This paper is concerned with locative alternation constructions in Korean within Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). Locative alternation is a phenomenon in which two internal arguments, Material and Location arguments, are altered without an...
This paper is concerned with locative alternation constructions in Korean within Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). Locative alternation is a phenomenon in which two internal arguments, Material and Location arguments, are altered without any changes of the verb formation.
The predicates in Korean which allow a locative alternation are adjectives, transitive verbs, and intransitive verbs. Among them, this paper focuses on the locative alternation constructions of transitive verbs in Korean.
To examine the syntactic-semantic features of the locative alternation constructions of transitive verbs in Korean, this paper specifically investigates the following items:
1. The common lexical features of the verb class allowing the locative alternation.
2. The meaning of two locative alternation constructions named a change of location-centered variant and a change of stative-centered variant.
3. The representation of the syntactic and semantic structures of the locative alternation verbs to simulate it by HPSG.
The findings are as follows:
1. Two variants of locative alternation constructions in Korean, one is the construction [NP-ga + NP-lul +NP-e] (a change of location-centered variant) and another is the construction [NP-ga + NP-lul +NP-lo] (a change of stative-centered variant), share the common semantic features which are the location change of a material argument into a locational argument and the change of state of a location argument affected by a material argument. But the former is to have a main event of a change of location of a material argument which is thematicized as a direct object, and the latter is to have a main event of a change of state of a locational argument which is thematicized as a direct object.
2. The argument of a material moving into a location and the argument of a container or a flat surface are represented on lexical entry of the verb class allowing the locative alternation.
3. The material feature value with the postposition lo of a change of location-centered variant triggers the locative alternation. By characterizing it the locative alternation lexical rule is proposed, which allows a change of stative- centered variant to be transformed into a change of location-centered variant.
The analysis proposed in this paper has three advantages. First, I could comprehensively approach the phenomenon on locational alternation by examining not only a single word but also a construction reflecting the usage of the word. Second, I suppose that the locative alternation construction share two same meanings, which are a change of state and a change of location, and that the constructions be identified by the lexical entries where the information on argument structures and the entailment relations of predicates are specified. Finally, it might be the first challenge in order to analyze the locative alternation construction based on HPSG.