Constraints and Type Hierarchies for Korean Serial Verb Constructions - An Analytic Study within the HPSG Framework -

Constraints and Type Hierarchies for Korean Serial Verb Constructions - An Analytic Study within the HPSG Framework -* Sanghoun Song Dept. of Linguistics, Korea Univ. Anam-dong Seongbuk-Gu, Seoul, 136-701 Korea yooseon21@korea.ac.kr Abstract. This paper provides a fine-grained analysis of Korean serial verb constructions within the HPSG framework, and covers major descriptive characteristics of the phenomena. This paper discusses constraints on serial verb constructions in terms of four aspects; transitivity, argument structure, semantic properties, and complementizers. As a result, 17 constraints have been built, which support the type hierarchies for Korean serial verb constructions. This paper also presents a sample derivation on the basis of on the constraints and the type hierarchies. Keywords: serial verb, SVC, KSVC, HPSG, constraint, type hierarchy 1. Introduction Sohn (1999:380) offers a general explanation to Korean Serial Verb Constructions (henceforth KSVCs) as the following. (1) Serial predicate constructions consist of two or more predicate (flanked by a complementizer) which denote sequential actions or states that denote a single coextensive or extended event. From a cross-linguistic perspective, Serial Verb Constructions (hereafter SVCs) are well-known for productivity. Dixon (2006:338) claims that ‘a SVC is a clearly recognizable, robust grammatical constructions type which carries a considerable functional and semantic load.’ Since the same goes for Korean, SVCs frequently appear in Korean, too. For example, (2) are extracted from the Sejong POS-tagged Corpora,1 which take mek- ‘eat’ as V2 within the frame of ‘V1 + e + V2.’ (2) nanwu-e mek-ta ‘divide and eat’, kkulhi-e mek-ta ‘boil and eat’, mandul-e mek-ta ‘make and eat’, cap-a mek-ta ‘catch and eat’, cip-e mek-ta ‘pick up and eat’, ssip-e mek-ta ‘chew and eat’, kwu-e mek-ta ‘broil and eat’, ppal-a mek-ta ‘suck and eat’,… * I would like to return thanks to Prof. Jae-Woong Choe, who helped this study forward. I also want to appreciate the comments of anonymous readers. Due to the comments, I could elaborate this paper. Of course, all errors are my responsibility. Copyright 2007 by Sanghoun Song 1 I extracted all data from these resources (morpheme-tagged corpora which cover ten million eojeol). According to inquiry into the corpora, 27% of verbs marked with ‘vv’ can be used as members in SVCs. 440 The purpose of this study is to provide an overall picture of KSVCs within the framework of the unification-based grammar2, in particular, Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG)3. This paper makes a fine-grained analysis of constraints on KSVCs, and also proposes the type hierarchies for KSVCs within the HPSG framework. 2. Basic data The expression form that this paper deals with is like (3), and examples that Sohn (1999:380) provides are given in (4). (3) V1 + COMP[e/a, ko, eta] + V2 (4) a. Cihwan.i-nun ttek-ul son-ulo cip-e mek-ess-e. Cihwan-TOPIC cake-ACC hand-with pick up-INF eat-PST-INT ‘Cihwan (picked up and) ate the rice cake with his fingers.’ b. mulkoki-ka kom-eykey cap-hi-e mek-hi-ess-ta. fish-NOM bear-by catch-PAS-INF eat-PAS-PST-DC ‘The fish was (caught and) eaten by the bear.’ c. Milan.i-nun kapnag-ul an tul-ko ka-ss-e. Milan-TOPIC bag-ACC not hold-and go-PST-INT ‘Milan didn’t take her …

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