Contrastive Focus and Exempted Anaphor Caki in Korean

Language, Information and Computation(PACLIC 11),1996, 307-316 Contrastive Focus and Exempted Anaphor Caki in Korean* Chan Chung Dongseo University cchung@kowon.dongseo.ac.kr Abstract This paper explores the effect of constrastive focus on the binding possibilities of the Korean anaphor caki (`self). Contrastive focus on caki has a special effect in that it improves the acceptability of an atypical binding pattern. To account for this fact, I propose (i) that caki with contrastive focus needs to be treated as an exempted anaphor in terms of Pollard and Sag (1992, 1994), (ii) that the binding possibilities of the exempted caki is determined by a discourse constraint not by a syntactic constraint, and (iii) that the discourse constraint needs to include the familiarity presupposition in Heim (1982) and linear order. 1. Introduction It has been proposed that there are two types of constraints on anaphor binding in various languages. These are the syntactic and discourse (or pragmatic) constraints as proposed by Roberts (1987), Reinhart and Reuland (1991, 1993), Iida (1992), Pollard and Sag (1992, 1994), Baker (1994), and Xue, Pollard and Sag (1994), among others. The dichotomy between syntactic and discourse constraints seems to pertain in Korean too. The proposals of this paper are as follows. First, contrary to the general belief that the discourse constraint only affects long-distance anaphor binding (the case where an anaphor and its antecedent are not coarguments), the coargument binding possibilities of Korean caki (` self) are affected by the discourse constraint when contrastive focus is introduced. Second, the focused caki should be treated as an "exempted" anaphor in terms of Pollard and Sag (1992, 1994), i.e., the focused caki is exempted from a syntactic constraint, and this exemption allows it to be subject to a discourse constraint not to a syntactic constraint. Third, the syntactic constraint hinges on "syntactic prominence" of an antecedent. The syntactic prominence is determined by two factors concerning the anaphor and its antecedent: obliqueness and linear order. Fourth, discourse constraint hinges on "discourse prominence" of an antecedent. The discourse prominence is partially determined by linear order and a set of presuppositions (the familiarity presupposition in Heim (1982) and the presupposition of contrastive focus). 307 2. Caki-Binding in Korean The typical pattern of caki-binding constructions in Korean is the case where the subject is an antecedent, and the complement is caki. Sentences of this pattern are all acceptable regardless of the effect of linear order, as shown in (1): phyenci letter-A (1)� a. Nwui-ka� caki;-hantey phyenci-lul who-Nom self-to�letter-Acc `who; wrote a letter to himself?' b. Caldi-hanthey� self-to�nwuj-ka who-Nom ssess-ni? wrote-Q -lul� cc�ssess-ni? wrote-Q The sentences in (2) are the reverse of the typical pattern, i.e., caki is a subject, and its antecedent is a complement. The sentences in this atypical pattern are all unacceptable, regardless of the linear, order:1 (2) a. #Caldi-ka nwukvvui-hanthey� phyenci-lul� ssess-ni? self-Nom who-to� letter-Acc� wrote-Q Lit. 'To whom; did himself; write a letter?' b. #Nwukwurhantey�caldi-ka� phyenci-lul� ssess-ni? who-to� self-Nom� letter-Acc� wrote-Q As shown in (3), however, when caki or its antecedent is contrastively …

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