The major goal of this paper is to provide a proper analysis of three representative readings from the Dative-Nominative construction with the copula-like predicate iss in Korean, such as agentive-locative, theme-locative and possessive readings. Base...
The major goal of this paper is to provide a proper analysis of three representative readings from the Dative-Nominative construction with the copula-like predicate iss in Korean, such as agentive-locative, theme-locative and possessive readings. Based on Harleys (2002) decompositional analysis, this paper claims that iss is not an independent lexeme but something decomposable into two functional categories, namely BE and P<SUB>HAVE</SUB> or P<SUB>LOC</SUB>. The essential idea underlying this claim is that the three different readings from the construction are attributed to different syntactic structures. In particular, it is suggested that the type of reading from a given Dative-Nomiative sentence is determined by the type of the selected abstract preposition as well as the availability of VoiceP typically specified for agentivity.