is used without any tense marker, the sentence hosting it is interpreted as past. Second, when it is used with so-called tense markers, such as past -ess- and future -keyss-, -te- introduces the implication similar to what is introduced by inferential evidentials in other languages. In this paper I first show that this apparent puzzle is misleading, by presenting some counterexamples which do not fit to what the ‘puzzle’ says. Then I propose a new lexical entry for -te-, according to which -te- introduces the presupposition that the speaker acquired some direct perceptive evidence before the utterance time, and then infers the prejacent from this direct perceptive evidence. I also show that this analysis accounts for the data in the previous puzzle as well as other data presented in this paper. Finally I point out several problems of previous analyses which are based on this ‘misguided’ puzzle.

Inchoative ci- without change of state verbs: causation at the interface

Dongsik Lim(임동식) 사단법인 한국언어학회 2017 한국언어학회 학술대회지 Vol.2017 No.6

On the Interaction between Lexical Aspects of Predicates and Evidentiality

Dongsik Lim(임동식) 사단법인 한국언어학회 2014 언어학 Vol.0 No.70

The aim of this paper is twofold: to propose a novel analysis of Korean direct perceptive evidential -te- based on the situation semantics (Barwise and Perry 1983), and to illustrate how this proposal actually works, focusing on the cases where the lexical aspect of predicates and the semantics of -teinteract. To achieve these goals, first, I adopt and revise Kalsang et al.’s (2013) analysis of Tibetan direct perceptive evidentials, and propose that, for -te- to be felicitously used, the situation where the speaker acquires perceptive evidence should be the same as, or be included by, the situation where the proposition is true. Next, I show that, with this proposal, we can account for some instances of the interaction between the lexical aspect of predicates and the semantics of -te-, including the case of the verb ip-, and the case where aspectually different predicates under the same situation show different behaviors regarding -te- and other aspectual morphemes.

Korean deadjectival inchoatives and measure phrases: a compositional study

( Dongsik Lim ) 한국언어정보학회 2016 언어와 정보 Vol.20 No.1

Korean adjectives in general cannot combine with measure phrases (MP), but MPs are compatible with adjectives when they appear with the inchoative morpheme -(e)ci. In this case, MPs can only denote the difference between two states along the dimension denoted by the root adjective. To account for this, this paper proposes that i) -(e)ci is a spell-out of V in the directed motion construction which takes an abstract path argument, like become, and ii) this path argument contains a comparative morpheme. By assuming this we can explain why MPs appear with -(e)ci, as well as other interesting phenomena such as variable telicity in deadjectival verbs with -(e)ci.