Clitic Analyses of Korean Little Words

Clitic Analyses of Korean "Little Words" Hee-Rahk Chae Dept. of Linguistics, Hankuk Univ. of Foreign Studies Mohyun-myun, Yongin-gun, Kyunggi 449-791, Korea hrchae@maincc. hufs. ac. kr ABSTRACT In Korean, there are many little words that can best be analyzed as clitics: The copula i- and the adjectival ha-, as well as some nominal and verbal particles. Among others, the clitic analysis of adjectival ha- leads to a unified account of light predicate constructions. I. Introduction "Clitics" are grammatical units which have some properties of inflectional morphology and some of independent words. The existence of clitics is widely attested in the languages of the world ([1]). Even though Korean has many "little words" which show clitic-like properties, not enough attention has been paid to the possibility that these units might actually be clitics. They have usually been analyzed as various types of simple affixes. However, it is clear that they have some properties of independent words, at least from a syntactic point of view. In this paper, I will show that there are many little words in Korean that should be analyzed as clitics: some (nominal and verbal) particles, the copula i- ( ` to be'), the "adjectival" ha- ( ` to do/be'), and others. We will focus on the analysis of adjectival ha-. The existence of these clitics will also lead to the conclusion that we need to distinguish between "Phonological Words" and "Syntactic Words." II. Clitics: Theoretical Background Clitics are those elements which have some properties of affixes and words. However, they are different from affixes and words. [2] and [3] provide some criteria for distinguishing clitics from inflectional affixes, and [4] provides some tests/criteria to distinguish clitics from (independent) words. When contrasted with independent words, clitics have some of the properties of affixes (especially inflectional affixes), and when contrasted with clitics, words have some of the properties of syntactic phrases. III. Clitic Analyses of "Particles" As for Korean nominal particles, [5] initiates the argument that Nom/Acc 97 case markers are clitics, as well as the "delimiter" -man ( `only'). I have shown in [6] that ordinary postpositions ("adverbial case markers") and delimiters are clitics even though Nom/Acc/Gen case markers are not regular clitics. I proposed the following morphotactic structure for Korean nominals: (1) Stem - Der Suffix - Infl Suffix - Clitic 1 - Clitic 2 - Edge Affix (2) sanszi) -nim� -t4'1� teacher Honor�-eke -man -i P1� to only Nom ( `only to the teachers') Stem� Der Suf Infl Suf Cl C2� Edge Af In example (2) postposition -eke and delimiter -man are analyzed as two different kinds of clitics. As for verbal particles, [7] assumes that the Quotative, Discourse Suffix and Plural markers are clear cases of clitics. IV. Clitic Analyses of Verbs in [NP + V] Forms The Korean Copula -i can also be analyzed as a clitic ([8]). It can be shown that it is neither a derivational/inflectional affix nor an independent word: (3) a. i� kas -4n [k4� saram� coh-a-ha-non] chxk-i -ta. this thing …

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