Two Types of Multiple Subject Constructions (MSCs) in Korean

Two Types of Multiple Subject Constructions (MSCs) in Korean Ji-Hye Kim Eunah Kim James Hye-Suk Yoon Baird University College College English Program Department of Linguistics Soongsil University Seoul, Korea Seoul National University Seoul, Korea University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign psychlg@gmail.com eakim2@gmail.com U.S.A. Abstract Although Multiple Subject Constructions in Korean have received significant attention in theoretical literature, few experimental investigations of various syntactic and semantic properties of these constructions have been conducted. In this study, we administered a Magnitude Estimation (ME) experiment in order to compare the acceptability of Multiple Subject and related Single Subject Constructions (MSCs vs. SSCs) and that of two types of MSCs (Possessor-type vs. Adjunct-type MSCs). The results showed that MSCs received lower acceptability than SSCs. In addition, the Adjunct-type MSCs received higher acceptability scores than the Possessor-type MSCs. Possible reasons for these results are discussed. 1 Introduction Korean has a type of sentence where more than one nominative-marked NP occurs in a single clause, as shown in (1). These sentences are called Multiple Nominative Constructions (MNCs) or Multiple Subject Constructions (MSCs): (1a) and (1c) show a sentence with two nom-marked NPs, and (1b) and (1d) show a sentence with more than two nom-marked NPs. (1) a. Cheli-ka kho-ka khu-ta Cheli-nom nose-nom is-big-decl ‘It is Cheli whose nose is big.’ b. Cheli-ka apeci-ka kho-ka Cheli-nom father-nom nose-nom khu-ta is-big-decl ‘It is Cheli whose father’s nose is big.’ c. Yelum-i maykcwu-ka coh-ta summer-nom beer-nom good-decl d. I ‘In summer, beer is good.’ cip-i kyewul-i this house-nom winter-nom ohwu-ka ttattusha-ta afternoon-nom is-warm- decl ‘This house is warm in winter afternoon.’ In the literature, MSCs have been classified according to certain interpretive relationships between the multiple nom-marked NPs. For example, the two NPs in (1a, b) stand in a Possessor-Possessee (Part-Whole relation) as indicated by the paraphrases (2a, b), whereas the first NP in (1c, d) functions as a scene-setting or temporal Adjunct with respect to which the event denoted by the second NP and its predicate is interpreted. (2) a. Cheli-ka/uy kho-ka khu-ta Cheli-nom/gen nose-nom is-big-decl ‘It is Cheli whose nose is big.’ b. Cheli-ka/uy apeci-ka/uy kho-ka Cheli-nom/gen father-nom/gen nose-nom khu-ta is-big-decl ‘It is Cheli whose father’s nose is big.’ c. Yelum-i/ey maykcwu-ka coh-ta summer-nom/gen beer-nom good-decl ‘In summer, beer is good.’ PACLIC 29 250 29th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation pages 250 - 258 Shanghai, China, October 30 - November 1, 2015 Copyright 2015 by Ji-Hye Kim, Eunah Kim and James Yoon d. I cip-i/eyse(-nun) kyewul-i/ey this house-nom/loc(-top) winter-nom/loc ohwu.sikan-i ttattusha-ta afternoon-nom is-warm- decl ‘This house is warm in winter afternoon.’ Based on the possible paraphrases, the first type of MSCs (cf. 1a, b) is called ‘Possessor-type MSCs’, while the second (cf. 1c, d) is dubbed ‘Adjunct- type MSCs’. Whether or not this classification is theoretically significant depends on a host of interrelated questions.1 In this paper, we follow the view on MSCs that Yoon (2004, 2007, 2009, 2015) endorsed, where MSCs are viewed as containing multiple Subjects, with the rightmost NP functioning as the Grammatical …

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